A molecular biologist from Madurai, our quizmaster enjoys trivia and music, and is working on a rock ballad called ‘Coffee is a Drink, Kaapi is an Emotion’. @bertyashley
Quiz | Easy like Sunday morning: on classic books
Swiss author Johanna Spyri’s book is named after the central character. What’s the name of the book?
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1 / 10 |
Born on July 24, 1802, this French novelist, who was the grandson of an African slave, is known for two classic works, both adapted to TV shows and movies multiple times. His most famous book follows a young man as he travels to Paris, and is titled after a group of friends he meets on the way known as “the three inseparables”. The second is about Edmond Dantès who is imprisoned under false pretexts and escapes and searches for a treasure. Who was this iconic author?
Answer : Alexander Dumas (The Three Musketeers / The Count of Monte Cristo)
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2 / 10 |
‘I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute; From the centre all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute’. This is the beginning of the William Cowper poem ‘The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk’, based on the real life of a Scottish Naval Officer. What book did it inspire that has multiple films including one where a FedEx employee ends up with a volleyball for a friend?
Answer : Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
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3 / 10 |
This book exposed the cruel treatment of children in London, which was known as ‘The Great London Waif Crisis’. The novel’s themes of child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals are written with sarcasm and dark humour. The novel may have been inspired by the life of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of life as a child labourer was widely read in the 1830s and also the author’s early youth. What is the novel and who is the author?
Answer : Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
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4 / 10 |
This American novelist’s story about four sisters in Civil War America transformed the genre of family stories for children. She then wrote a series of ‘sensational’ short stories featuring independent and empowered women, under the pseudonym A.M. Barnard. Even in her famous book, where the second sister was modelled on herself, it was only due to social conventions that she gets married and has a family. Which author and book is this?
Answer : Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
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5 / 10 |
This famously reclusive author wrote a coming-of-age story exploring themes of racism and prejudice in 1930’s Alabama, but is also criticised for the use of racial epithets in key scenes. Fifty-five years later, a sequel called Go Set a Watchman was published. Who was this author and what is this book, which the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in the U.K. voted as the #1 book to read before dying?
Answer : Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
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6 / 10 |
‘_____land’ is a tourist site in Switzerland named after a 1881 children’s book by Swiss author Johanna Spyri. The book narrates the events in the life of a young girl in her grandfather’s care in the Swiss Alps and to many people the idea of Switzerland comes about because of this book. The land and the book are named after the central character. What is the name of the book?
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Gadsby is a 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright about the dying fictional city of Branton Hills, and how John Gadsby saves it. Then unnoticed, it is now a favourite of fans of constrained writing, such as his versions of famous sayings “music hath charms to calm a wild bosom” instead of the original “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast”. John Keats’ “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” becomes “a charming thing is a joy always”. Known as a lipogram, what is unique about Gadsby?
Answer : The letter ‘E’ is not used in the entire 50,000 page novel.
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8 / 10 |
Mercy Brown was one of many people of Rhode Island who died in an outbreak of tuberculosis in the winter of 1892. The cold weather prevented the corpses from decaying but the townspeople thought that the dead were sucking on the life of the living. That was why the corpses such as hers were fresh. Apparently, a visiting Irish author was inspired by this to write a story, which would go on to haunt people forever. Who was the author and what book did he write?
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This 1898 novel was one of the earliest to detail a conflict between mankind and an extraterrestrial race. One of the most memorable events surrounding this novel was when actor Orson Welles (no relation) read on radio and caused mass panic among the audience who thought it was real news. What book is this that caused such confusion, and who was the author?
Answer : War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
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10 / 10 |
The Sentinel is a 1948 science fiction short story written for a BBC competition, which formed the starting point of a novel and a film. It deals with the discovery of an artifact on Earth’s moon left behind eons ago by ancient aliens as a “warning beacon” for possible intelligent species that might develop on Earth. Which highly successful novel/ film was adapted and expanded from this story and who was the author?
Answer : 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
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