Book

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. more...

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A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a sheet is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book.

The purpose of a book is to be read by the eyes or by fingertips and in some cases by hearing to gather information that has been recorded or printed onto a piece for the transferring of information to the brain for processing.

Books may also refer to a literary work, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers.

In novels, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, etc).

A lover of books is usually referred to as a bibliophile, a bibliophilist, or a philobiblist, or, more informally, a bookworm.

Etymology

The word book comes from Old English \"bōc\" which comes from Germanic root \"*bōk-\", cognate to beech.

Similarly, in Slavic languages (e.g. Russian and Bulgarian \"буква\" (bukva)—\"letter\") is cognate to \"beech\". It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood.

History of books

Antiquity

When writing systems were invented in ancient civilizations, nearly everything that could be written upon—stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets—was used for writing. Alphabetic writing emerged in Egypt around 1800 BC. At first the words were not separated from each other (scripta continua) and there was no punctuation. Texts were written from right to left, left to right, and even so that alternate lines read in opposite directions. The technical term for this type of writing is 'boustrophedon,' which means literally 'ox-turning' for the way a farmer drives an ox to plough his fields.

Scroll

Papyrus, a thick paper-like material made by weaving the stems of the papyrus plant, then pounding the woven sheet with a hammer-like tool, was used for writing in Ancient Egypt, perhaps as early as the First Dynasty, although the first evidence is from the account books of King Neferirkare Kakai of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2400 BC). Papyrus sheets were glued together to form a scroll. Tree bark such as lime (Latin liber, from there also library) and other materials were also used.

Read more at Wikipedia.org