The Book Lovers' Miscellany by Claire Cock-Starkey is a cute little pint sized hardback packed with bibliophilic facts and fictions. Quirky chapter titles include: Movies That Started Life As Books, Identifying a First Edition, The Twenty Most Influential Academic Books of All Time, Oddest Title of the Year, Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Famous Last Lines and more.
Some of the chapters are short and snappy at just a few paragraphs while others are in listicle format making this perfect for dipping in and out of. If you're a traditionalist like me who wouldn't dream of 'dipping in and out' of a book and insists on reading a book 'properly' - front to back - then you'll find a mix/combination of topics that didn't seem united by chronology or subject matter.
The content in The Book Lovers' Miscellany is definitely of a miscellaneous nature, which even extended to bookish gossip in the form of a supposedly well-known estrangement between A.S. Byatt and her sister Margaret Drabble.
"According to newspaper reports, the sisters have apparently been estranged since childhood due to their intense sibling rivalry and are said not to read each other's books due to the autobiographical elements in their work." Page 31I didn't even know these talented and accomplished authors were sisters, so learning that they don't share their literary success together as they should was sad.
Reading the chapter on Most Prolific Writers, I was shocked to learn Enid Blyton wrote more than 800 books, and while I was aware of Barbara Cartland's prolific writing career, seeing in print that she produced 723 novels in her lifetime was seriously impressive.
I love stationery, but in a chapter about Quills I found this astonishing:
"John of Tilbury, a scholar in the household of Thomas Becket in the twelfth century, described how a scribe taking a full day of dictation would need between sixty and a hundred quills sharpened and readied." Page 41Wow! I'm presuming you'd need a trunk or sack for the quills. And what did they do for the assizes during that period? The Book Lovers' Miscellany by Claire Cock-Starkey is full of facts and trivia, much of which I've read about elsewhere*, yet still managed to be entertained by again.
Recommended for trivia junkies and readers who love books about books. You know who you are!
*You may also enjoy these books for booklovers:
The Book on the Bookshelf by Henry Petroski
The Madman's Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts and Other Literary Curiosities from History by Edward Brooke-Hitching
