BOOKS AND MOVIES » quizzes

First lines quiz #12 – Banned Books Edition

CarrieK — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:55:50 +0000

~ I will post the first sentences of ten books. (I skip any beginning quotations or prefaces. If I think more than one sentence is necessary, I’ll post two.)
~ You guess the titles and authors and leave your guesses in the comments.
~ You don’t have to guess on all ten; guess on the ones you know.
~ I’ll update the post by putting the lines in bold and adding titles and authors when someone gets one correct.
~ Have fun!

All of today’s choices come from American Library Associations’ List of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990-2000.

1. “What you looking at me for? I didn’t come to stay…” – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou – guessed by Kristin

2. Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had had a happy life. – James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl – guessed by Kristin

3. When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. – The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton – guessed by Kristin

4. Sybil Davison has a genius I.Q. and has been laid by at least six different guys. – Forever, Judy Blume – guessed by Kristin

5. Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy. Hint: magical realism about a family in Chile.

6. It was April, and outside in the dark the rain whipped against the windows of our tavern, making a sound like muffled drums. Hint: Revolutionary War novel aimed at young adults.

7. Miyax pushed back the hood of her sealskin parka and looked at the Arctic sun. – Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George – guessed by Fyrefly

8. The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way toward the lagoon. – Lord of the Flies, William Golding – guessed by Kristin

9. When I saw the crowd gathering at the train station, I worried what President Roosevelt would think. Hint: WWII YA novel about a young girl’s relationship with an escaped German POW.

10. They murdered him. Hint: YA novel about a secret society in high school.

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First lines quiz #11 – National Book Award Edition

CarrieK — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:56:12 +0000

All of today’s choices come from National Book Award Fiction Winners.

1. When he finished packing, he walked out on to the third-floor porch of the barracks brushing the dust from his hands, a very neat and deceptively slim young man in the summer khakis that were still early morning fresh. – From Here to Eternity, James Jones – guessed by Emily

2. From the small crossed window of his room above the stable in the brickyard, Yakov Bok saw people in their long overcoats running somewhere early that morning, everybody in the same direction. – The Fixer, Bernard Malamud

3. In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn. – Sophie’s Choice, William Styron

4. The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. – White Noise, Don DeLillo – guessed by Kathy

5. The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. – All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy – guessed by Fyrefly

6. It was a bad time. Billy Boy Watkins was dead, and so was Frenchie Tucker. – Going After Cacciato, Tim O’Brien

7. A screaming comes across the sky. – Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

8. It goes a long way back, some twenty years. – Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison

9. The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. – Goodbye, Columbus, Phillip Roth

10. Last night at 3:00 a.m. President Kennedy had been killed. – Tree of Smoke, Denis Johnson

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First lines quiz #10 – Newsweek’s Top 100 edition

CarrieK — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:00:45 +0000

All of today’s choices come from Newsweek’s Top 100: The Meta-List.

1. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. – The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner – guessed by Melissa

2. You better not never tell nobody but God. – The Color Purple, Alice Walker – guessed by Stacy

3. Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. – Animal Farm, George Orwell – guessed by Pussreboots

4. The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” – In Cold Blood, Truman Capote – guessed by Kathy

5. They called him Moishe the Beadle, as if his entire life he had never had a surname. – Night, Elie Wiesel – guessed by Bonnie and Mindy

6. ‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’ – A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess – guessed by Susi

7. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. – Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys – guessed by Jules

8. They’re out there. – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey – guessed by Melissa

9. To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. – The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck – guessed by Bonnie

10. Except for the Marabar Caves – and they are twenty miles off – the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. – A Passage to India, E.M. Forster – This one was a stumper.

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First lines quiz #9 – EW’s New Classics edition

CarrieK — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:07:40 +0000

All of today’s choices come from Entertainment Weekly’s lists of the 100 best books from 1983 to 2008.

1. Standing among the tan, excited post-Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what’s floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely like an airplane. – Rabbit at Rest, John Updike – guessed by Sandy

2. When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake – not a very big one. – Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry – stumped you on this one!

3. At the first gesture of morning, flies began stirring. – Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier – stumped you on this one, too!

4. The book was thick and black and covered with dust. – Possession, A.S. Byatt – guessed by Susi

5. 124 was spiteful. – Beloved, Toni Morrison – guessed by Jackie

6. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. – The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien – guessed by Sandy

7. My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. – The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold – guessed by JoAnn

8. The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it “the Riddle House,” even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling – guessed by Kristi

9. Tonight, I find myself here in a guest house in the city of Salisbury. – Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro – guessed by Raidergirl

10. We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. – The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood – guessed by Zia

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First lines quiz #8 – Classics Edition

CarrieK — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:46:51 +0000

1. To Mrs. Saville, England; St. Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17- You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley – guessed by Rebecca

2. ‘Edith!’ said Margaret, gently, ‘Edith!’ – North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell – guessed by Susi.

3. In 1815 Monsieur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne. – Les Miserables, Victor Hugo – guessed by Raidergirl.

4. Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born: on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events: the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. – Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens – guessed by Shelley.

5. A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. – Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy – guessed by Shelley.

6. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition and Astrology. – The Once and Future King, T.H. White – guessed by Shelley.

7. A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State’s motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY. – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley – guessed by Susi and Shelley.

8. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. – The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald – guessed by Rebecca

9. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. – Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte – guessed by Susi and Julie and Shelley.

10. A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. – Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck – guessed by JoAnn

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First lines quiz #7 – Children’s Lit Edition

CarrieK — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:00:43 +0000

1. Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. – From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg – guessed by Kristin

2. It was a dark and stormy night. – A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle – guessed by Raidergirl

3. “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. – Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White – guessed by Kathy

4. These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket. – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl – guessed by Kathy

5. The primroses were over. – Watership Down, Richard Adams – guessed by JoAnn

6. Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn, New York. – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith – guessed by Kristin

7. Harriet was trying to explain to Sport how to play Town. – Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh – guessed by Kristin

8. I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing that I am here. – My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George – guessed by Nicola

9. During the summer of 1941, every weekday morning at the top of the tide, McCall Purnell and I would board my skiff and go progging for crab. – Jacob Have I Loved, Katherine Paterson – guessed by Kristin

10. There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. – The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman – guessed by Kristin

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First lines quiz #2

CarrieK — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:49:21 +0000

I had a lot of fun with the first lines quiz I posted a couple weeks ago, so decided to do another one.

~ I will post the first lines of ten books. (I skip any beginning quotations or prefaces.)
~ You guess the titles and authors and leave your guesses in the comments.
~ You don’t have to guess on all ten; guess on the ones you know.
~ I’ll update the post by putting the lines in bold and adding titles and authors when someone gets one correct.
~ Have fun!

1. Once upon a cold and luminous Saturday morning, in an urban hamlet of tenements, factories, and trolley cars on the western slopes of the borough of Brooklyn, a boy named Michael Devlin woke in the dark. – Snow in August, Pete Hamill – stumped ya on this one!

2. My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that. – Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, Alan Alda – guessed by Debra

3. At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. – The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd – guessed by Joy

4. The library is cool and smells like carpet cleaner, although all I can see is marble. – The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger – guessed by Sherry

5. When I was little, the great mystery to me wasn’t how babies were made, but why. – My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult – guessed by Stacy

6. Can I explain why I wanted to jump off the top of a tower block? – A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby – author guessed by Debra and Vasilly on Twitter

7. He left the coffee-scented warmth of the Main Street Grill and stood for a moment under the green awning. – At Home in Mitford, Jan Karon – guessed by Riva

8. Anyone in the neighborhood could tell you how Michael and Pauline first met. – An Amateur Marriage, Anne Tyler – another stumper!

9. When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. – The Road, Cormac McCarthy – guessed by Raidergirl

10. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. – I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith – guessed by Suey

Thanks for playing along, everyone – it was fun! Stay tuned for another quiz next Monday.

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