…or something like that.
Have you ever wondered about the longest book ever published? Or the longest word in the English language? Well, here are those facts and a few others.
What’s the longest book ever published? Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach is over 17 million words long! Of course there are some other giants, like The Blah Story by Nigel Tomm at 11 million words.
How about the longest word in the English language? Well if you want to be technical, then you can exclude the 189,819 letter word for titin and head over to dictionary.com and input the 45 letter word Pneumonoultramicroscop-icsilicovolcanoconiosis. Try saying that 5 times fast. Or even once.
How long is the longest published sentence? Well, there is some debate about that, but according to wikipedia the top contenders are The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe with 13,955 words, The Blah Story by Nigel Tomm at 2,403,109 words, and finally Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach again with a whopping 3,000,000 words. I can safely say that none of mine have or will ever come close to these behemoths.
Oddest book title? This is a tough one and since there is no technical way to figure this out (and I thought it would be an interesting question), there are many different answers. I can’t help but point out the title to the book shown in the picture above. Since there are just too many to name just one, here are two lists from the following places: 17 Unusual Book Titles and Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title.
17 Unusual Book Titles
1. How to Avoid Huge Ships by John W. Trimmer
2. Scouts in Bondage by Michael Bell
3. Be Bold with Bananas by Crescent Books
4. Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself by Dale L. Power
5. The Flat-Footed Flies of Europe by Peter J. Chandler
6. 101 Uses for an Old Farm Tractor by Michael Dregni
7. Across Europe by Kangaroo by Joseph R. Barry
8. 101 Super Uses for Tampon Applicators by Lori Katz and
Barbara Meyer
9. Suture Self by Mary Daheim
10. The Making of a Moron by Niall Brennan
11. How to Make Love While Conscious by Guy Kettelhack
12. Underwater Acoustics Handbook by Vernon Martin Albers
13. Superfluous Hair and Its Removal by A. F. Niemoeller
14. Lightweight Sandwich Construction by J. M. Davies
15. The Devil’s Cloth: A History of Stripes by Michel Pastoureaut
16. How to Be a Pope: What to Do and Where to Go Once You’re in the Vatican by Piers Marchant
17. How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title
100 Girls on Cheap Paper
A Tortilla is Like Life
Advances in Potato Chemistry and Technology
Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
An Intellectual History of Cannibalism
Bacon: A Love Story
Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 1741-1845
Bondage for Beginners
Briefs for the Reading Room
Budgeting for Infertility
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
Curbside Consultation in Cornea and External Disease
Cute Yummy Time
Dental Management of Sleep Disorders
Father Christmas Needs a Wee
Fluffy Little Kitten in Fluffy’s Brother
Food Digestion and Thermal Preference of Toad
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
How YOU Are Like Shampoo: For Job Seekers
I Stopped Sucking My Thumb…Why Can’t You Stop Drinking?
I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears
Is the Rectum a Grave?
Jokes by the Not So Famous Redneck
Map-based Comparative Genomics in Legumes
Mickey Mouse, Hitler and Nazi Germany
My Hare Line Meets the Brown Rabbit
Obama Guilty of Being President While Black
Peek-a-poo: What’s in Your Diaper?
Planet Asthma: Art and Acitivty Book
Plough Music
Plug-in Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington?
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Bean Conference
Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
Soft Drink & Fruit Juice Problems Solved
Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
The First Home-Built Aeroplanes
The Great Dog Bottom Swap
The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin
The Origin of Faeces
The Quotable Douchebag
The True History of Tea
The Wild World of Girly Men and Masculine Women – And Why Americans Suffer from So Many Other Idiotic Syndromes!
Venus Does Adonis While Apollo Shags a Tree
What Horses Do For Us
What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?
Who is the first author of a fantasy novel? It seems that the person most commonly considered the first author of fantasy as we know it today is George MacDonald, who was even a great influence on J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.
Posted in: Misc
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February 17, 2010 at 7:28 pm
misswriter says:
Wow, those are some, erm, great(?) titles. I think my favourite is ‘How to Be a Pope: What to Do and Where to Go Once You’re in the Vatican’ and I own a copy of ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’ though I have yet to read it.
And a 3,000,000 word sentence? Bloody hell. I’m pretty sure my longest sentence would come in at under 100 words.
Those are some interesting facts – how did you come across them?
February 18, 2010 at 4:09 pm
KatieRunyon says:
Yeah, I never thought some of the numbers would be anywhere close to what I found. I just did a few online searches. It’s amazing what you can find on the internet!