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5 Shocking Facts About Books

Updated on September 23, 2018
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Magazines, Poems and Novels Oh My!

Are you a bibliophile (book lover), a bibliophagist (a devourer of books), a Bibliobibuli (someone who reads too much) or all three? Either way, fill your inner bookworm with these 5 book facts.

Readership Is Down

Over one in four Americans surveyed said that they didn’t read a single book within the last 12 months. Other sources report a statistic as high as 80%. In particular, Mental Floss reports that one-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives and that 42% of college graduates never read another book after college.

For all future writers, the statistics are daunting. Somewhere between 600,000 and 1,000,000 books are published every year in the US alone, but 57% of new books are not read to completion.

People Prefer Manual Books

Even with the rise of e-reading, statistics show the preferred way of reading is still manual. According to piworld.com “respondents prefer reading from paper than screens”. In fact, next time you’re thinking about buying an online textbook, according to Businessinsiders.com, “a review of research done since 1992, we found that students were able to better comprehend information in print for texts that were more than a page in length. This appears to be related to the disruptive effect that scrolling has on comprehension”. Nothing beats the feel of pages and paper cuts.

Forget Papercuts, There Are Many Health Benefits To Reading

While it might be easy to lose ourselves in school or our job, but taking time to relax can be beneficial to your health and reading, in particular, has many benefits. Reading strengthens analytical skills, leads to memory improvement and improved concentration.

Reading can also prolong your life. Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health discovered that people who read books for as little as 30 minutes a day over several years were living an average of two years longer than people who didn’t read at all. This same study claimed that "book readers who reported more than three hours of reading each week were 23% less likely to die than their peers who read only newspapers or magazines."

The Largest And The Smallest Book

According to Guinness World Records, the largest book measures 16.40 ft by 26.44 ft, weighs approximately 3,306 lb, and consists of 429 pages. It took over 50 people to construct this massive book titled ‘This the Prophet Mohamed’ which highlights the lifetime achievements of Islam’s Prophet as well as the positive influence of Islam on the international and humanitarian scene.

Guinness World Records has also confirmed the smallest book in the world, Chekhov's Chameleon. Measured at just .9 by .9 millimeters, this book is not much larger than a grain of salt. It has 30 pages and three color illustrations but the print cannot be read by the naked eye.


People Can’t Get Enough Of Book Related Holidays

May 11-17 is Reading is Fun week. June is Audiobook Appreciation Month. July 30 is Paperback Book Day. World Book Day is April 23. September 6 is Read A Book Day.


Please comment below on what your favorite book is or what your favorite book fact is.

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