Summer Books Quiz
Did the author of The Graduate really live above a Sussex pet shop? Who did John Bercow call as wooden as a coffee table? Find out in our fiendish...
1‘ To be bad is good, because to be good is simply boring.’ In a biography published this year, whose relative used to say this?
a) Donald Trump’s father
b) Malcolm McLaren’s granny
c) Woody Allen’s mother
d) Machiavelli’s uncle
2 President Trump (bottom) tried unsuccessfully to prevent the publication of his niece Mary’s book about him. It is called Too Much And Never Enough. But what is its subtitle?
a) How My Family Spoonfed A Monster
b) How My Uncle Made Faces At Me Behind My Back
c) How My Family Created The World’s Most Dangerous Man
d) How My Uncle Played Dirty
3 A little-publicised addition to the Trump family library was published in January. Written by Donald Trump Jr, its title was Triggered. But what was its subtitle?
a) How The Left Thrives On Hate And Wants To Silence Us
b) How My Daddy Won Big
c) How To Bring Love And Hope To America
d) How The Wall Was Won And Other Great Tales Of American Valor
4 In July, Dominic Cummings (above right by Spitting Image) recommended which of these books to his Government advisers?
a) Super Thinking, by Gabriel Weinberg
b) Super Rabbit, by Stephanie Blake
c) Super forecasting, by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner
d) Super Human: The Bulletproof Plan To Age Backwards And Maybe Even Live Forever, by Dave Asprey
5 Of whom did a former colleague complain in a memoir that she had ‘dashed’ so many people ‘on a frayed and tattered heap during her powerful rule’?
a) Madame Mao, wife of Chairman Mao
b) Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue
c) Theresa May, former Prime Minister
d) Mary Berry, former star of The Great British Bake Off
6 In her new novel Rodham, novelist Curtis Sittenfeld imagines the life Hillary Clinton might have lived had she decided not to marry Bill. In one particularly fruity scene during their courtship, Hillary watches Bill naked, with ‘an unobscured view of his pale buttocks and he bent, opened the case, and pulled out…’ What?
a) His saxophone
b) A hot dog
c) A book of love poetry
d) A signed photograph of himself
7 Six Generations Of Adultery, Addiction And Tragedy is the subtitle to a new book about which famous family?
a) The Kennedys
b) The Windsors
c) The Trumps
d) The Gettys
e) The Beckhams
8 Which elderly diarist recently complained: ‘I am getting rather tired of me… I am stuck with my tone of voice, the timbre and rhythm of it, the self-satisfaction and the sometimes tiresome humour’?
a) Jan Morris
b) Alan Bennett
c) Roy Strong
d) David Hockney
9 ‘We are like school children who want to huddle together in a corner and laugh at our good fortune.’ Who wrote this in a recent memoir, about what?
a) Astronaut Jessamy Beames, of her first day on the International Space Station
b) Kate Fall, David Cameron’s deputy chiefof- staff, of her first day in Downing Street
c) Singer Lily Allen, of her first performance at Glastonbury
d) Ivanka Trump, of the Trump family’s first day in the White House
10 Who, in their 464- page auto biography, confessed: ‘Brevity is not my strong suit’?
a) Bob Geldof
b) Miriam Margolyes
c) John Bercow
d) Sarah Millican
11 In his acclaimed new book The Mystery Of Charles Dickens ( below right), A. N. Wilson suggests that had Dickens lived today, his creativity might have been destroyed. By what?
a) ‘A helpful course of cognitive therapy’
b) ‘24-hour television’
c) ‘ The relentless tug of the literary festival’
d) ‘Radio phone-in programmes’
12 ‘Once the queen’s head is severed, he walks away. A sharp pang of appetite reminds him it is time for a second breakfast, or perhaps an early dinner.’ These are the first two sentences of a bestseller published in the spring. Which?
a) The Chiffon Trenches, by André Leon Talley
b) The Beauty And The Terror, by Catherine Fletcher
c) The Crown In Crisis, by Alexander Larman
d) The Mirror And The Light, by Hilary Mantel
13 In June, Lionel Shriver, author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, revealed her reluctance to give away her own books to friends. Why?
a) ‘They might get the wrong idea and turn aggressive on me’
b) ‘Friends know me too well to be able to read my characters without hearing my voice. They would spend their time watching the ventriloquist’s mouth, not the puppet’s.’
c) ‘Let them buy their own. I need to run at a profit. A copy gifted is a copy unsold. My accountant wouldn’t stand for it.’
d) ‘When you give people your own book, they feel obliged to read it, and then they don’t read it. They feel embarrassed and you never hear from them again.’
14 Joi n t he s ummer book with its author:
a) Summer Lightning
b) Summer
c) Summertime
d) The Summer Book i) Tove Jansson ii) Edith Wharton iii) P. G. Wodehouse iv) J. M. Coetzee
15 Match the famous person with his or her choice of Desert Island book:
a) Frank Bruno (pictured, below left)
b) Alfred Hitchcock
c) Bob Geldof
d) Ian Fleming
e) Jo Brand
i) Robinson Crusoe
ii) Mrs Beeton’s Book Of Household Management
iii) The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire
iv) The Diary Of Samuel Pepys
v) War And Peace in German
16 What do Boris Johnson , Michael Morpurgo, Joan Bakewell and Aung San Suu Kyi have in common?
a) They are all collectors of Graham Greene first editions
b) They all have pet dogs named Shakespeare
c) They all picked The Beatles’ Here Comes The Sun as a Desert Island Disc
d) They all boast complete sets of the Tintin books
17 Who, invited to choose a book on Desert Island Discs, refused, saying ‘I don’t actually read books, which makes me sound pig ignorant… but I fall asleep’?
a) Jamie Oliver
b) John Prescott
c) Katie Price
d) Mary Beard
18 Two novels published this year have featured Leonard Cohen (top right) as a character. Which two?
a) A Thousand Moons, by Sebastian Barry
b) Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell
c) A Theatre For Dreamers, by Polly Samson
d) Exciting Times, by Naoise Dolan
19 Charles Webb, author of The Graduate, (above) died in June, aged 81. He was an eccentric figure. All these statements about him are true, except one. Which one is false?
a) He sold the film and stage rights to The Graduate for $20,000, and never received another penny. In all, the film went on to gross $100 million
b) In 1999 he lived in a flat above a pet shop in Newhaven, East Sussex
c) Following his initial success, Webb and his wife Eve worked successively flipping burgers, stacking shelves at K-Mart and as caretakers at a nudist colony
d) Webb’s only appearance on British TV was in an episode of Last Of The Summer Wine in 1984. He played the part of Terry, Compo’s long-lost brother from Texas
20 In a new collection of his interviews and essays, Vladimir Nabokov proves an unforgiving critic of his fellow authors, however grand. Pair the abuse with the abused.
a) ‘A writer for boys’
b) ‘ A small writer who did big stories badly’
c) ‘Swarms with cliches’
d) ‘Mediocre and tedious’
i) Thomas Mann
ii) Joseph Conrad
iii) Ernest Hemingway
iv) Miguel de Cervantes
21 Pair t he literary room with t he writer:
a) A Room With A View
b) The Room Where It Happened
c) Room d) The Blue Room
i) Emma Donoghue
ii) E. M. Forster
iii) John Bolton
iv) Georges Simenon
22 In his tell-all memoir of his days in the Trump administration, former National Security Advisor John Bolton reports that the President praised someone to their face as ‘a very good person, totally sincere, with a great personality’. Who?
a) Dolly Parton
b) Prince Andrew
c) Mike Pompeo
d) Kim Jong Un
23 Who insisted in their recent autobiography that, contrary to their reputation, ‘ I don’t have an intellectual neuron in my head’? They went on to say that they had never read Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, Dickens or any of the Brontës.
a) Germaine Greer
b) Simon Schama
c) Patti Smith
d) Woody Allen
24 In Kate Falls’s Downing Street memoir she revealed that a Cabinet Minister was such a terrible driver that he jammed his car in the Downing Street car-lift. Who?
a) Eric Pickles
b) Boris Johnson
c) Michael Gove
d) Kenneth Clarke
25 John Bercow’s autobiography, Unspeakable, was particularly rude about many former colleagues in the Conservative Party. Pair the insult with the insulted.
a) ‘As wooden as your average coffee table’
b) ‘Buttoned-up, inscrutable, a cold fish’
c) ‘Sniffy, supercilious and deeply snobbish’
d) ‘At his occasional best, a passably adequate politician’
i) William Hague
ii) Boris Johnson
iii) Theresa May
iv) David Cameron