I recently compiled a quiz based on the openings of a variety of books on our bookcases. It is a mixture of the well-known and the slightly obscure, the literary and the popular, with a dusting of SF/fantasy sprinkled in.
This page has the questions only: when you’re ready, there is a version of the quiz with answers also available.
Book 1
A classic classic opening to get started.
Book 2
Unfortunately, most of what I know about motorcycles comes either from this book or playing with Lego with my family.
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
This was… bleak.
Book 6
Another classic classic.
Book 7
The first of a diabolical duo…
Book 8
…and the second of the diabolical duo, nearly 50 years later.
Book 9
Start humming the zither music now…
Book 10
Book 11
Book 12
The first picture round.
Book 13
Book 14
Book 15
A fantastically funny play.
Book 16
I’m not sure that televisions tuned to dead channels are that colour any more.
Book 17
I was gripped by this when it was Radio 4’s Late Book during one summer vacation, avidly staying up past the midnight news to hear each new episode.
Book 18
Book 19
Book 20
An extract from this was a reading at our wedding. (That’s not giving away the answer to a security question, is it?)
Book 21
There is an art to the building up of suspense.
Book 22
Despite the title of the first chapter, not a novelisation of the Cannon Films He-Man movie (which, as an obscure clue, came out the same year as this novel).
Book 23
Discovered in the school library, this was one of the books which encouraged me to go on to study maths at university.
Book 24
Imagine, if you like, a background of 1970s symphonic rock.
Book 25
More from Mars.
Book 26
Book 27
Do the next two books have the same author? It depends on how you count it…
Book 28
Game developers deserve recognition too!
Book 29
A book which I re-read a few times, on a holiday with not quite enough books to fill the days (this being a couple of decades before the Kindle eliminated this particular First World Problem).
Book 30
I’d thought “immanentize the Eschaton” an uncommon phrase, but it turns out that there’s a whole Wikipedia article about it (and this book only appears two-thirds of the way down).
Book 31
The second picture round.
Book 32
