Books

Who would have known that these two photographs can be connected in a very special way? We all love books, but I never knew before that the word is derived from the Old English and German word for a Beech Tree! A Bok is a block of wood then, because this is how maybe the first writing was set down, by carving in wood. The pages of the first book were wood, later wax, then papyrus, parchment, paper, finally electronic....
There are also magazines, journals, periodicals, and newspapers: these are not books. The technical word for a book is Monograph. A book lover is a Bibliophilist, or if you like it backwards, a Philobiblist. Talking about writing backwards, I discovered that some books are printed with alternate lines of text going in opposite directions. Boy! that would sure screw me up! Oh, by the way, someone said that there are 130 million unique books in the world! Is that all?

A "Beach" Tree ( Ha Ha! )

Our Famous Penticton Book Shop Sign

To sum up, writing started about five million years ago, scrolls switched to books (codex) somewhere between the third and fourth centuries A.D., and nowadays a new form of publishing called "On Demand" has started, to avoid the cost of warehousing large numbers of books awaiting sale, and also to enable "out of print" books to continue in existence longer. Happy Reading!