General Flashcards
Richard Bachman is the pseudonym of what author? The the general view among publishers was that an author was limited to one book per year, since publishing more would be unacceptable to the public. This author therefore wanted to write under another name, in order to increase publication without over-saturating the market.
Stephen King
What is the term, derived from the Spanish for “rogue,” for a type of literary narrative, usually comic or satirical, that depicts the escapades of a single, likeable, roguish hero living by his (or her, but more often his) wits? English examples include Huckleberry Finn, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Moll Flanders, while the progenitor is widely considered to be the 1554 novella Lazarillo de Tormes.
Picaresque
What Australian-born writer, whose books The Shock of the New and American Visions were both serialized for television, was dubbed by the New Yorker as the “most famous art critic in the world,” a role he filled for Time magazine for more than 30 years?
Robert Hughes
The Tuck family finds a fountain of youth in this novel by Natalie Babbitt.
Tuck Everlasting
This author’s first book of tales in 1835 included “The Tinderbox” and “The Princess And The Pea.”
Hans Christian Andersen
This author, while primarily known for writing children’s books like “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” was also an avid artist and expert in the field of mycology (the study of fungi).
Beatrix Potter
Co-writing a children’s book can lead to some odd pairings. Name the co-author, not exactly associated with purity and childhood innocence, whose name has been redacted from the cover of the book seen here.
Bill O’Reilly
The title wrongdoing in this novel is the murder of a pawnbroker and her sister by Raskolnikov.
Crime and Punishment
In the standard English version of “Jack and the Beanstalk”, what item does Jack trade in exchange for the magic beans?
Cow
If You Need Healing, Do These Things; The Miracle of Seed-Faith; and Something Good is Going to Happen to You! are works by what Pentecostal preacher and university founder?
Oral Roberts
Whittier is the last name of what cheerful and irrepressibly optimistic (and arguably naive and self-delusional) character created in 1913 by Eleanor H. Porter?
Pollyanna
What are the only two letters of the alphabet that each span two volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia?
C, S
The first novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, the story of a cynical failed wizard named Rincewind, is The Colour of what?
Magic
A brutal death in a vehicle accident kicks off the events that conclude the story of The Great Gatsby. Give the first name of either the character who dies in the accident or the character who was driving the car at the time.
Myrtle, Daisy
In this 1945 novel, Moses, a raven, tells the other creatures about a better life to come on Sugar-Candy Mountain.
Animal Farm
This author wrote and illustrated “The Tale of Pigling Bland”
Beatrix Potter
Wolf, this Washington Irving character’s dog, fails to recognize his master after a 20-year absence.
Rip Van Winkle
Boy: Tales of Childhood, which includes stories of Norwegian holidays, the author’s sadistic schoolmasters, and his childhood fantasies as an inventor of sweets, is the first volume of memoirs by what British writer?
Roald Dahl
What Anne Tyler novel, first published in 1985, tells the story of a middle-aged travel writer named Macon Leary who does not like traveling?
The Accidental Tourist
Irving Stone’s bestselling novel based on the life of an artist was made into a movie starring Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison. Who was the artist, and what was the book’s title?
Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstacy
This wildly successful and scandalous novel (which would hardly earn the latter adjective today) was set in the fictional New England town of Tarbox. Author and title, please.
John Updike, Couples
Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle were two of the three co-authors of a hugely influential book first published in 1961. Who was their far better-known American collaborator?
Julia Child
What organization’s adventures were most famously described in the 1924 novel Beau Geste?
French Foreign Legion
Twenty-two years before he appeared in Closing Time, this character—usually known only by his surname—appeared in a much more famous novel by Joseph Heller. Name that character.
John Yossarian
Published in the U.S. in 1962, followed by a film version several years later, this novel included characters referred to as droogs, prestoopniks, and vecks. Quite a few of them occasionally engaged in “doing the ultra-violence.”
A Clockwork Orange
What first and last name are shared by two writers, respectively one of the most iconic American authors of the 1970s (I’m OK, You’re OK) and of the 1980s (The Silence of the Lambs)?
Thomas Harris
In this work by Franz Kafka, an unnamed traveler investigates an unusual form of capital punishment.
In The Penal Colony
What author, currently working on Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, announced last year that its sequel, the tenth book in her best-selling series, will also be the last?
Diana Gabaldon
American author M.F.K. Fisher wrote broadly about various topics, but she is best remembered today for (and the majority of her writing was) works on what subject?
Food
“Walden” was written by this master pencil maker whose father owned a pencil factory.
Henry David Thoreau
Philip Marlowe is the hard-boiled gumshoe of “The Big Sleep” by this author.
Raymond Chandler
“The Naked & The Dead” and “The Executioner’s Song” are books by this novelist.
Norman Mailer
The 1930 book “Murder at the Vicarage” featured this female sleuth.
Miss (Jane) Marple
First published in 1998, the Booker prize-winning novel Amsterdam is by which author?
Ian McEwan
What is the first name of the heroine who jockeys the winning horse in the famous English steeplechase the Grand National in a 1935 Enid Bagnold novel (and subsequent film adaptation)?
Velvet
This is the second and final novel to be written by Harper Lee. Though marketed to publishers as a sequel to To Kill A Mockingbird, it is believed by many to be a first draft of that debut novel.
Go Set A Watchman
A novel of religious satire by C.S. Lewis first published in 1942 takes the form of a series of letters to a “Junior Tempter” named Wormwood, with advice on how best to draw a particular Englishman into sin and, eventually, into Hell. These letters are written by Wormwood’s uncle, a senior-level devil, who goes by what name?
Screwtape
“Droll Stories” is a collection of racy tales by this author of “La Comedie Humaine.”
Honore de Balzac
The New Pilgrims’ Progress is the alternate title of what humorous Mark Twain travel narrative based on newspaper dispatches during his 1867 steamship voyage to Europe and the Holy Land?
The Innocents Abroad
The title of the Aldous Huxley short story “The Gioconda Smile,” from his Mortal Coils collection, references a work of art best known by what name?
Mona Lisa
What is the anagrammatical title (nearly but not quite a semordnilap) of a satirical Utopian novel by English author Samuel Butler first published anonymously in 1872?
Erewhon
Sons and A House Divided, the second and third installments of the House of Earth trilogy, are works by what Pulitzer and Nobel-winning American novelist?
Pearl S. Buck
What name is shared by the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen from Greek legend, the saintly wife of Sicilian king Leontes in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, and (likely) literature’s most prominent only child of English dentists?
Hermione
hough she had written numerous books, including House of Incest, Winter of Artifice, and the Cities of the Interior series, what French-born American novelist did not achieve wide renown until the publication of her diaries written from 1931 to 1966, with their seven volumes published between 1966 and 1980?
Anaïs Nin
This executive has written “Business at the Speed of Thought” and “The Road Ahead.”
Bill Gates
Ralph Waldo Emerson was neighbor, friend and mentor to this “Little Women” author.
Louisa May Alcott
This 1939 novel by Ernest Vincent Wright is known for its near-complete avoidance of the letter “e” throughout its 50,000 words.
Gadsby
In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, what is the name of the euphoria-giving drug that citizens of the “world state” use recreationally and to suppress “troublesome” emotions?
Soma
What individual replaces Jesus as the primary deity figure in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?
Henry Ford
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” is the opening line from what novel?
1984
While this 1884 Edwin Abbott Abbot novella was first written as a satire on Victorian cultural hierarchy, its more enduring contribution has been its examination of dimensions.
Flatland
This author often wrote his stories in a non-linear fashion using index cards. This method was used to write his most famous 1955 novel.
Vladimir Nabokov
This author wrote Gone With The Wind.
Margaret Mitchell
The antagonist in this Stephen King novel is a 1958 Plymouth Fury.
Christine
In his 1958 essay “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose”, he compared a writing technique to a jazz musician’s style.
Jack Kerouac
This is the name given to a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed. It’s name features the playwright and author who mentioned it in many of his writings.
Chekov’s Gun
Roald Dahl wrote “constant twitching & jerking & snorting” were all signs of this alliterative disorder.
Shell shock
“Runs” is the last word of this 1960 John Updike novel about a man running from his responsibilities.
Rabbit, Run
In Audrey Niffenegger’s bestseller, Clare Abshire DeTamble is this title spouse.
The Time Traveler’s Wife
This children’s author considered using the anagrams Edgar Cuthwellis & Edgar W.C. Westhill for his pen name.
Lewis Carroll
“Circling the Sun” fictionalizes the love triangle of Beryl Markham Denys, Finch Hatton and this author of “Out of Africa”
Isak Dinesen
The name of what author, eventual TV producer, and reporter (at the time) for The Baltimore Sun has been redacted from the cover seen here? This particular book was written after the reporter in question spent a year with the Baltimore Police Department Homicide Unit.
David Simon
What two words have been redacted from this book cover? The same words can refer to an oft-mentioned but rarely depicted part of Doctor Who lore.
Time War
A Pale View of Hills (1982) was the debut novel of what Nagasaki-born English author, who is probably best known for the Booker Prize–winning 1989 novel The Remains of the Day?
Kazuo Ishiguro
Multiple sci-fi concepts related to the warping of space have been named, for whatever reason, after the 4-dimensional hypercube. This image is the canonical explanation of one of those concepts, as seen in what 1962 novel?
A Wrinkle In Time
