A nose for books

There is actually a name for ‘old book smell’! If you enjoy catching a whiff of those yellowed, dusty pages of old books, it’s called ‘bibliosmia’. Scientists can estimate the age of a book by just sniffing its pages. This is called ‘material degradomics’.

Books make the world go round

Google states that there are about 130 million published books in the world right now! It is further estimated that almost 800 000 new books are added to that list every year.

Books: 1, TV: 0

Did you know that children’s books have 50% more interesting words in them than any television show for adults? So, you can be smarter than a grown-up by simply reading a book!

Books and bugs

Bookworms are creatures too… These little insects live in and feed on the binding of books. So, if you’re a bookworm, remember that actual bookworms also love to devour those pages!

Crazy collectors

If you are a serial book hoarder, there is a word for you: Tsundoku is Japanese for “to let reading materials pile up in your home and never read them”.

That’s one popular book

Take a guess what the most-read book, and the world’s best seller, is… it’s The Bible!

Alice is real!

Then-ten-year-old Alice Liddell is the real-life inspiration behind Alice in Wonderland. Author Lewis Carroll was close friends with Alice’s parents. Alice asked Lewis to tell her a story while they were on a boating trip, and the Alice that we know and love was born.

Where to go when you really love books

The Ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt was one of the largest libraries in the world. The library contained up to 400 000 scrolls! The library was said to be destroyed by a fire, though experts cannot determine how it was destroyed for sure. What we do know is that it is considered one of the greatest cultural losses in the history of mankind. Today, the United States Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. It houses over 38 million books!

Talk about long-winded!

The longest sentence ever printed is 823 words! It is a sentence in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.