A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other various material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book (e-book).

Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels and sometimes other types of books (e.g. biographies), a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, etc.). A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile, a bibliophilist, or a philobiblist, or, more informally, a bookworm.

A store where books are bought and sold is a bookstore or bookshop. Books can also be borrowed from libraries.

In 2010, Google estimated that there were about 130 million unique books in the world.

History of books

Quotations about books:

Sourced

• One reader is better than another in proportion as he is able of a greater range of activity in reading and exerts more effort.
  • Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book, (1940; 1972)

• Why is marking a book indespensible to reading it? First, it keeps you awake — not merely conscious, but wide awake. Second, reading, if it is active, is thinking, and thinking tends to express itself in wordes, spoken or written...Third, writing your reactions down helps you to remember the thoughts of the author...Marking a book is literally an expression of your differences or your agreements with the author, It is the highest respect you can pay him.
  • Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book, (1940; 1972)

• Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
  • Francis Bacon "Of Studies"

• Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
  • Francis Bacon "Of Studies"

• The covers of this book are too far apart.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

• Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
  • Harold Bloom, quoted in O Magazine (April 2003)

• Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.
  • Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (1979), translated by William Weaver (1981), p. 72

• There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
  • G. K. Chesterton, in Heretics (1905)

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Mon Aug 23 14:23:17 2010