15 Super-Nerdy Book Facts for Bibliophiles:
A Guest Post by Desiree Villena
Fans of Jane Austen might pride themselves on being able to recite the opening lines of lesser-known titles like Lady Susan as easily as Pride and Prejudice. Potterheads might know the series so well, they can list off the fictional birthdays of each character. Avid Tolkien readers might have encyclopedic familiarity with Middle-earth lore. In general, book-lovers tend to be deep wells of knowledge when it comes to their favorite stories or authors.
In this post, however, I want to talk
about the world of literature as a whole and reveal my top 15 pieces of
biblio-trivia. How
many did you already know?
1. Longest novel
Words
just seem to flow more easily in French. Both of the world’s
longest books
were written by French authors: Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus by Georges de Scudéry goes on
for 1.95 million words, while Men of Good
Will by Jules Romains has an astounding 2.07 million word count across 27
volumes. That’s about twice the size of the entire
Harry Potter series combined — and well above the
average length of
a novel. (And here we were
all wondering if Order of the Phoenix could
have done with some editing!)
2. Most expensive print book
Drumroll,
please! The most expensive book in the world is none other than the Bay Psalm Book, a pamphlet of hymns
produced by Puritans who emigrated to Massachusetts Bay in 1640. These days,
there are only 11 original copies in existence. The copy I’m speaking of here
was sold for a whopping
$14.2 million in
2013 — making this slender pamphlet more expensive than the “Marie Antoinette”
necklace and the Moussaieff Red Diamond combined.
3. Smallest book
How
small is the smallest book in the world? Try this on for size: 70 micrometers
by 100 micrometers. (That’s about the width of a human hair.) Perhaps
fittingly, it’s a reproduction
of a book titled Teeny Ted from Turnip Town — a
tale about a small bear at a county fair. You won’t be able to read it with
your naked eye, so if you want to find out who wins the turnip-growing contest,
grab the nearest electron microscope and get ready to squint.
4. tsundoku
For
all you bibliophiles out there, there’s actually a Japanese word to describe
the act of buying books and not reading them. 積ん読 (tsundoku) is a pun that
combines the word tsundeoku (which
means to “to pile things up”) and dokusho
(which means “to read”). Literally: to pile up things to read. No word yet on
whether there’s a cure for this behavior.
5. Bestselling author of all time
There’s
a bit of a debate over who occupies the top spot, with both Agatha Christie and
Shakespeare having sold somewhere
between 2-4 billion copies of their books. I’m sure that no one would mind if I call it a
virtual tie for now. Here’s some more trivia for the road, as well: Danielle
Steel sold more total books than J.K. Rowling, and out of the top 10
bestselling authors ever, nine out of ten wrote in English.
6. Bestselling novel of all time
It’s
Don Quixote’s world, and we’re just
living in it. This tale of a
delusional, romantic knight and his trusty squire has sold an estimated 500 million copies. To be fair, it had a massive
head start: Miguel de Cervantes published it in 1605, more than 250 years
before the number-two bestselling novel of all time, Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. That gives the
next two entrants — Lord of the Rings
and The Little Prince — something to
aim for in the next quarter-millennium!
7. Shortest chapter
Taken
from Allen Carr's The Easy Way to Stop
Smoking, the shortest chapter in existence is titled "The Advantages
of Being a Smoker" and is, quite appropriately, blank. Some more famous
examples come from William Faulkner’s five-word chapter in As I Lay Dying and Lewis Carroll’s eight-word chapter in Alice In Wonderland. For more wee
chapters in literature, check out this page. As it points out, if you read
them all, you’ve practically read an entire book, right?
8. Longest sentence
Until
quite recently, the longest sentence in literature came from Jonathan Coe’s
2001 novel The Rotter’s Club. It’s a
bonafide mouthful that lasts a whopping 13,955 words (roughly half the word
count of Of Mice and Men).
However, that record has since been usurped by
Lucy Ellman’s Ducks, Newburyport, a
finalist for the 2019 Booker Prize which famously contains nearly the entire
novel in a single sentence of over 400,000 words (!!!).Though Ellman’s
gargantuan sentence is clearly the technical champion here, I thought I’d
include both in case readers were curious about the longest sentence within a book, as well as comprising the
entire thing.
9. Biggest library ever
Hermione
Granger’s secret? “When in doubt, go to the library.” Even if the Library of
Congress doesn’t contain any magical books, it is the biggest in the
world,
boasting over 150 million items and the largest collection of rare books in
history (including one of the three perfect copies of the Gutenberg Bible). On
top of all that, the Library of Congress receives 15,000 new books every day —
which might be enough to keep even the hungriest reader occupied.
10. Longest word
methionylthreonylthreonyglutaminylarginyl[…]isoleucine.
The
ellipses, by the way, are there for your convenience. Otherwise, this word
could take you a solid minute to scroll through on a screen. At a total of
189,819 letters, it would take about 3.5 hours to pronounce from beginning to
end.
In
comparison, the longest word to
ever appear in literature seems practically compact: Lopadotemachoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimhypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakechymenokichlepikossyphophattoperisteralektryonoptekephalliokigklopeleiolagoiosiraiobaphetraganopterygon,
which is a fictional Greek dish in Aristophanes’ Assemblywomen.
11. Largest population of bookworms
Since
Asia is the biggest continent, it makes sense that it would also have the most
bookworms! According to the 2014 NOP World Culture Score Index, India is the country that reads
the most, clocking on average more than 10 hours per week per person. That
said, people in Thailand and China aren’t far behind — they read 9.24 and 8
hours per week per person, respectively. Meanwhile, the United States only
reads a measly 5.6 hours per week per person, ranking it 22nd on the list.
12. Longest series ever
A Song of Ice and Fire doesn’t even come close. This
title goes to Perry Rhodan, a German
science fiction series whose first installment was published in 1961. It’s come
quite a way since then: as of April 2017, the original series consists of more
than 2,900 novels. That pushes Perry Rhodan to just over 300,000 pages
in total. To put that into perspective for you, Terry Pratchett's entire
45-book Discworld series comes out to 15,497 pages — and A Song of Ice and Fire totals “only” 4,228 pages so far.
13. Thickest book published
HarperCollins
has the distinct honor of publishing the thickest book in the world: a complete
collection of Agatha Christie’s Miss
Marple stories that measures 12.6 inches (322 mm) in width. As the Guinness Book of World Records points out, that’s 68 crimes committed, 11
philandering paramours, 68 secrets, 12 poisonings, 6 strangulations, 2
drownings, 1 death by an arrow, 2 people pushed, and 66 maids. All in a day’s work, as Miss Marple
might say.
14. abibliophobia
Fear
of spiders? Nope. On the contrary, abibliophobia
describes a reader’s worst nightmare: it’s an extreme fear of running out
of reading material. Signs of abibliophobia
include:
●
Reading receipts when there’s nothing else around;
●
Panicking because you forgot to bring a book with you on a flight; and
●
Re-reading novels more than six times in a row.
If
you are experiencing any of the above symptoms, consult your local bookstore
immediately.
15. Most words invented
Sure,
Paris Hilton thinks that she
invented the word “selfie” — but could she come up with more than 1,700 new words? That’s the
number of terms that we owe to Shakespeare, without whom we wouldn’t have such
commonly-used words as “anchovy,” “addiction,” “compromise,” “drugged,”
“auspicious,” “bedazzle,” “bloodstained,” “assassination,” “negotiate,”
“radiance,” “torture,” “dauntless,” “summit,” “frugal,” and “excitement.” I
could go on, but I’ll let Shakespeare have the last word: “amazement.”
Desiree Villena is a writer with Reedsy, a
marketplace that connects authors with the world's self-publishing resources and professionals. In her spare time, Desiree enjoys reading
contemporary fiction, writing short stories, and boning up on literary trivia!
Thank you for this nifty, nerdy, noteworthy guest post, Desiree. I learned a lot of fascinating, new biblio-trivia (at least I knew the word tsundoku)! I appreciate the time and effort that went into this well-written post, which includes terrific links to various related sites.
What do you think? Your comments are welcomed as always, so please feel free to add to the conversation.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank you for this nifty, nerdy, noteworthy guest post, Desiree. I learned a lot of fascinating, new biblio-trivia (at least I knew the word tsundoku)! I appreciate the time and effort that went into this well-written post, which includes terrific links to various related sites.
What do you think? Your comments are welcomed as always, so please feel free to add to the conversation.
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