Books Facts Generator

• [Books fact 1] The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a challenge to write the worst opening paragraph to a novel possible. It is named after the author of the 1830 novel Paul Clifford, which began with “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents.”

  Books, Honorsource

• [Books fact 2] When the Sears magazine printers switched from a thin, newspaper-like stock to a more modern glossy paper stock, people wrote into the company to complain that the magazine couldn't be used for toilet paper anymore.

  Books, Corporationsource

• [Books fact 3] The Library of Alexandria was not destroyed by the Muslim Army during the capture of the city in 641. A common misconception alleged that Caliph Umar ordered the destruction based on the reasoning "If those books are in agreement with the Quran, we have no need of them; and if these are opposed to the Quran, destroy them" (or its variation). This story did not appear in writing until hundreds of years after the alleged incident (most famously in the work of Bar Hebraeus in the 13th century) and contemporary accounts of the Arab invasion do not include any account of the library's destruction. Modern consensus suggests the library had likely already been destroyed centuries before this incident. (It is instead believed that the Library of Caesarea, a key repository of Christian literature, was the library destroyed near this time.)

  Books, Disastersource

• [Books fact 4] American author Robert E. Howard created Conan the Barbarian at the age of 26 and committed suicide at the age of 30. He didn't live to see Conan become successful and is considered to be the father of sword and sorcery.

  Books, Deathsource

• [Books fact 5] Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff wrote a novel, City of Thieves, about 2 people surviving the Nazi onslaught in Russia. This novel was later the "major artistic inspiration" for the hit video game The Last of Us.

  Books, Games, Peoplesource

• [Books fact 6] The daughter of J.R.R. Tolkien believes that the description of the Dead Marshes (in Lord Of The Rings) is based on the author's experiences during the First World War.

  Books, Fictionsource

• [Books fact 7] A Chinese author based some of the murders in his books on ones he had committed years earlier. Liu Yongbiao was convicted in 2018 of killing four people way back in 1994 and he was sentenced to death. In a preface to his 2010 novel titled ‘The Guilty Secret’, Liu said he was already at work on a follow-up about an author who’s committed a series of gruesome murders and evaded capture. In the end, he never wrote it, though he already had a title in mind: ‘The Beautiful Writer Who Killed.’

  Books, Crime, Peoplesource

• [Books fact 8] Solomon Northup, a free African American living in New York in the 1800s, was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the south. As a slave, he had no way to testify his case. He remained a slave for 12 years before finally being freed. He then wrote a memoir “Twelve Years A Slave.”

  Books, Peoplesource

• [Books fact 9] Aldous Huxley’s descriptions of the effects of alcohol on fetuses in Brave New World predate the scientific recognition of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome by more than four decades.

  Beverages, Books, Humanbodysource

• [Books fact 10] Dr. Seuss's editor bet him $50 that he couldn't write a children's book in 50 words or less. Dr. Seuss won the bet with his book 'Green Eggs and Ham.'

  Books, Peoplesource

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