Happy Book Lovers Day

Today, August 9,  is the National Book Lovers Day. It's not an official holiday, but it's recognized by those who love to read. So, I'm posting some trivia about the book world. No one really knows who was the first author, who wrote the first novel, and etc., Yet, it's fun to ponder over things as such...

It's believed that the first author was Enheduanna. She was a poet, priestess, and a politician from Mesopotamia who lived 4200 years ago.

Apparently, the first novel was written more than 1000 years ago by Murasaki Shikibu. It depicted the aristocratic life during the Heian period. Few years ago, I visited the museum dedicated to her work. More here...

The first book printed in English was Recuyell of the Histoire of Troye. It's a book about country romance, written by Raoul Lefèvre, and translated from French to English by William Caxton 550 years ago. Caxton was the founder of the printing press in England. The book sold for £1 million in 2014.

Robert Carlton Brown, a successful writer, came up with the concept of E-Reader in 1930. He believed that print books would become obsolete, and wanted books to keep up with film when he said that we have talkies (meaning, we changed the radio to cinema), but what we need are readies (meaning, we are behind in times and print books should be changed to E-Books). He invented, and produced about 150 electronic book reading machines.

In 1932, the American Foundation for the Blind created the first audio book in the form of a record, yes record—you know, those things that make a popping, and khhh sound when playing on the record player. Later records changed into cassettes and then to CDs. Finally, when Amazon came about, portable audio recorders were created.