Harry Potter and Other Books

The 5th installment in the Harry Potter series "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" will be on theaters worldwide July 11, and a lot of movie fans are already excited to see it on the big screen. This book by J.K. Rowling is the fastest-selling book of all time, selling 5 million copies in the U.S. and another 1 million copies in the U.K. within the first 24 hours it was released. The book went on sale June 21, 2003 at 12:01 a.m. and Barnes and Noble sold the book at a rate of more than 80 copies per second. By midnight of June 22, 1 in every 60 americans had bought a copy of the book.

A true Harry Potter fan, 16-year old Emerson Spartz flew from Chicago to London on June 21, 2003 for the sole purpose of buying a copy of the same book, putting him in the world record as having to made the longest distance ever traveled to buy a book (3,950 miles). As Spartz told the Los Angeles Times, "I want to feel the weight of that book". Spartz is also the founder of the Harry Potter fansite MuggleNet.

The 4th book in the Harry Potter series, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" ranked as the second fastest-selling book, having sold 3 million copies in the first 48 hours. The Harry Potter books were really good to its author, J.K. Rowling, and made her one of the world's richest. She is now richer than Queen Elizabeth II.

Harry Potter books not only ranked as the fastest-selling books, it is also ranked as the most frequently banned book in america. Not only it was banned, it was also, at times, burned. Jack Brock, pastor of the Christ Community Church in New Mexico called the Potter books "a masterpiece of satanic deception" as his congregation burned them in December 2001. Another congregation in Greenville, Michigan, relegated Harry Potter books and other "witchcraft items" to a bonfire in August 2003.

While Harry Potter books are the fastest-selling books of all-time, the best-selling copyrighted book of all time is "Guiness Book of World Records". The book that records all amazing feats and records got listed on its own page in 1974 when 23.9 million copies were sold, and had cracked the 100 million sales threshold on November 2003. The book was originally conceived on a 1951 hunting trip when an argument ensued about what was Europe's fastest bird. No book held the answer, so Norris and Ross McWhirter wrote one.

The best-selling non-copyrighted works, in order are (1) The Bible, (2) The Koran, and (3) Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book.

The world's most prolific author is Brazilian Jose Carlos Ryoki Inoue. After abandoning a medical career in 1986, Inoue has authored a staggering 1,070 books. Using 39 different pseudonyms, Inoue wrote mostly pulp fiction, detective stories and westerns. Aside from these books, he had written over 38 million words in his diary during the span of over 2 decades. He can write a chapter during a trip to the bathroom, and a 195-page novel in one day. Inoue once said, "Truthfully, I haven't even read all the books I've written".

The Book of Psalms is the world's oldest bound book. Discovered in 1984 in a Christian cemetery 85 miles south of Cairo, Egypt, the 490-page manuscript dates back to the 2nd half of the 4th century A.D. The Moravian Book Shop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is the world's oldest bookstore that is still in operations. It was originally founded in 1745.

And, lastly, here are the original titles of some famous books:

• Catch-18 (Catch-22) - Heller changed the title because Leon Uris had released a book titled Mila 18 on the same year.
• Pansy (Gone With The Wind) - In earlier drafts, Scarlett was named Pansy O'Hara, hence Mitchell's aborted title for the book. Other titles he thought of were "Tote the Weary Load" and "Tomorrow is Another Day".
• 1805 (War and Peace) - Tolstoy originally meant to call it "1825", then published it as "1805" before changing it to War and Peace.
• Trimalchio in West Egg (The Great Gatsby) - Another title Fitzgerald considered was "The High Bouncing Lover".
• The Last Man in Europe (1984) - Orwell thought "The Last Man" title was too bleak and instead switched the last two digits of the year it was completed (1948) to come up with the title.
  

Random Odds & Ends:

• The first public library in the U.S. opened in 1698 in Charleston, South Carolina.
• Dorothy Straight was only 4 years old in 1964 when she wrote the book How the World Began, for her grandmother. Her parents sent it to the publisher who thought the book was good enough to be published, thus making her the youngest published author.
• A.A. Milne used his son as the inspiration for the character Christopher Robin in his Winnie the Pooh book series. His son, also named Christopher Robin, grew up hating the books because his schoolmates teased him.
• Agatha Christie (1890–1976) is the world’s best-selling fiction writer. She wrote 78 crime novels that sold more than 2 billion copies.
• J.J. Audubon's The Birds of America, published in 1840, is the most expensive book in the world. In March 2000, it was sold for $8,802,500 — the highest price ever paid for a book. You can find hardcover copies in Amazon for less than $10.