Books: A lifetime Friend

Introduction:
Books are a common feature in today’s fast moving world. It is quite difficult to find someone who has not seen, touched, and read at least one book in his or her lifetime. Today, authors write books on nearly every subject be it arts, science, commerce, history, literature, poetry, and other contemporary subjects.

Publishing and printing of books has become easier and more widespread since the invention of the printing press. Earlier, books were copied and written by hand, making books expensive and rare. Let us travel a little back in time to discover the journey that books have taken since first known to humankind.

History:
The word ‘book’ comes from an Old English word called ‘bōc”. According to the popular site thefreedictionary.com, a book in modern terms is “A set of written, printed, or blank pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers.”

The early Mesopotamians wrote books on clay tablets. The ancient Egyptians wrote on papyrus rolls in Egypt as early as 3000 B.C. In China, bamboo strips tied together with chords served as books. These dated back to around 1300 B.C. In ancient India, seers and sages wrote ancient religious texts on palm leaves – nature’s paper. These early writers would preserver these books for posterity and hand them down from one generation to another for preservation and dissemination of knowledge.

By the 19th century, printers could no longer meet the demand for books by hand printing. The printing press and the moveable type press, attributed to Johannes Gutenberg, changed the scenario, thus bringing the cost of books down to a considerable level. Johannes Gutenberg is also credited with printing the first real book - the Gutenberg Bible, using the movable type printing press.

Large presses followed this invention, thus making it possible for larger books to be printed. Further advances were made during the mid 1800s. For example, the invention of the papermaking machine, binding machinery, the cylinder press and the linotype machine made it possible for books to be printed in large numbers. In modern times, books are printed using a number of sophisticated processes, which require special attention out of scope of this article.

Classification of Books:
Books are classified into various types according to their content. A popular segregation is fiction and non-fiction books. Fiction books contain largely fictitious material, such as novels, which are the most common form of fictional books. Typically, novels consist of a plot, setting, themes, and character.

Non-fictional books usually provide useful information as opposed to fiction books. A common type of non-fiction book usually found in libraries is the reference book. Other books can include handbooks, almanacs, encyclopaedias, atlases, instruction manuals, and others. School and college textbooks are come under the non-fictional category. Other non-functional books can take the form of directories, address books, phone books, appointment books, logbooks and diaries.

Another popular method of classifying books is by the type of covers they are provided with. Accordingly, they can be classified as hard cover and paper back books. While hard cover books have a stiff binding, paperback books have paper binding which are less robust and last lesser compared to their hardbound counterparts.