I
stumbled upon a copy of the brand new Guinness World Records 2016 when I
visited a Barnes & Noble superstore in New York City. The book colorfully lists and illustrates
thousands of records and amazing feats, from sports and science, to construction
and wealth. However, nowhere to be found
were any mentions of books.
Even
in the section on media and leisure, one couldn’t find anything about the book
industry, authors, books, or the world of book publishing. There were listings about YouTube, theater,
videogames, music, television, comics, streaming, apps, music, movies, the
Internet… but no books!
There
certainly must be some interesting or odd records that could be tabulated and
presented, such as these:
·
Most
books read by one person
·
Most
pages for a book
·
Most
books in a series
·
Most
annual editions of a book
·
Most
bestsellers for an author
·
Most
books sold by an author in a lifetime
·
Most
books turned into movies for an author
·
Most
weeks on a bestseller list for an author
·
Rarest
book or oldest book
·
Highest
price paid for a book
·
Most
books written by an author
·
Most
books written about a specific person
Surprisingly
in a book about records, there’s no mention of books. Tens of billions of dollars is spent on books
each year. Books inform society, define
culture, record history, and serve as tools to inspire action. But they don’t seem to be worthy of mention
in the book that believes it important to highlight that:
·
3
dogs survived the sinking of the Titanic
·
15
million plastic bottles are used daily in the UK
·
A
man once carried 429 cans, weighing 381 pounds, on his head
·
There’s
now a 1 in 250 chance a birth results in identical twins
·
The
longest beard measured 8 feet, 2.5 inches
·
The
average global life expectancy for a woman (71) is five years more than men
(66)
·
There
are about 6,000 lizard species
·
A
flying bee registers 200 wingbeats per second
·
A
panda spends 15 hours a day eating
·
One
million recycled phones yield 75 extracted ponnds of gold
·
Bill
Gates is the richest man with a fortune of 79.2 billion bucks
·
The
largest personal fortune made from a film franchise belongs to George Lucas
(Star Wars) at $5 billion
Are
books not as sexy as rugby, rowing, or butterflies? It seems everything else made it in here but
books. It also appears – but I don’t
have proof – that the book is mixing in paid content, otherwise what explains
full pages devoted to Mindcraft, Legos, and Star Wars?
When
we think of records, we think of amazing feats that test the human body and
mind, true accomplishments of the odd, amazing, and mind-boggling. But the current edition seems to cater too
much to the trends of the day, rendering some of its listings meaningless or
diluted.
It
still holds interesting records and factoids about the feats of animals,
machines, nature, and people, but I would hope that Guinness World Records,
which celebrated its 60th anniversary last year, gets back to being
what was – a legendary standard-bearer for verifying and recording records in a
way that was useful and meaningful. To
snub books is hard to fathom, but for that disgraceful transgression I rate the
book a B+.
It
fielded over 39,000 record submissions last year. Weren’t any for books? Weren’t any records from the past six decades
connected to books at all? In a world of
billions of book readers, I would think it a record to not have any
book-related records!
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