Do you like to read? We also love, and we are convinced that the book is a truly precious thing. Even the fact that books that once were piece goods, are now available to all comers for a very modest amount, does not detract from their importance. In relation to books, one can judge the attitude of a person towards other people. At least that’s what some book lovers say, and perhaps there is some truth in their words.
The first books, judging by archaeological finds, appeared more than two thousand years ago. They were made of wood and wax.
Nevertheless, there is an even more ancient book – the manuscript of Priss, which is about five and a half thousand years old. It is written on papyrus.
There are about 130 million books on Earth. This refers to the number of works of all kinds, and not copies of the books themselves.
The most mysterious book is the Voynich manuscript. This medieval manuscript, apparently describing some plants, has not yet been deciphered. It is written in a non-existent language, and there are no such plants on Earth, by the way. So far, the debates about the origin of the book are boiling, and the versions are very different.
“Leicester Code” for the authorship of Leonardo da Vinci – one of the most expensive books in the world. It was sold to Bill Gates at auction for a fantastic sum of $ 24 million. Curious is the fact that the book is written in a mirror, that is, you need to arm yourself with a mirror to read it.
Many know “Tales of a thousand and one nights,” but few know that in the original version of these tales Aladdin was not an Arab, but a Chinese.
L. Carroll’s book “Alice in Wonderland” is banned in China because of the presence of talking animals in it.
In the library of the famous Harvard there are four books written on parchment from human skin.
In Gulliver’s Travel, certain laws of celestial mechanics, in particular, the dimensions of the satellites of Mars and the features of their rotation around the mother planet, have been described for a good hundred years before the astronomers stated the same. Here is such a mysterious fact.
In the books of Shakespeare, the word “love” occurs almost exactly ten times more often than the word “hatred”.
The Robinson Crusoe has a sequel. It describes the adventure of the same protagonist, who suffers another shipwreck, as a result of which he is forced to go home for months on land, in particular, across the territory of Russia.
For the entire period of the existence of the printed matter, around two billion books have been published worldwide.
The first literary novel is the Japanese “The Tale of Genji,” written more than a thousand years ago.
The most popular book in the world is the Bible. The second most popular is a collection of quotes by Mao Zedong (thanks to popularity in China), and the third is the Lord of the Rings.
The most prolific author in the world is Barbara Cartland, who published an average of two new novels per month.
