What is the difference between novels and books

novels and books

Would you believe it if I said that reading books for only half an hour a day adds additional 24 months to your life?

Believe it or not, it is true.

If you are an avid book reader then you’re bound to get success in your life. Books create such an influence on you.

Also, you get the purest form of entertainment from reading novels.

If you realize the importance of the entertainment provided by novels then you will only choose novels over TV or other forms of entertainment.

Novels not only entertain you but you get to learn a lot from them too.

Like, by reading Agatha Christie’s novels I could learn how to use the word ‘queer’. Well, this was one of the several examples in my experience.

Speaking of novels and books, have you ever been curious about what is the difference between novels and books?

I am sure you would be thinking how subtle the difference would be but they indeed exist.

Let me help you understand the difference between novels and books in this article.

By learning these differences you can brag about them at work or in college or if you are a parent then you can simply teach it to your kids.

Books

When humans began writing, there arose a need of storing information.

Ancient history records the use of clay tablets for storing information.

People would write characters on damp clay and dry them out.

Then came scrolls, also called rolls, made of papyrus.

A scroll was several sheets made of papyrus attached together enclosed within a cylinder with the title inscribed on the enclosing cylinder.

Scrolls were followed by codex which is the nearest ancestor of modern-day paperbacks and hardcovers.

You can visualize them as books with a major difference that the pages were made of vellum or papyrus rather than paper.

Now that you know a little history let’s see the definition of the book in simple terms.

A book is a collection of information on a subject expressed as the text, printed on paper, bound together using a spine and thick covers.

The term book has a lot under its purview. The textbooks you study in college or school are a type of book.

The workbook that you work or worked upon as a part of the homework is a type of book too.

Also, have you ever paid attention to the fact that a notebook is also a book that carries blank or ruled pages to write notes?

The other types include biographies, journals, religion books such as Bhagavad Gita and Bible, self-help books, craft books, cookbooks, and business books.

They all have subjects inside them.

Even a text containing native phrases and vocabulary of French printed on pages enclosed within covers is a book.

How many words minimum for a book?

A book can have as few as 10 pages.

You would ask for an example of such a book so one example of such a book is a refrigerator manual, that gives you instructions on how to operate the refrigerator.

In fact, the board books for children teaching them about shapes, fruits or vegetables are less than 15 pages.

You should know that books can be categorized into fiction and non-fiction. A third category is a combination of fiction and non-fiction.

All the types of books that I mentioned above (in bold) fall in the non-fiction category.

Novels fall in the fiction category of books.

What’s the writer of a book called?

The writer of a book is called an author.

An author expresses his knowledge, experience, or imagination in the form of text and pictures.

In books on mathematics, stocks trading, or other business books, the authors also convey information or data in the form of charts and tables to enhance your learning experience.

Novels

A novel is a book that presents a story to its reader in a narrative form.

A novel, as mentioned earlier, belongs to the fiction category of books that binds together on its pages & within its covers a plot, characters responsible for pushing that plot ahead, events, a beginning, climax, and an end.

As per Wikipedia the word ‘novel’ comes from the Italian word ‘novella’ that means ‘new’, or ‘short story of something new’.

Novels are younger than books.

Historians believe that the world’s first novel was ‘The Tale Of Genji’ by Murakasi Shikibu written around 1010 AD.

However, evidence suggests that the Greeks wrote fictional works back in the 1st century AD.

A few of the greeks’ novels are Chariton’s Callirhoe, Xenophon of Ephesus' Ephesian Tale, etc.

Don Quixote written by 17th-century novelist Miguel De Cervantes is considered the first modern novel of literature.

A novel can be tragic or comedy, erotic or science fiction, adventure or mystery, thriller or romance.

The categories also expand to teen, and young adults.

Classic examples of novels include Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (romance genre), To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee (gothic novel), The Catcher In The Rye (young adult), Moby Dick (Adventure)

Another class of novel worth mentioning in this article is an autobiographical novel.

An autobiography is when a person writes about their life, gives a detailed or summarized account of the events leading to the person they are at the present.

But when fiction is merged into an autobiography to make it intriguing, intimate, and interesting then it leads to the production of an autobiographical novel.

At times, the names of the characters and the dates of the events are changed, additional details are added to spice up the events in an autobiographical novel.

What is the minimum word count for a novel?

A novel’s success doesn’t depend on the number of words it contains within itself but on the intriguing story it tells, the way it tells, and the development of the characters as the story progresses.

However, the word count measured in successful novels falls in the range of 70,000 to 100,000.

A Science fantasy novel can go as far as 120,000 words but when we talk about the minimum word count, a fiction narrative written in more than 40,000 words qualify as a novel.

The best minimum word count for a novel is 50,000 words.

What is the writer of a novel called?

The writer of a novel is called a novelist.

Novelists make a living out of writing fiction and thus entertaining people using their imagination and observation.

Some of the famous novelists are Jane Austen, Charles Dickins, J.K. Rowling, Agatha Christie.

Difference between novels and books

While I have highlighted out the characteristics of both - books and novels - but I think putting them together will help you clarify the differences between novels and books further.

A novel is a subset of books which means that every novel is a book but every book is not a novel.

A novel is a fictional narrative written to entertain or thrill readers. Basically, the novel has a plot as its backbone and a few characters that take the plot from the beginning to the end.

A book encloses content within its pages that can be informative, entertaining, or interactive such as workbooks, sketchbooks.

The writer of a book is called an author while the writer of a novel is called an author.

No definite minimum word count exists for a book. A book can have a minimum word count of as little as 500 and can have 10 pages only, however, a novel has a minimum word count of 40,000 words.

Books can be divided into fiction and non-fiction. Books cover biographies, cookbooks, novels, instruction manuals, textbooks under its scope whereas, generally a novel is fiction. A special class of novels is an autobiographical novel.

Final Word

Take good caution in speaking on the differences between novels and books.

You cannot speak about such hot topics to everyone.

What I mean to say is if you’re going to tell it to a movie buff who always rates movies over books or to a friend who doesn’t find books interesting then you will be mocked.

But, if you are going to speak about it in a book club to fellow readers or in a group that discusses nothing but books then you will get a lot of appreciation and recognition.

So, to whom you are going to initiate the discussion about the difference between novels and books? Let me know.

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