An Exhibition of Superlative Books: The Most Holey Book in the World

 
The enemies of books can be thorough. The most holey book in the world does not exist, having been digested by very hungry caterpillars (pictured). The proof is in the pudding, which means the most holey book vanished, leaving no evidence for its holeyest claims. This may be why ‘most holey book’ retrieves no hits on Google. While the librarian is on vacation, the mice will have no hesitation. The enemies of books play havoc with the records. The elements find their way in. All of a sudden, it’s sodden. Water makes the pages wavy. Water can balloon a book to several times its normal size. A minnow may turn into a whale. But at least there’s a chance we can still read the text. The most burnt book in the world leaves nothing but full stops (pictured). Guinness would tell us the title, if its scouts could recreate the work from ash and dust. Fire is a bad master. We will never learn what caused the fiery iconoclasts so much spite. Book burners know the mind of a tyrant. They obliterate the collective memory and exert control over what others value. The enemies of e-books are time and hire, compatibility and availability. The whole digital world is a fragile entity, with enemies everywhere: tired drives, broken links, 404 pages. Rust and moth may destroy. The idea that the internet has inbuilt entropy, that the rot could set in, seems not to perturb the scintillating savants of Silicon Valley. They would hear these words as a mini-jeremiad. What’s app, Doc?, they gleefully reply. Only, what happens when the cloud moves on? The most stolen book in the world is its own story of reader-response. If we knew where the book is now, we could possibly reconstruct its story. Theft keeps the words out of our hands. It is an enemy of books. If the purpose of a book is to reach those who want it, then theft deprives a book of that original purpose. Librarians are aware of this issue. Their efforts to recall overdue or stolen books have nothing much to do with possession, everything to do with equal access. Understandably, no records exist for the most neglected book in the world. The doorstopper has outlived its meaning in life and may as well be restored to the forest. The old scintillators have been shifted to the stacks. The sheer scale of publication lends to neglect. It is why the rediscovery of a neglected work is an argument for libraries. But neglect is a major enemy of books. We cannot say the same of the most banned book in the world which, for all we know, could be amongst the most read books in the world. A curious fact about lists of banned books is how many of them we readily recognise, or indeed have read.