Here's a different puzzle. It is intended for readers and even among readers, for those who have read a lot of old English Classics.
Famous First Lines:
Have you ever been so moved, amused, or provoked by the first
line of a novel that it stayed in your memory long after you finished
the book and put it back on the shelf? Here's your chance to see
just how many first lines you remember (or how many you can guess). Try to
match each of the following opening lines with the correct novel.
1. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he
found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
a) Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
b) Angels and Insects, A. S. Byatt
c) The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
d) Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig
2. "All children, except one, grow up."
a) Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
b) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Caroll
c) Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans
d) Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
3. "It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--
except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust
of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our
scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the
scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
a) The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
b) Dead Souls, Nikolay Gogol
c) Paul Clifford, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.
d) Bleak House, Charles Dickens
4. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
a) Wuthering Heights, Emily Bront
b) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
c) The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
d) The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
5. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy
in its own way."
a) Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
b) Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
c) Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
d) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams
6. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was
the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of
belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the
winter of despair"
a) Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
b) The Two Towers, J. R. R. Tolkien
c) All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
d) A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
7. "Call me Ishmael."
a) Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
b) Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed
c) Moby Dick, Herman Melville
d) The Letter of Marque, Patrick O'Brian
8. "Call me Jonah."
a) Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
b) Moby Dick, Herman Melville
c) Catch-22, Joseph Heller
d) The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
9. "I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man."
a) Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
b) Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
c) The Misanthrope, Molire
d) Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
10. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel
Aureliano Buenda was to remember that distant afternoon when his
father took him to discover ice."
a) The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges
b) Hopscotch, Julio Cortzar
c) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garca Mrquez
d) The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes
11. "The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the
reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended."
a) Dune, Frank Herbert
b) 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
c) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
d) The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
12. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll
probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy
childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before
they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't
feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
a) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
b) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
c) The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
d) The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton
13. "'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the
heavens, 'first you have to die.'"
a) The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
b) The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
c) A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
d) The Serpent and the Rope, Raja Rao
