A handy list of pub quiz questions based around the theme: stories. Answers are below.

Questions:

1. How many books are in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ‘trilogy’, and how many can you name?
2. What do J K Rowling’s first two initials stand for?
3. First lines: book and author
   1. ‘Call me Ishmael.’
   2. ‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.’
   3. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.’
   4. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’
   5. ‘I am an invisible man.’
4. How many plays did Shakespeare write, according to popular consensus, and into what 3 categories are they generally divided?
5. What are the names of King Lear’s 3 daughters?
6. Who invented the phrase ‘catch-22’, and what book popularised it?
7. Describe briefly the ‘world’ of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books
8. Which famous horror fiction author also used to write under the pseudonym ‘Richard Bachman’, and can you name any of the books published under that name?
9. In the science fiction series Dune, what is everyone fighting over, and on what planet?
10. Who won the nobel prize for literature, somewhat controversially, in 2016?

Answers:

1. 6 novels
   1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
   2. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
   3. Life, the Universe and Everything
   4. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
   5. Mostly Harmless
   6. And Another Thing…
2. Joanne Kathleen
3. First lines:
   1. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
   2. 1984, George Orwell
   3. Don Quixote, Cervantes
   4. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
   5. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
4. 38 (or 39, or 40); comedy/history/tragedy
5. Goneril, Cordelia and Regan
6. Joseph Heller; Catch-22
7. A flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle
8. Stephen King; any of Rage (1977), The Long Walk (1979), Roadwork (1981), The Running Man (1982), Thinner (1984), The Regulators (1996), and Blaze (2007)
9. Spice; Arrakis
10. Bob Dylan