14 Random Book Facts
I have dedicated a number of posts to author and book-related trivia. This week sees a return to the theme. Here are 14 new book-related ‘facts’. I think they are quite interesting, and I hope you will too.
J.R.R. Tolkien typed the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy with two fingers.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is said to be the first book to have been written on a typewriter. Some disagree.
The largest book in the world is The Klencke Atlas at 1.75 metres tall and 1.90 metres wide. It is over 350 years old.
The first book ever bought on Amazon is thought to be Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.
Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables contains a sentence that is 823 words long.
The Bay Psalm Book was the first book printed in North America.
The slowest-selling book in history is allegedly a 1716 translation of the New Testament from Coptic into Latin. The last of its 500 copies was sold in 1907.
Nathanael West’s 1939 novel The Day of the Locust features a character named Homer Simpson.
Alexander Lenard’s Latin translation of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh is the only Latin book to have appeared on The New York Times Best Seller List.
Vladimir Nabokov wrote the first draft of his controversial novel Lolita on notecards.
The first book described as a ‘best-seller’ was Fools Of Nature by US writer Alice Brown in 1889.
The Tale of Genji is purported to be the first book ever written (circa 1007).
The first handwritten Bible since the invention of the printing press cost $8 million. It took 12 years to complete.
Cat’s Cradle earned Kurt Vonnegut his Master’s Degree.
