Portal:Books
The Books Portal
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex (plural, codices). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page.
As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's Physics is called a book. In an unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts.
The intellectual content in a physical book need not be a composition, nor even be called a book. Books can consist only of drawings, engravings or photographs, crossword puzzles or cut-out dolls. In a physical book, the pages can be left blank or can feature an abstract set of lines to support entries, such as in an account book, an appointment book, an autograph book, a notebook, a diary or a sketchbook. Some physical books are made with pages thick and sturdy enough to support other physical objects, like a scrapbook or photograph album. Books may be distributed in electronic form as ebooks and other formats.
Although in ordinary academic parlance a monograph is understood to be a specialist academic work, rather than a reference work on a scholarly subject, in library and information science monograph denotes more broadly any non-serial publication complete in one volume (book) or a finite number of volumes (even a novel like Proust's seven-volume In Search of Lost Time), in contrast to serial publications like a magazine, journal or newspaper. An avid reader or collector of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, "bookworm". A place where books are traded is a bookshop or bookstore. Books are also sold elsewhere and can be borrowed from libraries. Google has estimated that by 2010, approximately 130,000,000 titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the increased usage of ebooks. (Full article...)
Selected article
Night is a 1960 book by Elie Wiesel based on his Holocaust experiences with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944–1945, toward the end of the Second World War in Europe. In just over 100 pages of sparse and fragmented narrative, Wiesel writes about the death of God and his own increasing disgust with humanity, reflected in the inversion of the parent–child relationship as his father deteriorates to a helpless state and Wiesel becomes his resentful, teenage caregiver. "If only I could get rid of this dead weight ... Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, ashamed forever." In Night everything is inverted, every value destroyed. "Here there are no fathers, no brothers, no friends", a kapo tells him. "Everyone lives and dies for himself alone."
Wiesel was 16 when Buchenwald was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945, too late for his father, who died after a beating while Wiesel lay silently on the bunk above for fear of being beaten too. He moved to Paris after the war and in 1954 completed an 862-page manuscript in Yiddish about his experiences, published in Argentina as the 245-page Un di velt hot geshvign ("And the World Remained Silent"). The novelist François Mauriac helped him find a French publisher. Les Éditions de Minuit published 178 pages as La Nuit in 1958, and in 1960 Hill & Wang in New York published a 116-page translation as Night.
Selected picture
Credit: Diliff
Books topics
- For a topical guide of this subject, see Outline of books
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Related portals
Web resources
- Bookbinding and the Conservation of books, A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, 1982 by Matt T. Roberts and Don Etherington
- IOBA glossary of book terms
- Project Gutenberg - Free e-Books
- Words at Large: The best in books from CBC.ca
- please add more!
Selected biography
Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 – February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his Paulicéia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist—he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology—his influence has reached far beyond Brazil.
Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism, and became Brazil's national polymath. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde "Group of Five." The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. (Full article...)
Selected quote
| “ | Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom. | ” |
| — William Shakespeare | ||
Did you know...
- ...that Black Beauty was banned in South Africa because of the use of the word 'black' in the title?(Pictured)
- ...that in December 1936, George Orwell went to Spain as a fighter for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War ?
- ...that Epigraphia Carnatica, compiled by Benjamin L. Rice, contains a study of about 9000 inscriptions found in the Old Mysore region of India?
General images
Design by Hans Holbein the Younger for a metalwork book cover (or treasure binding) (from Book design)
The spine of the book is an important aspect in book design, especially in the cover design. When the books are stacked up or stored in a shelf, the details on the spine is the only visible surface that contains the information about the book. In a book store, it is often the details on the spine that attract the attention first. (from Book design)
12-metre-high (40 ft) stack of books sculpture at the Berlin Walk of Ideas, commemorating the invention of modern book printing (from History of books)
Bookbinder's type holder (from Bookbinding)
European output of manuscripts 500–1500 (from History of books)
Marbled book board from a book published in London in 1872 (from Bookbinding)
Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on the Latin edition of Marco Polo's Le livre des merveilles. (from History of books)
A Sumerian clay tablet, currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, inscribed with the text of the poem Inanna and Ebih by the priestess Enheduanna, the first author whose name is known
Modern paperback spines (from Bookbinding)
Example of blind tooling a book binding with exquisite detail (from Bookbinding)
European output of books 500–1800 (from History of books)
Book conservators at the State Library of New South Wales, 1943 (from Bookbinding)
Photograph of a printing press in Egypt, c. 1922 (from History of books)
Page from the Blue Quran manuscript, ca. 9th or 10th century CE (from History of books)
Folio from a manuscript of the Shanamah (Book of Kings) (from History of books)
Cloth book cover with attached paper panel, mimicking half leather binding (from Bookbinding)
Decorative binding with figurehead of the 12th century manuscript Liber Landavensis (from Bookbinding)
Page from a Jain manuscript depicting the birth of Mahavira, c. 1400 (from History of books)
Jikji, Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters, the earliest known book printed with movable metal type, 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. (from History of books)
European output of printed books c. 1450–1800 (from History of books)
Sammelband of three alchemical treatises, bound in Strasbourg by Samuel Emmel c. 1568, showing metal clasps and leather covering of boards (from Bookbinding)
Three Sophie Calle books with different titling orientations: ascending (left), descending (middle) and upright (right) (from Bookbinding)
Dresden Codex (page 49) (from History of books)
The scene in Botticelli's Madonna of the Book (1480) reflects the presence of books in the houses of richer people in his time. (from History of books)
Page spread with J. A. van de Graaf's construction of classical text area (print space) and margin proportions. (from Book design)
Hardbound book spine stitching (from Bookbinding)
Scheme of common book design(from Bookbinding)- Belly band
- Flap
- Endpaper
- Book cover
- Head
- Fore edge
- Tail
- Right page, recto
- Left page, verso
- Gutter
Folio from the Shah Jahan Album, c. 1620, depicting the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (from History of books)
Rebacking saving original spine, showing one volume finished and one untouched (from Bookbinding)
The codex Manesse, a book from the Middle Ages (from History of books)
An author portrait of Jean Miélot writing his compilation of the Miracles of Our Lady, one of his many popular works. (from History of books)
A traditional bookbinder at work (from Bookbinding)
First printed book in Georgian was published in Rome, in 1629 by Niceforo Irbachi. (from History of books)
The Book of the Dead of Hunefer, c. 1275 BCE, ink and pigments on papyrus, in the British Museum (London) (from History of books)
9th-century Qur'an in Reza Abbasi Museum (from Bookbinding)
Initial on the opening page of a book printed by the Kelmscott Press (from Book design)
Woman holding wax tablets in the form of the codex. Wall painting from Pompeii, before 79 CE. (from History of books)
A Chinese bamboo book (from History of books)
Traditionally sewn book opened flat (from Bookbinding)
Hardbound book with half leather binding (spine and corners) and marbled boards (from Bookbinding)
Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the Codex Amiatinus (c. 700) (from Bookbinding)
A 15th-century Incunable. Notice the blind-tooled cover, corner bosses, and clasps. (from History of books)
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