Wednesday, October 30, 2019

So you think you know the classics

Forget fourth graders, are you smarter than a liberal arts major?  Test your knowledge this go round and find out.

library


Yes, you liked it, so it's back.  Below you will find the opening paragraph or paragraphs to five classic books.  Can you identify them?

Wait, we'll make it easier for you.

After the five excerpts, there are six possible books that the five can be from.

Can you match them up?

Openings:


1) "You do see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?"




2) No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill house, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for 80 years and might for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.


3) The recitations were over for the day.  It was the first week in November and it had rained about every day the entire week; now freezing temperature added to the discomfiture of the dismal season.  The lingering equinoctial whirled the last clinging yellow leaves from the trees on the campus and strewed them over the deserted paths, while from the leaden sky fluttering snow-white flakes gave an unexpected touch of winter to the scene.

4) Some voyages have their inception in the blueprint of a dream, some in the urgency of contradicting a dream.  Lillian's recurrent dream of a ship that could not reach the water, that sailed laboriously, pushed by her with great effort, through city streets, had determined her course toward the sea, as if she would give this ship, once and for all, its proper sea bed.


5) As a child, on the Red River Plantation where he was born, Little Augie was not required to chop cotton or work in the rice swamp like the other boys of his age.  He was considered too frail for hard labor.  Instead it became his duty to mind the cows when they grazed in the clover fields and to lead the horses to the watering-place.



A) Pauline Hopkins' OF ONE BLOOD: ON THE HIDDEN SELF


B) Arna Bontemps' GOD SENDS SUNDAY


C) Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE


D) Anais Nin's SEDUCTION OF THE MINOTAUR


E) Agatha Christie's APPOINTMENT WITH DEATH


F) Amanda McKittrick Ros' IRENE IDDELSLEIGH



So how did you do?

Not sure?

Need to check or maybe to cheat?

Fine, the key is below.


1) E

2) C

3) A

4) D

5) B


"So you think you know the classics"
"So you think you know the classics"
"So you think you know the classics"
"So You Think You Know The Classics"