Friday, January 7, 2011

Trivial Pursuit for Book-Lovers

Children's: What author uproots a Massachusetts family to the Gold Rush town of Lucky Diggins, in The Ballad of Lucy Whipple?

Classics: What followup to The Web and the Rock was Thomas Wolfe's last novel?

Non-Fiction: What nation did David Halberstam describe in Ho and The Making of a Quagmire?

Book Club: Whose 1998 novel Filth interrupts its narrator, Edinburgh detective Bruce Robertson, with comments from the 10-foot tapeworm inside him?

Authors: What pen name did Mary Challans grab from a 17th-century British play, for eight novels set in ancient Greece?

Book Bag: What real-life politician is skewered by Garrison Keillor's satire Me, by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente?

6 comments:

Karen said...

NF: Must be Vietnam, eh?

I can't recall who wrote _Filth_, though I'm sure I've known this at some point.

Harriet M. Welsch said...

Wow, a tough one this week.

I know three:

Nonfiction: Vietnam

and

Authors: Mary Renault. It's funny this one showed up today, because I just pulled The King Must Die off my bookshelf and was thinking of rereading it. I was pretty obsessed with Renault when I was in 6th and 7th grade (we studied Ancient Greece in 6th grade.Since I was living in Europe at the time, I spent a week in Greece with about half of my class and a bunch of teachers. My mom pointed me toward the books and I read as many as I could get my hands on.)

The third one is a guess, but for Book Bag, I'm pretty sure, based on the name and the state Garrison Keillor's from, that Jimmy Valente is a stand-in for Jesse Ventura. I have no idea about the other three.

Andrew Santella said...

Classics: You Can't Go Home Again? An apt title because he was, at publication, dead.

Melissa (Avid Reader) said...

Holy cow, I've got nothing!

Karen said...

I looked it up. My vague memories were correct: all I could think of for _Filth_ was that it was connected to _Trainspotting_. Irvine Welsh wrote both.

Jeanne said...

Children's: Karen Cushman
Classics: You Can't Go Home Again
Non-Fiction: Vietnam
Book Club: Irvine Welsh's
Authors: Mary Renault
Book Bag: Jesse Ventura

This was a tough one, and as a group, you did quite well!

Also, I like Karen Cushman a lot as a children's author.