First Lines Quiz #2 — Music: And the Correct Answers Are...

1. Genesis, "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight"

2. Muse, "Supermassive Black Hole"

3. Queen, "Another One Bites the Dust"

4. Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1"

5. Porcupine Tree, "Fear of a Blank Planet"

6. David Bowie, "Ashes to Ashes"

7. Marillion, "Script for a Jester's Tear"

8. Van der Graaf Generator, "La Rossa"

9. Judas Priest, "Dissident Aggressor"

10. Sting, "Russians"

Not that many participants this time around and seeing as how both of them clocked in one correct answer each, I think they both deserve honorary mentions: lazy and Tom.

First Lines Quiz #2 — Music

Back in August, I did a First Lines Quiz inspired by my friend Lazy over at Lazy's Library. Then (as in Lazy's inspirational case) the challenge was to recognise from which book (by which author) the first lines in question were taken.

This time, however, I decided to try something slightly different, since I figured the quiz would work just as well with music. So, from which songs (by which artists/bands) are the following first lines taken?

1. "Can you tell me where my country lies?"

2. Oo baby don't you know I suffer

3. Steve walks warily down the street

4. Daddy's flown across the ocean

5. Sunlight coming through the haze

6. Do you remember a guy that's been

7. So here I am once more in the playground of the broken hearts

8. Lacking sleep and food and vision here I am again, encamped upon your floor

9. Grand canyons of space and time universal

10. In Europe and America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria

I hope you'll enjoy the challenge and good luck!

First Lines Quiz: And the Correct Answers Are...

1. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.

2. Stephen King, The Gunslinger.

3. Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart.

4. Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter (Preface).

5. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.

6. Ian Fleming, Casino Royale.

7. H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness.

8. Richard Matheson, I Am Legend.

9. William Gibson, Neuromancer.

10. G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday.

Honorary mentions go to...

Ed who (albeit without specifying which quote) wrote:
"The only one I recognized right off the bat is I am Legend."
Which I guess qualifies for a sort of point.

lazy who wrote:
"Number two is so obvious (and excellent) I don't really even want to answer. And of course it has that bonus feature that would be a spoiler to anyone who hasn't read... all of it.
Four should be Dunsany, is my guess, The King of Elfland's Daughter?
Five sounds familiar... looked it up and was right! Conrad, Heart of Darkness."
Which if taking the first "unnamed" named, together with the "looked it up" gives a total of at least two points any which way one looks at it.

And finally, Ikeaboy who wrote:
"1- midnight's children
6 - casino royale
8- i am legend (the name gave it away)
9- neuromancer
didn't include authors's names, because that's just too obvious. so there."
Which, even with subtraction for failure to cite author names, does give us a winner of the quiz with four correctly cited titles.

So I give you the Quiz Master: IKEABOY!


Hope you all enjoyed the guessing. May do another one at some point in the future.

First Lines Quiz

My friend Lazy over at Lazy's library (in Swedish) recently re-arranged her bookshelf applying the somewhat maddening sorting system of placing the books in alphabetical order based on the first sentence of each book (and she does have quite a few books, I hasten to add). As a side effect of this project, Lazy made a number of quiz like blog posts, where the idea was to guess the authors responsible for a number of first lines and which books they were from.

Now, while the whole re-arranging bookshelf according to a somewhat maddening sorting system is not a thing I would ever get into my own head to try, I have to say that the first lines quiz does strike a certain chord with me. And therefore I have decided to hold a little first lines quiz on my own over here.

There are ten quoted first lines below. Answers require an author and a book title for each quote (and you do not have to provide answers to all ten quotes if you cannot). There are no prizes given except honour, and the correct answers will be posted separately in a week or so.

Anyway... here goes:

1. I was born in the city of Bombay . . . once upon a time.

2. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

3. So intent was Frank upon solving the puzzle of Lemarchand's box that he didn't hear the great bell begin to ring.

4. I hope that no suggestion of any strange land that may be conveyed by the title will scare readers away from this book; for though some chapters do indeed tell of Elfland, in the greater part of them there is no more to be shown than the face of the fields we know, and ordinary English woods and a common village and valley, a good twenty or twenty-five miles from the border of Elfland.

5. The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.

6. The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

7. I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.

8. On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back.

9. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

10. The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset.

Good luck!