June 2009 - Posts - Bookends

June 2009 - Posts

Friday evening honour roll - 12

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Possibly out of mourning for Michael Jackson, the book quiz did not have its usual number of participants. One gentleman did manage to make it onto the honour roll, though. 1. In what way did A contribute to B's existence? A B A: Herman Hesse (A) wrote a book called Steppenwolfe , from which the band Steppenwolfe (B) got its name 2. Author X once...

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Thursday afternoon books quiz - 12

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Welcome back, book fiends. This week, there's no theme, just five straightforward -- well, relatively straightforward -- questions. 1. In what way did A contribute to B's existence? A B 2. Author X once recalled that the family often went to a town near Alibaug for weekend retreats, and this town was where Author Y, X's mother, set her most...

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Friday evening honour roll - 11

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Four entries into the honour roll today, but only one of them cracked the theme. Siddarth Raman offered up the tenuous theme of Egypt, which was imaginatively researched, but Siddarth, I'm afraid it was just a little too tenuous. The answers: 1. This is a man named Henrik Klausen, portraying a famous Henrik Ibsen character. Name the character. A...

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Thursday afternoon books quiz - 11

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
A certain gentleman pointed out to me, last Friday , that my theme was far too obvious and the questions too easy. (This was the person who thought the theme should have been schizophrenia.) He proceeded, without mincing any words, to state that the books quiz was turning out to be a watered-down affair and not suited to "real" quizzers. It...

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Off-the-cuff links: Book, audiobook, Kindle, or iPhone?

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Via Arts & Letters Daily , a great essay on a four-way experiment in reading Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit . There's one passage that struck me in particular, about the irreplaceable personal nostalgia and romance of the book: I started with the paperback, reading in bed. "Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun. ..."...

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Write your own Tom Swifty

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Just over a week ago, on his New York Times blog , Ben Schott kicked off a Tom Swifty competition that has attracted, thus far, a whopping 2,685 comments. Tom Swifties, as Schott explains, are "are curious puns that monkey with the description of reported speech for comic effect." (The name comes from the sort of "linguistic frippery"...

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Friday evening honour roll - 10

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
An absolutely record number of people on our honour roll today, and quite a few of you pointed out that this was an easier quiz, relatively speaking. Duly noted. The next quiz shall be solely on the more obscure works of Friedrich Schiller. <<Evil laugh rings out around the cubicle.>> 1. Complete the quote: "Shoot all the blue jays...

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Thursday afternoon books quiz - 10

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
The Thursday afternoon books quiz turns 10 today -- well, 10 weeks old, anyway. Five questions this week, as well as a theme to guess at: What links all these books? 1. Complete the quote: "Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin __ ____ __ ________." 2. This novel was published in 1847 under the...

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Off-the-cuff links: The best shortest story ever

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Via the excellent blog of Mint Lounge's book critic, Chandrahas Choudhry: In an essay titled "How Few Words Can The Shortest Story Have," Amihud Gilead begins, naturally enough, with the most famous of the shortest stories, written by Ernest Hemingway. In a contest or a fit of inspiration (depending on which version you believe), Hemingway...

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Rudyard Kipling's "If," feat. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
On YouTube, a little package of goosebumps : Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal take turns reading Rudyard Kipling's poem If . It isn't immediately clear who commissioned and made this wonderful video, but I suspect it is a promotion for Wimbledon. Over the player's entrance to Centre Court at Wimbledon, two lines of this poem are inscribed...

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Friday evening honour roll - 9

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
A batch of tough-ish questions, I thought, so I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of entrants into the honour roll as well as a a few more entries who were just one or two questions away from an all-correct list of answers. 1. Which Nobel laureate was named after a Chandela king, who was said to have fought bravely and fiercely against Muslim...

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Thursday afternoon books quiz - 9

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Thursday afternoon quizzing mania returns, at a slightly earlier time than usual. No theme to the questions this time, but do write in to tell me what genres you'd like to see quizzes on -- graphic novels, the Hardy Boys, Assamese literature, anything at all. 1. Which Nobel laureate was named after a Chandela king, who was said to have fought bravely...

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Revisiting the Archie comics

Posted by Samanth Subramanian at 
Towards the end of last week, I read this earthshaking piece of news : That after 67 years, Archie Andrews would be finally making his damn mind up and getting married to Veronica Lodge. I had last read an Archie comic around 1989, roughly the time when, for two years, I read nothing but Archie comics . I raided neighbourhood lending libraries for them...

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