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LITERARY TRIVIA III

21) What was the first book sold on Amazon.com?


In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.

22) What dystopian novel by George Orwell told of life in a future totalitarian state dominated by "Big Brother"?


Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, dictated by a political system that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime".

23) The U2 song "Shadows and Tall Trees" is taken from a chapter title in what famous book?


Chapter 7 of Lord of the Flies is titled "Shadows and Tall Trees," which U2 used as the final track on their debut album, Boy.

24) In what Philip K. Dick novel does bounty hunter Rick Deckard track down a group of rogue androids?


In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, bounty hunter Rick Deckard signs on to a new police mission to earn enough money to buy a live animal to replace his electric sheep. The mission involves hunting down ("retiring") a group of six Nexus-6 androids that went rogue and fled from Mars to Earth. The book served as the primary basis for Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner.

25) Which of the following characters appears in 3 of Shakespeare's plays?


Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future king. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, he is the buffoonish suitor of two married women.

26) What famous author was a descendant of one of the Salem witches?


Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, was a descendant of one of the Salem witches, Mary Perkins Bradbury, who was sentenced to hang in 1692 but managed to escape and evade capture until the trials had been discredited. She died in 1700 at the age of 85.

27) How many rejections did Louis L'Amour receive before being published?


Western writer Louis L'Amour received 200 rejections before he was finally published. His novels have now sold more than 320 million copies worldwide.

28) What author wrote his last novel in crayon?


Owing to failing eyesight, James Joyce wrote much Finnegans Wake in crayon on pieces of cardboard.

29) Which of the following words were first used in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise?


Fitzgerald's novel provides us with the first known uses of the words "T-shirt" and "daiquiri."

30) The phrase "dark horse" comes from what 1831 novel?


The phrase "dark horse" comes from Benjamin Disraeli's 1831 novel The Young Duke, in which such a horse is the surprise winner at the races.


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