Book Quiz Answers

[nmg]

Rather later than hoped (v. busy at work), here are the answers to my book quiz:

The Quotes

Quote 1

Rambling sentences and sheep? It could only be Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) by Thomas Hardy, specifically the passage in which Gabriel Oak loses his shepherding livelihood thanks to an overenthusiastic sheepdog and a cliff.

Quote 2

The alien zoo is on the planet Tralfamadore, which makes this Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut. So it goes.

Quote 3

Now, I am not wishing to be casting aspersions, but there is only one fellow who is writing about gangsters and other such persons in the continuous present tense, and that fellow is Damon Runyon. The quote is from Guys and Dolls (1932), a book that demands to be read aloud.

Quote 4

A trick question. It's a quote from a political theory text that's a book within a book. Emmanuel Goldstein's The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, which is from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948). Doubleplusgood.

Quote 5

It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegon, as usual. Garrison Keillor doing his homely thing in Lake Woebegon Days (1985). If you're not aware, the Lake Woebegon News is available as a podcast - try looking on iTunes.

Quote 6

Another trick question. The conceited ass is clearly Sherlock Holmes, but the narrator isn't Dr Watson. In this case, it's Brigadier-General Sir Harry Paget Flashman, the bully and notable cad from Tom Brown's Schooldays. The quote is taken from George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman and the Tiger (1999), which also manages to work the Battles at Rorke's Drift and Isandlwana into the story. Highly recommended.

Quote 7

A bit of an easy one. It's a gumshoe evaluating a dame, and with that turn of phrase it could only be Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1939), eyeing up the delicious Mrs Regan.

Quote 8

Obligatory cultural stereotyping in the sequel to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, the wonderful and little-read Three Men on the Bummel (1900). The unrepentant ignorer of signage is Harris, of course.

Quote 9

The book that launched a thousand stream-of-consciousness travelogues, and which was probably also responsible for the goddamned hippies. Jack Kerouac's semi-autobiographical road novel On the Road (1957). The sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the name of the book appears in the quotation.

Quote 10

Modern Westernised Japanese with obsessive descriptions of food, so it has to be Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicles (1997).

The Scores

And so to the scores. In reverse order:

• nul points, coffeeandtv0 (it's the taking part that counts)
• 3 points, mcnutcase (who fell straight into the Sherlock Holmes trap)
• 5 points, burkesworks (spot on the Vonnegut)
• 8 points, lionsphil (partial credit for some good reasoning)
• 10 points, swisstone (short and sweet)
• 17 points, gothick_matt (good across the board knowledge, and some good guesswork)
• 24 points, steer (glad you enjoyed the quiz)
• and finally, with an uncanny 38 points, blue_condition

Named Awards

The Golden Banana Skin (for falling for the trick question in 6) goes to mcnutcase.

The Broken Chronoclastic Infundibulator (for the highest aggregate wrong guesses at dates) goes to gothick_matt, with an honourable mention to steer for missing the Jerome by sixty years.

The QI Medal of Honour (for the most interesting fact) goes to lionsphil for his trivia about the throat-shot Orwell.

The Amulet of ESP (for guessing a book you haven't read) goes to blue_condition for identifying the Hardy, including the character.

The original posting is now unscreened - thanks for playing.

Comments

[steer.livejournal.com]

Excellent stuff -- I enjoyed that. I know now why (3) threw me. Actually, the thought that possibly this is going to turn into barbarian fantasy, kind of describes how Goldstein wants to tear down his society. :-)

I should have spotted that it wasn't just a Flashman novel but also a Holmes pastiche and that would have told me exactly which book -- but having got Germans and Bismarck I thought it must be Royal Flash.

Funny how Germans, wire and barked orders made me assume WWII and that the comic tone would turn dark.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Your reasoning for 1984 was brilliant, and completely wrong. It does raise the twin questions of what 1984 would have been like if written by Robert E. Howard (or even worse, John Norman), and of what Conan would have been like if written by Orwell. The former is slightly more imaginable.

I've a bit of a thing for wonky Holmesiana - I rather enjoyed Neil Gaiman's Study in Emerald, which also featured Sebastian Moran.

re: Bummel, it's a fun book, but it doesn't hold together as well as Boat. Some very good set pieces, however.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Your reasoning for 1984 was brilliant, and completely wrong. It does raise the twin questions of what 1984 would have been like if written by Robert E. Howard (or even worse, John Norman)

Heh... it's telling that I thought it might be someone philosophising in preparation for a major upset of society -- I just assumed they'd do it with a huge sword while wearing a loincloth.

If written by Robert E. Howard then Winston would have twisted the rat cage into a lump of scrap metal, escaped and killed the entire inner party setting himself up as ruler and liberating the proles.

I've not actually read any John Norman apart from the odd scrap. From what understand he would do similar but liberate only the male proles.