Christmas Book Quiz Winner

It's time to reveal the winner of the quiz I set just before Christmas. Before I do, though, here are the answers to the ten questions posed :



1. How many ghosts visited Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol?
   - Four (Jacob Marley, Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Yet To Come).

2. In which poem is there a "rough beast" that "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
   - Second Coming by W. B. Yeats.

3. A person holds 66 books in their hands. They put one book down. Now they are holding no books at all.  What book was it they put down?
  -  The Bible (there are 66 books in the Christian Bible).


4. Find a verbal connection between Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes,  Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ludd-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.
   - Dapple(d) - Name of Don Quixote's donkey; first line : "Glory be to God for dappled things"; name of river that flows from the land of faerie.

5. Which book did the American critic Edmund Wilson famously describe as "long-winded balderdash"?
   - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. How wrong can you be?


6. Which Victorian novel ends with the words "He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was"?
   - Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

7. Which novel contains these lines in a poetic preface : "And, gentle reader, you as well / The fountainhead of all remittance. / Buy me before good sense insists / You'll strain your purse and sprain your wrists."
   - A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

8. In which Shakespeare play do Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek appear?
   -Twelfth Night.

9. Who lived in the house at Pooh Corner in the A. A. Milne story?
   - Eeyore.

10. What was the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 : A Space Odyssey?
   - 2010 : Odyssey Two.

And the winner is : Andy Yates, one of my oldest followers. I mean, he's not old. He's just been one of my followers for a while. Anyway, congratulations Andy, you'll have your book ASAP.