7/1 £500 Waterstone vouchers (quiz)

naso · 2 January 2008 at 9:12PM

Number 43 is E.M. Forster (who is the answer to another question too) -- WH Auden's 'Journey to a War' was dedicated to him, and his second novel, 'The Longest Journey' was released in 1907.

kirsteenatom · 2 January 2008 at 9:14PM

great thanks

kirsteenatom · 2 January 2008 at 9:21PM

I'm wondering if 7 is based on the Canterbury tales, written in the 1300's. I found this about works based on it:

Many literary works (both fiction and non-fiction alike) have used a similar frame narrative to the Canterbury Tales as an homage. Science Fiction writer Dan Simmons wrote his Hugo Award winning novel Hyperion based around an extra-planetary group of pilgrims. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins used The Canterbury Tales as a structure for his 2004 non-fiction book about evolution - The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. His animal pilgrims are on their way to find the common ancestor, each telling a tale about evolution.
Henry Dudeney's book The Canterbury Puzzles contains a part which is supposedly lost text from the Tales.

naso · 2 January 2008 at 9:25PM

kirsteenatom wrote: »

I'm wondering if 7 is based on the Canterbury tales, written in the 1300's. I found this about works based on it:

Many literary works (both fiction and non-fiction alike) have used a similar frame narrative to the Canterbury Tales as an homage. Science Fiction writer Dan Simmons wrote his Hugo Award winning novel Hyperion based around an extra-planetary group of pilgrims. Evolutionist Richard Dawkins used The Canterbury Tales as a structure for his 2004 non-fiction book about evolution - The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution. His animal pilgrims are on their way to find the common ancestor, each telling a tale about evolution.
Henry Dudeney's book The Canterbury Puzzles contains a part which is supposedly lost text from the Tales.

The only problem is that none of the books listed there were written this year, and there's only meant to be one that wasn't in the list... although it's very probable other books have been based on it... it does seem to be the most likely 14th century storytelling classic!

naso · 2 January 2008 at 9:27PM

I do believe 41 is "The Playboy of the Western World" by J. M. Synge, a play written in 1907 in which a man claims to have killed his father by whacking him over the head with a spade!

(Is anyone else finding researching for this comp oddly fun?)

Oh, and 40 is "The Secret Agent" by Joseph Conrad.

kirsteenatom · 2 January 2008 at 9:34PM

10 And finally name the two books that connect England's 2005 Ashes triumph to the lead character in Todd Haynes's new film.

The lead character is Bob Dylan - for a starting point on this one.

Sorry about scatter approach but I've got a nasty head cold and my concentration is shot! lol

Kirsteen

oh i've also posted about this on a question and answer site i came across when I was researching the times/faber literary quiz - the gang there found out most of the answers, so hoping they might be able to help us if we get stuck

naso · 2 January 2008 at 9:40PM

31 would appear to be Jeanette Winterson and Sir Howard Davies -- he's a Booker prize judge who claimed he read the books at 80 pages an hour, and she's an author whose book ("The Stone Gods") didn't make the Booker longlist.

naso · 2 January 2008 at 9:44PM

33 - Val McDermid and Ian Rankin -- he said that the most graphic crime novels were written by women and that "they are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting", a statement which she, as a lesbian, described as "arrant rubbish"

I'm learning so much today!