advertising
Link to jump to start of content The Seattle Times Company Jobs Autos Homes Rentals NWsource Classifieds seattletimes.com
The Seattle Times Books
Traffic | Weather | Your account Movies | Restaurants | Today's events

Friday, August 11, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 AM

E-mail article     Print view

Book Buzz

Just for the record

Here in the books corner, we try not to think too hard in August. So here are some fun facts from the just-released "Guinness World Records 2007" (Guinness World Records, 288 pp., $28.95).

• Best-selling fiction author: Dame Agatha Christie, whose 78 crime novels have sold 2 billlion copies in 44 languages.

• Fastest-selling nonfiction book: Hillary Rodham Clinton's "Living History," which sold 200,000 copies on its first day of sale in 2003.

• Highest annual earnings for a children's author: J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter creator, who purportedly earned $59.1 million in 2004, according to the Forbes Celebrity 100.

• Highest annual earnings for any author: Dan Brown, author of "The Da Vinci Code," who earned $76.5 million in 2005, according to Forbes.

• Longest novel: "Remembrance of Things Past" by Marcel Proust, which contains an estimated 9,609,000 characters.

• First graphic novel: The word "graphic novel" first appeared in 1976 on the jacket of "Bloodstar" by Richard Corben and Robert E. Howard. Two other self-labeled graphic novels, "Beyond Time and Again" by George Metzger and "Red Tide" by Jim Steranko, also appeared that year.

If you're asking how a world-records volume with "2007" in the title could be published in the middle of 2006; we're not available — that would be thinking too hard.

Mary Ann Gwinn, Seattle Times book editor

Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company

Marketplace

advertising