You may think you’re quite a bookworm, but how well do you remember your classics? For this quiz, we’ve spanned all genres of fiction, so you’re bound to know your favorites, but we bet you can’t get all of these correct!
C.S. Lewis' Narnia series is a classic indeed! But which of the books begins, "There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
Correct!
Wrong!
I'll bring the Dostoyevsky, you bring the dip! Which of Dostoyevsky's classics begins, "I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man."
Correct!
Wrong!
This dystopian classic begins "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Correct!
Wrong!
Which Charles Dickens classic begins with the line, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
Correct!
Wrong!
This Russian classic begins "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Correct!
Wrong!
This 1938 avant-garde classic begins "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."
Correct!
Wrong!
This classic featuring a teenage protagonist begins, "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 all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
Correct!
Wrong!
This coming-of-age novel by an African-American writer begins, "Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."
Correct!
Wrong!
Which Shakespearean comedy begins, "If music be the food of love, play on."
Correct!
Wrong!
This mid-Victorian study of provincial life begins, "Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress."
Correct!
Wrong!
This 1971 satire begins "What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?"
Correct!
Wrong!
This classic from the magical realism genre begins, "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
Correct!
Wrong!
This classic, set in a mental hospital, begins "Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me."
Correct!
Wrong!
This seafaring classic begins "Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."
Correct!
Wrong!
This beat writer's best-known work begins, "I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up."
Correct!
Wrong!
Which Jane Austen novel begins, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Correct!
Wrong!
This Vonnegut classic begins with the words, "All this happened, more or less."
Correct!
Wrong!
This novel capturing the spirit of Los Angeles begins "What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask."
Correct!
Wrong!
This Margaret Atwood novel begins "We slept in what had once been the gymnasium."
Correct!
Wrong!
This modern Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction begins "It began the usual way, in the bathroom of the Lassimo Hotel."
Correct!
Wrong!
Emily Parker is a musician, writer, and avid reader who started Bucket List Book Reviews, the ‘1,001 Books to Read Before You Die’ project. For Sweatpants & Coffee, Emily hopes to inspire the reading of the classics by a whole new audience by only reviewing the really good stuff.
Dianne Shearin
What are the correct answers?
Emily Parker
The correct answers highlight in green as you go, once you guess.