Tags
authors, Books, literature, Lockdown quiz, Pub Quiz, Quiz, Writers
Welcome to the second edition of The Ox‘s literary pub quiz.
Our second contestant is Bibby Bop! You’ll find out a bit more about her at the half-time break.
Play along at home, and let us know how you got on in the comments.
Got your drinks? Got your snacks? Harbouring deep enmities against the team who beat you last week? Let’s go!
ROUND ONE
1. Name Ebeneezer Scrooge’s former business partner who appears to him as a ghost in A Christmas Carol.
2. Who wrote The Third Man?
3. Complete the title of this noughties bestseller: The Devil Wears (X)
4. Who wrote the popular science classic, Cosmos?
5. Take A Letter – For two points, tell me what either the H or G stand for in HG Wells.
6. Which writer gave us the classic short story “The Lottery” as well as the novel, The Haunting Of Hill House?
7. Which writer from antiquity penned the play Oedipus Rex?
8. “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”. This epigram inscribed on the Scottish Parliament comes from which writer and artist, best known for the novel Lanark?
9. “You: Comma: Marilyn Monroe”, “Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan” and “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As A Downhill Motor Race” are all chapter titles in which JG Ballard book?
10. Which fictional creation of Muriel Spark had a fondness for Mussolini and taking tea with her Set?
***HALF TIME – MEET OUR CONTESTANT***
1. What’s your name and where are you from?
Since I haven’t decided on a pen name yet, lets go with Miss Bibby Bop.
2. When you think about reading books during the summer holidays as a kid, what are the first ones to come to mind?
Probably either Nancy Drew or Enid Blyton. Classics! I liked adventures in far flung places. My favourites were the four go adventuring series and due to the Spider Sapphire I have had Machu Picchu on my must see list since I was nine.
3. What’s your dream author life?
That’s hard. On a realistic (sorta) level I’d love to have a career similar to someone like Sue Grafton. Not a celebrity but able to make a good living. JK’s level of success brings me out in boils of horror… On those days when reality is taking a break i’m turning my (not written yet) series into mega-million TV shows (the perils of writing speculative fiction is the absolute certainty your gonna need Disney or Lucas on your side to make it come to life) but perhaps the most fantastical dream of all is feeling happy with what I write instead of deeply critical and self-flagellating… such stuff dreams are made of…
4. If you had a daemon like they have in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, what would it be?
Probably an elephant. Big clumsy well meaning, guaranteed to make me spend all day apologising for breaking, bumping and generally feeling like I shouldn’t be there, even though like all elephants in the room, no one is paying me any attention…
5. Past, present and future – what’s your writing history, and what are you working on now?
Feels like it’s mostly past! Haven’t written in ages… We might even be into years, not since that business of paying bills and keeping a roof over your head kinda took priority. Currently trying to use lockdown to reignite it all with a short story or ten using the current situation as inspiration. Not sure it’s the most original or cheery idea but gonna free write it, so may be interesting on a ‘stuff my therapist may need to see’ level…
ROUND TWO:
11. Anne Brashares wrote which trousers-based young adult novel about female friendship in 2001?
12. Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman collaborated on a novel, first published 30 years ago. Give me its title.
13. Which writer best known for his fantastical children’s books wrote the memoir, A Grief Observed, under the pseudonym NW Clerk?
14. Which experimental American poet wrote “Anyone lived in a pretty how town” and “a leaf falls”?
15. The Bell Jar is a novel by which English poet?
16. Which fictional private detective was the hero of Raymond Chandler’s novels The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely and The Long Goodbye?
17. Tell me which writer created the whimsical adventures of the Larkin family in The Darling Buds Of May books.
18. The Steven Spielberg movie AI: Artificial Intelligence was based on a series of short stories by which English SF writer?
19. Who was Inspector Poirot’s sidekick in the Agatha Christie stories and books?
20. A Woman Of Substance is one of the best-selling novels of the 1980s. Who wrote it?
WE’LL GIVE IT A LITTLE SCROLLING GAP NOW, BEFORE THE ANSWERS…
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NO PEEKING NOW…
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HERE WE GO…
Bibby’s answers:
1. Jacob Marley ✓
2. Graham Greene ✓
3. Prada ✓
4. Professor Brian Cox x
5. Herbert George (a total guess!) ✓✓
6. Joe Hill x
7. Virgil x
8. Sir Walter Scott x
9. Couldn’t even name one he wrote. Sorry! I’ll make up a title hopefully befitting such chapters WORLD: COLON: OOPS x
10. Jean Brodie ✓
11. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants ✓
12. Good Omens ✓
13. Roald Dahl x
14. Emily Dickinson x
15. Sylvia Plath ✓
16. Philip Marlowe ✓
17. I know this, but cannot think of it… agghhh have to make something up pointless style… em Marjory Littlebottom… x
18. Asimov x
19. Captain Hastings ✓
20. Barbara Taylor Bradford ✓
Bibby Bop has scored… 12/21
Answers:
1. Jacob Marley
2. Graham Greene
3. Prada
4. Carl Sagan
5. Herbert George
6. Shirley Jackson
7. Sophocles
8. Alasdair Gray
9. The Atrocity Exhibition
10. Miss Jean Brodie
11. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants
12. Good Omens
13. CS Lewis
14. ee cummings
15. Sylvia Plath
16. Philip Marlowe
17. HE Bates
18. Brian Aldiss
19. Captain Hastings
20. Barbara Taylor Bradford