Interesting Facts

On World Book Day I thought I would share some scary facts about the land of Shakespeare and Dickens. According to the OECD, young people in England have the lowest literacy levels in the developed world. (One term used is "functionally literate", and around 16 per cent, or 5.1 million adults in England, can be described as functionally illiterate, in that they would not pass an English GCSE and have literacy levels at or below those expected of an 11-year-old. Another study conducted by the Royal Society of Literature showed that 1 in 5 Brits cannot name a single author of literature, and that 15 per cent of those surveyed believed that literature is too difficult to understand. Happy World Book Day!)

A copy of Shakespeare's First Folio has been discovered at a stately home on a Scottish Island, just in time for the 400th anniversary of his death. (The book contains 36 of the bard's plays, and was published in 1623, seven years after his death.  It brought together the majority of his plays for the first time, without which there would be no copies  for more than half of them, including Macbeth and The Tempest. T he book had been in the library of Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute for more than 100 years, and was confirmed as genuine by Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Oxford University.  It's quite a find, as a previous copy sold for £2.8m in 2006.)

According to Matthew Jockers, a University of Nebraska English professor, there are about 6 archetypal plot shapes in fiction. (Using an algorithm that abstracts the structure of plot by looking at how sentiment changes in a story, resulting in a sort of plot graph, from what he calls the man on a hill story - a mainly positive story in which there is a mid-way peak - to the 'man in a hole' story, which tends to follow a character as they get into trouble and crawl back out again. People have been looking at this for a long time, probably in an attempt to get computers to write best sellers. In 2004, Christopher Booker published The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, in which he suggested there were 7 types of tales: rags to riches; overcoming the monster; the quest; voyage and return; comedy; tragedy, and rebirth. Way back in the 18th Century, Italian playwright Carlos Gozzi said there were 36 dramatic situations, which included the revolt; the enigma; madness; i...

US crime writer James Patterson is offering £250,000 to independent bookshops in the UK and Ireland. (Worried about the death of the independent bookshops, he has already run a similar scheme in the US, with grants of between £250 and £5,000 available to spend on schemes aimed at encouraging reading among children.  This is what you could call, putting your money where your mouth is.)

New rules have been introduced into jails in Italy; Italian prisoners will have their sentences reduced by three days for every book they read while in jail. (They will be able to learn up to 48 days off a year, but will only be allowed to choose from a list of carefully selected books. I guess that's what you would call, turning over a new leaf.

Psychologists at the New School for Social Research in New York, have shown that reading literary fiction enhances emotional intelligence. (The fiction found to have this effect was literary fiction, which included books like A Chameleon by Anton Chekhov, The Runner by Don DeLillo, and The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht. The researchers make a distinction between literary fiction and other types of writing. David Comer Kidd said, "Some writing is what you call 'writerly', you fill in the gaps and participate, and some is 'readerly', and you're entertained. We tend to see 'readerly' more in genre fiction like adventure, romance and thrillers, where the author dictates your experience as a reader. Literary [writerly] fiction lets you go into a new environment and you have to find your own way." I wonder if there are any books that have the opposite effect, and who might have read them?)

According to the website Goodreads the most abandoned book is  The Casual Vacancy by J K Rowling. (The runners up for the not so prestigious award of being really putdownable were:- Fifty Shades of Grey   by EL James Eat Pray Love  by  Elizabeth Gilbert and surprisingly  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo  by S tieg Larsson The top five abandoned "classics" were:- Catch 22 Heller’s satirical work, about the madness of the Second World War, introduced its title into the English language. The 1961 book follows the story of Joseph Yossarian, who flies bomber missions, and is convinced the military is trying to get him killed.  (Over 10m copies sold.) The Lord of the Rings The fantasy novel published in 1954 follows the epic journey of hobbits, dwarves, elves and other assorted creatures to destroy the Ring of Power.  It built a legion of fans and was turned into three blockbuster films.  (Over 150 million sold.) Ulys...

According to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Telegraph , the most borrowed book from the House of Commons library in 2012 was How to be an MP, by Paul Flynn. (The complete list is:- How to be an MP, by Paul Flynn. How Parliament Works, by Robert Rogers The new few, or a very British Oligarchy, by Ferdinand Mount Losing small wars: British military failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, by Frank Ledwidge Erskine May’s treastise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament, edited by Malcolm Jack Years of Lyndon Johnson, vol 4, by Robert Caro Outside in, by Peter Hain A Journey, by Tony Blair Chavs, by Owen Jones Back from the brink, by Alistair Darling But the winning book had only been borrowed 19 times, I personally think that says more about our MPs than anything else.)

According to a report published by Renaissance Learning, pupils in the UK struggle to understand GCSE exam papers. (Their reading skills are so poor at the end of secondary education due to a lack of time spent practising how to read.  This is so sad.) Source

A study by the National Literacy Trust found that, in the UK, children as young as seven are more likely to own a mobile phone than a book. (I would like to think that maybe they have an e-reader installed on the phone, but who am I kidding?)

A study at Brigham Young University found that popular novels aimed at teenagers contain, on average, 38 swear words per novel. (Professor Sarah Coyne, of Brigham Young University in America, found that 88 per cent of all the books on the adolescent best-seller list contained at least one swear word, she also noticed that the most popular characters were the most foul-mouthed.)

According to the Publishers Association, revenue from digital downloads hit £92million in 2011. (This is a 366 per cent increase on 2010. Around 1 in 40 UK adults received a Kindle for Christmas, and retailer John Lewis said that at one point during the festive season they were selling a Kindle every 30 seconds. Experts say the success of e-books is being driven by top authors releasing eBook-only short stories and novels,. If they would just reduce the price of an e-book these figures would sky-rocket.)

According to a poll by consumer group Silver Poll, in 2011 6% of over-55s in the UK owned an e-book reader. (This compares with five per cent of those aged 18-24. Of course there is a simple explanation, over 55s can read.  Oh and you can make the print bigger.)

A continuator is a writer who chooses to finish the work of another author. (The latest book to be "continuated" is Charles Dickens' unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, his only mystery story. It was his final book, published in 1870, but he only completed six of twelve parts before he died. No-one knows how he intended to conclude it, but Gwyneth Hughes not only adapted Dickens's half-written novel into a new television drama but also gave it an ending of her own. You could describe what continuators do as literary necrophilia, or maybe they simply keep popular authors alive.)

"The Making of a Fly" - a book about the molecular biology of a fly from egg to fully-fledged insect was advertised on Amazon for $23.6m (£14.3m). (Now, I'm sure it is a fabulous book, but did it really deserve such a high price tag? No, it didn't. It hit that figure briefly on the Amazon site after the algorithms used by Amazon to set and update prices started outbidding each other. Yes, an algorithm written by a human went haywire. An amusing insight into the chaos that may be caused if we put all our trust in the machines we use every day.)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is going to be republished, this time without the N word. (Instead of the n word the word slave will be used, and the author, Twain scholar Alan Gribben, has also changed "injun" to "Indian".    Of course Huck Finn is a classic and so many people are up in arms. Seemingly many schools will no longer allow the book to be read because of the use of the ‘N’ word.  I guess it's a step up from book-burning.)

The factory that makes Ikea's Billy bookcases knocks out 15 of them every minute. ( So by the time you have read this message, there'll be another 15 Billy bookcases in the world.) 

The University of Texas in San Antonio (UTSA) has opened the first completely bookless library on a university campus in the US. (The library in the engineering department seats 80 people and holds 425,000 e-books and 18,000 e-journal subscriptions. And the students don't have to worry about books already being out on loan, they simply download whatever they want, whenever they want. What bliss!)

Oxford University's Bodleian Library is entitled to a copy of every book published in the UK. (Not surprisingly they've been running out of space (around 1,000 new books arrive each day), but they now have a warehouse big enough to store eight million books - which is enough space for about 20 years. And I thought I had a storage problem!)

A library book borrowed by the first U.S. president, George Washington, has been returned to New York City's oldest library, 221 years late. (I'm so glad I won't be paying that particular fine.)