The World of Books: 35 Surprising Facts

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26Horton Hears a Who!

Horton Hears a Who!

Horton Hears a Who!, by Dr. Seuss, is an allegory for post-World War 2 US occupation of Japan. Seuss, who was vehemently anti-Japanese during the conflict, had a drastic change of heart after visiting postwar Japan. He dedicated the book to a Japanese friend.


27. In 2010, an Australian publisher had to reprint 7,000 copies of a recipe book named 'The Pasta Bible' because a typo asked for "freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.


28. A Dutch author named Richard Klinkhamer wrote a pretty suspicious book named ‘Woensdag Gehaktdag’, which detailed seven ways to kill your spouse. He wrote it a year after his wife disappeared. He became a celebrity and spent the next decade hinting - in print and on TV - that he had murdered her. Finally, it turned out that he really had.


29. ‘The Complete Manual of Suicide’ is a Japanese book which provides explicit descriptions on various methods of suicide. It was first published in 1993 and sold more than 1 million copies.


30. In 1956, at the urging of radio host Jean Shepherd, listeners entered bookstores and asked for a book named ‘I, Libertine’ that did not exist. So many people took part in this hoax that the book was soon on The New York Times Best Seller list.


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31Handcuff secrets

Handcuff secrets

Harry Houdini wrote a book in 1909 called “Handcuff Secrets” in which he revealed many of the tricks behind his famous escapes.


32. The book 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess had two different versions, an American one and a European one, because the US publisher thought Americans would find the the idea of a criminal being redeemed unrealistic.


33. There is such an expansive collection of books under the British library in their archive, that if a person could read 5 books per day it would take them 80,000 years to complete.


34. In 2013, J.K. Rowling secretly released a book named ‘The Cuckoo's Calling’ under a different name (Robert Galbraith) in order to release a book “without hype and expectation.” When she was revealed to be the author, the book surged from 4,709th on Amazon to #1 best-selling novel.


35. There has been a book written from the perspective of a successful sociopath/psychopath about the intricacies of the life of someone with this condition called "Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight". The book, for obvious reasons, was written under a pseudonym.

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