Did you know…?

Posted 3.11.2020 | Wednesday
categories: Funny Book News
tags:


I’ve loved books my entire life. I still remember the first novel I read when I was barely five, Little House on the Prairie. Books have always been a huge part of my life, even before I decided to begin writing. And along the way, I’ve picked up some pretty obscure facts about them.

Did you know…

  1. That the first book written on a typewriter was Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, published in 1882?
  2. That the largest structure, fashioned after the Parthenon, made out of books was built in 2017? Marta Minujin, an Argentinian artist, built it out of banned books, plastic sheeting, and metal grills. And she built it at a once-Nazi book burning site in Germany. It contains 100,000 copies of 170 titles.
  3. That liking the smell of books is a real thing? It’s called bibliosmia. I have it!
  4. That there is also a word for buying books and not reading them? Tsundoku, in Japanese. Marie Kondo would not approve.
  5. That in January of 2017, Amazon sold out of all physical copies of a book published almost seventy years earlier? It was Orwell’s 1984, in line with the two biggest trending topics in media. “Fake news” and “alternative facts.”
  6. That Harry Potter books are the most banned books in the 21st century?
  7. That Virginia Woolf wrote her books standing up? I definitely do not!
  8. That there is an actual phobia associated with being afraid of running out of something to read? It’s called “abibliophobia.”
  9. That there are four law books bound in human skin Harvard University’s libary?
  10. That part of the MG toll road in Birmingham, UK, is made out of pulped books? Mills and Boon novels were pulped in South Wales and then used in the top layers of the road.
  11. That the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was typed with just two fingers? Okay, then.

About Kim

A mom, a wife, an Army vet, a hardcore reader, and a writer with too many stories to tell! Read more here.

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