Beneath Your Beautiful Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jack London

"To Build a Fire" (1902,1908) by Jack London is a startling and gorgeous short story set, like many of London's tales, in the Yukon wilderness. The reader feels foreboding, but the man does not, as we follow him off the Yukon Trail into the brutal cold. Jack London spent only months in the Klondike, but said that there, "I found myself".

"As he turned to go, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air..."

Answer: Prodigal Summer

"Prodigal Summer" (2000) is the fifth novel of Barbara Kingsolver, and a national bestseller. A Forest Ranger protects and observes the great woods, and unwillingly falls in love. Barbara's "The Poisonwood Bible" was a worldwide best seller, and she and her husband often team-write about science and nature.

"She needed to listen to this: prodigal summer, the season of extravagant procreation. It could wear out everything in its path with its passionate excesses, but nothing alive with wings or a heart or a seed curled into itself in the ground could resist welcoming it back..."

Answer: An odyssey

Jamake Highwater wrote "Anpao: An American Indian Odyssey" in 1977. It won the prestigious Newbery Honor Book award for juvenile literature. Anpao sets out on a personal quest, an odyssey, both lovely and strange. Highwater wrote some 30 works, but there was major controversy about his claimed heritage and personal history.

"A very beautiful girl lived in the village. When a young man looked upon her the world would stop. Music would beat in his blood..." But Ko-ko-mik-e-is has no want of a husband, so Anpao sets out on a journey, to become a wise and complete man, and win her love.

Answer: Alexandria Quartet

Lawrence Durrell wrote the exquisite "Alexandria Quartet" in 1957-1960, adding the fourth book six years later. The Quartet is four perspectives on events in Alexandris, Egypt, and on art, sex and love, before and during WWII, as seen by "Justine", "Balthazar", "Mountolive" and "Clea". The novel is a Modern Library "100 Best English-language Novels of the 20th Century" work. Durrell died in 1990.

"Landscape-tones: brown to bronze, steep skyline, low cloud, pearl ground with shadowed oyster and violet reflections. The lion-dust of desert: prophets' tombs turned to zinc and copper at sunset on the ancient lake..."

Answer: Great Expectations

"Great Expectations" (1861) by Charles Dickens is among his 15 novels described as most finely crafted. Dickens called it his "best work". It follows the life of a young orphan boy, Pip, forever changed by a chance meeting with a convict.

"...somebody in the boat growled as if to dogs, "Give way, you!" which was the signal for the dip of the oars. By the light of the torches, we saw the black Hulk lying out a little way from the mud of the shore, like a wicked Noah's ark. Cribbed and barred and moored by massive rusty chains, the prison-ship seemed in my young eyes to be ironed like the prisoners. We saw the boat go alongside, and we saw him taken up the side and disappear. Then, the ends of the torches were flung hissing into the water, and went out, as if it were all over with him".

Answer: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-2014) wrote "One Hundred Years of Solitude" (published 1967 in Spanish) in just 9 months. In 1982 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, given to those who "further the knowledge of man and his condition". This story details seven generations of the Buendia family in Colombia, unable to escape their pasts, both real and ghostly or magic.

"From the first day of his rule Arcadio revealed his predilection for decrees. He would read as many as four a day in order to decree and institute everything that came into his head..."

Answer: The Fox

"The Fox" (1922) is an arresting short story by David Herbert Lawrence. A fox eludes two people living on a farm, as a young man entrances and preys upon one of them. While Lawrence is most famous for "Lady Chatterley's Lover", he wrote deeply moving and delicate poetry and short stories, as well.

"Something was missing. Instead of her soul swaying with new life, it seemed to droop, to bleed, as if it were wounded. She would sit for a long time with her hand in his, looking away at the sea..."

"He was sitting on a log in a dark corner with the gun across his knees....and then--a shadow. A sliding shadow in the gateway. He gathered all his vision into a concentrated spark, and saw the shadow of the fox, the fox creeping on his belly like a snake. The boy smiled to himself..."

Answer: Cry, the Beloved Country

Alan Paton wrote the moving and poetic "Cry the Beloved Country" in 1948, an immediate bestseller. In this novel, a simple Zulu pastor of South Africa struggles with love, racism and tragedy when his burglar son kills a Caucasian human rights activist.

"...Dubula and Tomlinson listen to it, with contempt, and with envy. For here is a voice to move thousands, with no brain behind it to tell it what to say, with no courage to say it if it knew. The policemen hear it, and one says to the other, this man is dangerous. And the other says, it is not my job to think about such things..."

Answer: The Philosopher's Stone

J.K. Rowling wrote "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (retitled "...the Sorcerer's Stone" in some countries), in 1997, the first of a phenomenon and series. An orphan, Harry lives with cruel relatives until one strange day an owl arrives with a message. Soon Harry boards the Hogwarts Express to attend a school for wizards. Little does he know who he really is, and the dangers ahead.

"Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives...Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake: Mr. H. Potter. The Cupboard under the Stairs. 4 Privet Drive..."

Answer: The Machine Stops

British Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) wrote "A Passage to India" (1924), a Modern Library "100 Great Works of Literature". "The Machine Stops" is a science fiction short story describing technologies very similar to instant messaging, Skype and the Internet. All humans are connected directly to "the machine", which allows them to perfectly control their lives, but they live underground, and have given up basic freedoms. Then, the machine stops. Incredibly, he wrote this in 1909:

"But it was fully fifteen seconds before the round plate that she held in her hands began to glow...and presently she could see the image of her son, who lived on the other side of the earth, and he could see her..."

"...she made the room dark and slept. Above her, beneath her, and around her, the Machine hummed eternally; she did not notice the noise, for she had been born with it in her ears. The earth, carrying her, hummed as it sped through silence, turning her now to the invisible sun, now to the invisible stars. She awoke and made the room light".