Large print ... a museum curator inspects the world's largest book. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA
You're going to need a hell of a big coffee table. To mark World Book Day, the National Library of Scotland is putting on display "the world's largest book". The world's biggest book is obviously Harry Potter, but the largest apparently measures seven feet across when open, and weighs nine-and-a-half stone.
Somewhat reminiscent of the imperial map in the Borges story whose perfect fidelity extends to its 1:1 scale, Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the last Himalayan Kingdom is a collection of photographs taken in the picturesque mountain realm. Printing a single copy takes 24 hours, a gallon of ink and a roll of paper bigger than a football pitch. Organisers of the BBC's Big Read exercise a few years back will no doubt be spitting that this was not available when they were cooking up their promotional razzle dazzle.
The mean-minded among us might question whether an object of these dimensions is actually a book at all - but the pictures do look appealing, and it's clearly a testament to the disappearing art of book binding. A snip at $30,000.
