Just A Minute! Part 2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Decameron

Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron" is a collection of 100 tales told by seven women and three men in a country villa outside Florence, where they've gone to escape the Black Death. "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer is a similar collection, but the tellers of those stories are participating in a religious pilgrimage, not fleeing disease. "1001 Nights", also called "Tales of the Arabian Nights", are folk-stories collected together to be told by Scheherezade to her husband the Sultan Sdhahriar, and include the tales of such famous characters as Ali Baba and Aladdin. Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" tells the tale of the poet's journey through the afterlife, both Heaven and Hell, in search of his lost love Beatrice.

Answer: Forrest Gump

Groom's novel "Forrest Gump" is a lot different from the movie which was made from it, somewhat more dark and cynical in tone. Still, an interesting read if you ever wondered what Forrest would be like as an astronaut (in the book, it's one of the things he does which got omitted from the movie).

Answer: Cujo

That is, of course, just the bare outline of the book, which is actually one of my fave King stories. Movie wasn't bad either!

Answer: All of these

Not too hard, this one (I hope!). James Michener passed away in 1997, at the age of 90, having produced stunning works of historical fiction dealing with everything from Judaism (in "The Source") to the entire histories of nations and areas (in books like those named above). Michener also wrote copious amounts of quality journalism, non-historical fiction, and non-fiction.

Not bad for a man whose professional writing career didn't start until he was 40 years of age.

Answer: The Handmaid's Tale

Margaret Atwood's scary novel "The Handmaid's Tale" was made into a movie in 1990 starring Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway and Natasha Richardson. The other titles mentioned above are also by Atwood, a prize-winning Canadian writer.

Answer: Rules of Prey

John Sandford's "Prey" series is just about my all-time fave series! A must-read for anyone who enjoys thrill-a-minute crime mysteries. The series began in 1989 with "Rules of Prey" and now numbers, I believe, fifteen books. Read them!

Answer: All of these

James Joyce with "Ulysses", Thomas Pynchon with "Gravity's Rainbow" and William Faulkner with "The Sound and the Fury" produced books that are considered to be important works of literature, but linear plots are definitely not a feature!

Answer: Through the Looking Glass

If you guessed "Alice in Wonderland", tough luck! Close, but as they say, no cigar. "Through the Looking Glass" is the sequel to Lewis Carroll's famous story written for his young friend Alice Liddell. Carroll's "meaning" has been debated ever since. Was he lampooning the Victorian society around him under the guise of a simple story? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, a wonderful tale he wove.

Answer: The Aeneid

Virgil's "Aeneid" tells the mythological story of the founding of Rome, and was written during the reign of the Emperor Augustus primarily to glorify the city and strengthen the "divine" basis of the Roman Empire. The earlier "Odyssey" and "Iliad" by the Greek poet Homer tell parts of the same story - the Trojan War between Troy and the Greek states - but from the Greek point of view.

They deal not with the Trojan/Roman hero Aeneas but the Greek Odysseus, and his attempt to get home to his wife while dodging various god-sent obstacles. Just like Aeneas, he finally gets where he wants to, but it's a helluva ride! The Greek dramatist Aeschylus penned "The Seven Against Thebes", another mythological story telling of an ill-fated expedition against the city of Thebes by seven hostile chieftains.

Answer: The Winter of Our Discontent

John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature the year after his novel "The Winter of Our Discontent" was published in 1961. It's a difficult book to read, but ultimately, as with all of Steinbeck's work, rewarding and thought-provoking.