Curious facts about literature - For many people, there is nothing more enjoyable than reading a good book and getting lost in their imagination. If you are one of those people, follow us through this gallery about books and literature.

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Biggest consumers - The countries that buy the most number of books are: China, United States, Japan, Russia, and Germany.

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Libraries - The country with the highest number of libraries is the United States.

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Most expensive - The most expensive book ever sold is Leonardo da Vinci's manuscript Codex Leicester, which according to Business Insider, was bought by Bill Gates at auction for $30.8 million.

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Biggest library in the world - The biggest library in the world is the Library of Congress, which is home to 144 million books, written in around 470 different languages.

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The Middle Ages - In medieval times, books were produced by copyist monks. As their title suggests, they used to copy official manuscripts, page by page.

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The most sold - The best selling books of all time are: the Bible, Mao Tsé-Tung's Little Red Book, the Quran, the Harry Potter series, and Miguel Cervante's Don Quixote.

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Bible sales - Several estimates indicate that around 47 bibles are sold per minute.

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Existing books - According to a Google count in 2010, there were 129,864,880 published books. Of course, the number has increased since then.

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Most translated author - William Shakespeare is the world's most translated author. It is estimated that his work has been translated to over 110 languages.

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Fan fiction - Miguel Cervante's masterpiece Don Quixote was so popular even when first published, that an anonymous author wrote a second part for it.

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The smell of books - There is actually a word for enjoying the smell of books: bibliosmia.

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Authors' names - In the past, books didn't have the authors' names on their covers. The cover was saved for illustrations, usually engravings in the leather that were sometimes filled with gold.

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - The first book written on a typewriter was Mark Twain's famous novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

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Roosevelt's habit - According to historical records, former US president Theodore Roosevelt read a book a day.

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Illiteracy - It is estimated than one in every five adults worldwide cannot read or write. The countries with the highest rates of illiteracy are in southern and western Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

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There's a word for it - The Japanese word "tsundoku" means "buying a lot of books and having no time to read them."

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Most avid readers - According to recent statistics, Indian people spend the most time reading—an average of 10.7 hours per week,

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Record - The world record for the largest number of people balancing books on their heads at the same time is 998. It was achieved in 2012 in Sydney, Australia.

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Banned - The Harry Potter books are allegedly the most banned in the US due to religious complaints.

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The biggest book in the world - The Klencke Atlas is 1.75 m tall and 1.9 m wide.

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Original standing desk - Virginia Woolf wrote while standing.

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Chained - In the past, books were incredibly expensive and time-consuming to produce. To prevent theft, valuable books were chained to shelves.

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Numbers - It is estimated that only 2% of the 1.2 million books published every year sell over 500,000 copies.

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Books and Alzheimer's disease - A study by Rush University Medical Center, found that people who read regularly show less tendency of being affected by Alzheimer's disease.

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Books and society - A study by the University at Buffalo showed that access to fiction and different realities opens doors to new emotions and feelings, and that this helps people empathize with others.

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Reading and vocabulary - The more you read, the more vocabulary you will learn, which can be an asset in daily life and writing.

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Sexy - A study by Northwestern University found that women are attracted to men who like reading.

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