Once again, a great tricky book quiz from our friends at The Guardian, this time on Gothic Fiction. I did better than usual (6/10 - hey, they’re usually quite difficult!), thanks in large part to a feature we’re currently putting together on a brief history of vampires in literature….stay tuned!
Archive for the ‘quiz’ Category
Gothic Fiction Literary Quiz
Friday, October 23rd, 2009Booker Prize Quiz
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009It’s that time of year… here’s a Quiz about the Booker Prize. I got six out of nine.
But it doesn’t tell you the answers! Bah.
Literature Exam - Put Yourself to the Test
Thursday, August 20th, 2009If you’d like to revlive the stress of exam-taking or if you’d just like to know how well you know literature, cruise on over to The Guardian site where they’ve posted a quiz on fictional exams.
The good news, or bad depending on how you look at it, is that you don’t have to wait for the results! Personally, the first couple of questions filled me with terror!
Masquerade by Kit Williams – 1979’s treasure-hunting puzzle book is reborn
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
A BBC radio show and a series of newspaper articles have reignited demand on AbeBooks for an out-of-print treasure-hunting book that sold a million copies 30 thirty years ago before fading into obscurity.
Masquerade by Kit Williams is an illustrated children’s fantasy puzzle book. Originally published in August 1979, the book contains clues within its illustrations as to the whereabouts of a small gold and jewelled amulet hare (worth £5,000 at the time - a decent but not excessive prize for 30 years ago) that had been buried somewhere in the United Kingdom. In an era before search engines, the idea of a search for real buried treasure turned the book into a worldwide bestseller.
Not only did Williams’ illustrations hold the key to buried treasure, they are beautiful and intriguing depictions of English wildlife accompanied by a captivating storyline. The moon falls in love with the sun and wants to give him a token of her affection, and sends Jack Hare as her courier. Masquerade describes his journey to deliver the moon’s amulet to the sun. But somewhere along the way Jack Hare drops the amulet and the reader must unravel the clues to find the buried treasure.
The puzzle was not easy to crack. In fact, it’s still completely baffling, although the location of the golden hare was widely reported and can be discovered in seconds with a Google search. Thirty years ago, readers formed teams to help each other map their way through the book’s dead ends and red herrings. The buzz about Masquerade spread across the world attracting many treasure-hunting visitors to the UK.
Three years after the book’s publication, the hare was found but under controversial circumstances. A man who identified himself as Ken Thomas discovered the loot but it was later found he had given a false name and was called Dugald Thompson – he was the business partner of a man who was the then-boyfriend of Kit Williams’ ex-girlfriend (whom the artist had been dating when developing the treasure hunt scheme). Thompson/Thomas sold the hare in 1988 at auction for £31,900 to an anonymous overseas bidder and that was the end of the Masquerade story …until the middle of July 2009 when BBC Radio 4 broadcasted a show to mark the 30th anniversary of Masquerade’s publication and Williams gave his first interview in years. The media coverage renewed interest in Masquerade and it became the bestselling book on AbeBooks.co.uk for the week of 13-19 July.
A quick search on AbeBooks revealed one of our local Canadian booksellers in Victoria, BC, Limebay Books (thanks Linda) who are located about a kilometre from our office, had a copy so within 40 minutes we were able to see the book for ourselves.
The 1979 editions of Masquerade are rather hard to locate but second-hand later editions of the book are plentiful and affordable. It’s a great story about an extraordinary book.
How Well Do You Know Literary Spies?
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to complete The Guardian’s quiz, “How much do you know about literary spies?”
Be careful…it may be possible to know too much…
This message will self destruct in 30 seconds. Well no it won’t really, I’ve just always wanted to say that.
What Type of Book Customer Are You?
Monday, June 15th, 2009It appears that the writer of the post The Seven Types of Bookstore Customer is a somewhat disgruntled big boxstore employee but if you can put aside the bitterness and focus on the fun side, there’s entertainment in determining where you’d place yourself. I know I’m not an Oprahite or a Camper . . .
Celebrities and Their Favorite Books - Try Our Quiz!
Thursday, April 2nd, 2009Earlier this week, ABC News posted on their website a slide-show revealing the favorite books of 12 celebrities.
Well, we decided to add to the fun and created a quiz based on their slide-show. See if you can match the celebrity with the book they’ve said is their all-time favorite. Just jot down the number associated with the celeb and the letter representing the book you think is the correct match.
The answers are in the comment attached to this entry.
Have fun!
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A) Catherine Zeta-Jones |
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B) Angelina Jolie |
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C) Natalie Portman |
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D) Nicole Kidman |
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E) Denzel Washington |
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F) Kate Winslet |
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G) Alec Baldwin |
7) Vlad the Impaler : In Search of the Real Dracula by M.J. Trow |
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H) Russell Crowe |
8) Therese Raquin by Emile Zola
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I) Will Smith |
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J) Mel Gibson |
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K) Mira Sorvino |
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L) Miley Cyrus |
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Quiz on Dysfunctional Literary Families
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
The Guardian posted a quiz about dysfunctional families in literature today. I’m a bit ashamed to say I only got 8 out of 13 correct, and that’s including a couple of lucky guesses. How do you do?
The only ones I knew with any actual knowledge were the ones that referenced Anna Karenina, Carrie, Oedipus, Jane Eyre, and The Virgin Suicides. Oh, and Harry Potter, of course.
Although Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is on my to-read pile.
BBC Book Quiz - How Many have You Read?
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Via Elizaphanian. How many of these 100 books have you read? It’s an interesting mix of classics and modern bestsellers.
Mine marked below for 36, or just over a third. According to the BBC, the average is six. I have a hard time believing that. It’s a depressing notion.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible - ()
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ( )
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ()
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x )
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (x)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x) 
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (x )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (x)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (x)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (x)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ()
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ()
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( )
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie () 
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ()
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (x)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (x)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (x)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad () 
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()
What’s your count?
Of the above books I’ve read, my top five favourites would be:
5. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
4. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
3. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Also very good is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I’m very excited to hear that she has a new one coming out called Her Fearful Symmetry (William Blake! Man, I love when I get a reference. Makes me feel so smart.), which according to Amazon.com is due out in October 2009.