Literary Fun and Games

Time for some English Literary Fun and Games

Identify the following Literary Fun first lines with the novel or short story that they open. Who was the author?

1. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish.
2. When Mrs. Frederic C. Little’s second son arrived. Everyone noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.
3. A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak and studded with iron spikes.
4. We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
5. One thing was certain, that the white kitten had nothing to do with it –it was the black kitten’s fault entirely.
6. « Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents, » grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
7. Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a moocow coming down along the road, and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
8. 1801 — I have just returned from a visit to my landlord — the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with.
9. The boy, with fair hair, lowered himself down the last few feet of rock, and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.
10. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
11. Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
12. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
13. Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
14.  ‘Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow,’ said Mrs. Ramsay.
15. 124 was spiteful.

Nathaniel Hawthorn

Answers

1. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
2. Stuart Little by EB. White
3. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
4. The Handmaid‘s Tale by Margaret Atwood
5. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
7. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
8. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
9. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
12. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
13. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston
14. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Wolff
15. Beloved by Toni Morrison

If you answered 1-4 correctly, you’re a casual bookworm; 4 -6 a Literary fun bibliophile; 7 or more a bona fide lit wit.

Jane Austen

Cross match the Shakespearean couples

If you correctly answered 1-6, you’re a budding Shakespearean; 7-12 a legitimate Shakespearean reader; 13-15 the Bard himself!