To celebrate World Book Day and Festival of Words Year 7 joined with the rest of the school to dress up as characters or words. We enjoyed finding out amazing facts about books and here are some of our favourites.
- The word for loving the smell of old books is ‘Bibliosmia’. Similar to carbon-dating, scientists can analyze the chemicals responsible for “old book smell” to determine the age of a book. The process is called “material degradomics”.
- The three most read books in the world are The Holy Bible, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, and Harry Potter.
- Dr Seuss invented the word ‘nerd’, using it in his 1950 book ‘If I Ran the Zoo.’
- The term ‘bookworm’ originates from insects who live in and feed on the binding of books.
- The most expensive book in the world is the 1640 Bay Psalm, which sold for $14.2 million.
- The largest book in the world is The Klencke Atlas, which measures 1.75 metres tall, and 1.90 metres wide when open.
- Longest novel ever written is Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, containing an estimated 9,609,000 characters.
- Charles Dickens owned a bookcase which functioned as a secret door in his house, and was populated with fake books bearing amusing names including Jonah’s Account of the Whale, The Lives of a Cat which came in nine volumes, and The Art of Cutting Teeth.
