23 June 2020

Book Lovers’ Quiz — Answers

By nonfictioness

Here are the answers to my book lovers’ quiz (if you have not had a go yet you can see the questions here). Let me know how you got on!

1. Real name                                                      nom de plume

Stephen King                                                     Richard Bachman

Anton Chekhov                                                Man Without a Spleen

Mary Ann Evans                                               George Eliot

William Sydney Porter                                   O. Henry

Agatha Christie                                                 Mary Westmacott


2. The series all contain six books which is known as a hexalogy or a sextet.


3. d) 1987. Pasternak won the Nobel Prize for Literature for Doctor Zhivago after it was smuggled out of Russia and published. Sadly the Russian government banned him from collecting his prize.


4. The James Bond series by Ian Fleming. Fleming himself wrote about Bond in 12 novels and 2 short stories.


5. Slumdog Millionaire. The film went on to win 8 Oscars.


6. They were all unfinished novels which were posthumously published (some in fragments).


7. S. E. Hinton (The Outsiders) was 18

Percy Bysshe Shelley (Zastrozzi) was 18

Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) was 21

Brett Easton Ellis (Less than Zero) was 21

George Eliot (Adam Bede) was 40

Richard Adams (Watership Down) was 52

Anna Sewell (Black Beauty) was 57

Frank McCourt (Angela’s Ashes) was 66


8. 723!


9. d) 2.1 million. The book came in ten volumes and has 13,095 pages.


10. b) A Tale of Two Cities. Although numerous celebrated books vie for the title of best-selling book of all time, poor record keeping in the past and unreliable sales figures has made gaining a definitive answer difficult, however it has widely been agreed that A Tale of Two Cities has sold over 200 million copies since publication.


11. The skins of roughly 170 calves would be required to make one bible from vellum.


12. a) ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

b) ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’ 1984 by George Orwell

c) ‘It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents…’ Paul Clifford by George Bulwer-Lytton

d) ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley


13. Jacket colour                                                type of book

Orange                                                                 fiction

Green                                                                   crime fiction

Cerise                                                                   travel & adventure

Dark blue                                                             biography


14. d) 38. Mitchell is in good company. J K Rowling, James Joyce, Beatrix Potter and Yann Martel were all also rejected by numerous publishers before finally securing a deal.


15. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier


I hope you enjoyed the quiz! You can buy The Book Lovers’ Miscellany here.