Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

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Books, and the amount of people who might read them, have actually been absolutely important to human advancement over the centuries.

With such an abundant history of concepts, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how incredibly fortunate we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a substantial proportion of all the books that have ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can quickly change the way that you take a look at the world, which has been true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built on knowledge that has been handed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.

It can be tough to envision what the world would be like today if the vast bulk of individuals were not able to read, but for the vast bulk of history the large majority of individuals might not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the invention of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books a lot more accessible. Naturally, it was still just really the wealthiest and well-read that could read or write, but it made it possible for an entire host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been dispersed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to simply log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and quickly access the totality of human understanding.

It is very important to remember that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, simply due to the fact that the vast bulk of people might not read, implying that most books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a short boom during the classical period of antiquity, the amount of literate people dropped significantly throughout the Middle Ages. Books became uncommon treasures, with monks meticulously copying out the enduring traditional texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were some of the only members of the population who could read or write. They were the professional keepers of knowledge like biology and faith that we all have access to in the contemporary world.