Books, Time, and Silence: Book Lovers' Quiz

I regularly team up with fellow blogger and all round bibliophilic good egg Norfolk Bookworm to host a book quiz at the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library.

For those who can't be there, those who just like testing their quizzing acumen, and those wanting to test the water before booking, here are the questions. (Answers are in white below the question: highlight the - apparently - blank space to see them)

Enjoy! And good luck.

Round 1: ‘All the World is a birthday cake – so take a piece but not too much.’

George Harrison

1) At the start of which book is the main character about to celebrate his eleventyfirst birthday?

A: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

2) “Doest thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?” are lines from which Shakespeare play?

A: Twelth Night

3) Which Pulitzer Prize winning poet said “a diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age?

A: Robert Frost

4) Which Australian outlaw is the narrator of Peter Carey’s 2001 Book Prize winning novel?

A: Ned Kelly

5) Geraldine Brooks’ 2001 novel Year of Wonder is about which devastating epidemic?

A: The 1665/66 Plague

6) Which literary bear entertains his guests at his own party with a series of magic tricks – all of which go horribly wrong?

A: Paddington

7) Which 2001 novel by UEA alumni Ian McEwen ends at the main characters 77^th birthday party?

A: Atonement

8) Which television quiz show does the plot of David Nicholl’s 2003 book Starter for 10 revolve around?

A: University Challenge

9) Which author’s novel And Then There Were None originally had a far more controversial title?

A: Agatha Christie

10) Which playright premiered his play The Birthday Party in Cambridge in 1958?

A: Harold Pinter

Round 2: Anything You Can Do, I Kazoo Better

In this round, we read lines of dialogue from plays or film adaptations of books. However to make it harder the lines I read were replaced with a kazoo.

Identify the book and author for each of the following

SARAH: First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?

SAM:
SARAH: No. That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?

SAM:

SARAH: No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now.

SAM:
SARAH: No. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?

A: The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

SARAH She's a replicant, isn't she?
SAM

SARAH          I don't get it, Tyrell.
SAM
SARAH          Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced.
SAM
SARAH          [realizing Rachael believes she's human] She doesn't know.
SAM
SARAH          Suspect? How can it not know what it is?
A: Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep – Philip K Dick

SARAH I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just... I could have got more.

SAM

SARAH If I'd made more money... I threw away so much money. You

have no idea. If I'd just...

SAM
SARAH          I didn't do enough!
SAM               You did so much.

A: Schindler’s Arc by Thomas Keneally

SAM

SARAH Magic Mirror: Famed is thy beauty, Majesty. But hold, a lovely maid I see. Rags cannot hide her gentle grace. Alas, she is more fair than thee.

SAM
SARAH          Magic Mirror: Lips red as the rose. Hair black as ebony. Skin white as snow.
SAM

A: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by Brothers Grimm

SAM

SARAH I do bite my thumb, sir.

SAM

SARAH [Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side, if I say ay?

GUEST No.

SARAH No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.

GUEST Do you quarrel, sir?

SAM

SARAH If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.

A: Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Round 3: American Literature

1. Q: In which of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novels does the heroine Hester Prynne appear?

A: The Scarlet Letter

2. Q: Who wrote the classic anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

A: Harriet Beecher Stowe

3. Q: Which prolific American poet was perhaps best known for her dark novel The Bell Jar?

A: Sylvia Plath

4. Q: Who wrote the words, “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'”

A: Edgar Allan Poe

5. Q: Which author of A Moveable Feast and The Sun Also Rises was also an accomplished boxer?

A: Ernest Hemingway

6. Q: Which Jazz Age novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald ends with the lines: “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

A: The Great Gatsby

7. Q: Which Cormac McCarthy novel won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction?

A: The Road

8. Q: Who wrote the story of Holly Go-Lightly and her glamorous escapades in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?

A: Truman Capote

9. Q: What is the titular name of the protagonist in John Updike’s famous quartet of novels?

A: “Rabbit”

10. Q: Which Upton Sinclair book is an exposé of the meat packing industry?

A: The Jungle

Round 4: Autumn

1) Whose poem entitled ’To Autumn’ starts with the line: “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness””

A: John Keats

2) Which Edith Wharton novel opens at Grand Central Station in September? (It was a fairly recent film with Gillian Anderson)

A: Edith Wharton

3) Tove Jansson’s autumn book about the Moomins is set in which month?

A: November

4) Which comic book series follows the story of a resurrected Guy Fawkes?

A: V for Vendetta

5) Who or what is Fawkes in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series?

A: A phoenix

6) Which author, who wrote the award winning Graveyard Book, celebrates his birthday today?

A: Neil Gaiman

7) Which First World War poet wrote ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’?

A: Wilfred Owen

8) Life is defined as “a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay” in which dictionary?

A: The Devil’s Dictionary

9) The Hunt for Red October was released in cinemas in April 1990, but who wrote the book it is loosely based on?

A: Tom Clancy

10) Which American author more famous for his dystopian and science fiction novels wrote The Halloween Tree – a children’s fantasy tale where 8 friends travel through time and space experiencing Halloween in different times and cultures as they try to rescue their friend?

A: Ray Bradury

Table Round 1 (total of 20 points)

Only Connect Connecting Wall

(based on the popular BBC4 quiz)

This Connecting Walls consist of 16 clues.

You must:

1 – Sort the 16 clues into four connected groups of four

2 – State what connects each of those four groups

Although some groups might appear to have more than four possible answers, there is only one configuration that allows all clues to be sorted into four groups of four. This is what you are looking for.

Scoring:

3 points for each correctly solved group

(1 point for three identified from any individual group)

2 points for each correctly identified connection

Arthur C Clarke	Ted Hughes	Lewis Carroll	Samuel Johnson
Margaret Mitchell	Ellis Bell	Harper Lee	Carol Ann Duffy
Stephen King	George Orwell	Mark Twain	Arundhiti Roy
Andrew Motion	Emily Bronte	John Betjeman	Roald Dahl

Poet Laureates – John Betjeman, Carol Ann Duffy, Ted Hughes, Andrew Motion

Female authors who only wrote one novel – Emily Bronte, Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, Arundhiti Roy

Authors who gave their names to Book Prizes – Arthur C Clarke (Sci Fi), Roald Dahl (Children’s funny books), Samuel Johnson (BBC Non-Fiction), George Orwell (Journalism/Politics)

Pseudonyms – Ellis Bell, Lewis Carroll, Stephen King, Mark Twain

Table Round 2

Sound and Vision

1. Who is this?