Dear Friends,
My son Truman, a sophomore at Ithaca College, is studying creative writing and filmmaking, but he has read as many books as any English major or comparative literature major, or so it seems to me.
To prove my point, I will share here a list that he recently sent me, titled “Books I’ve Read.” My wife Kate and I wanted to get him a literary book he hadn’t read for his birthday, but we were having trouble finding gaps in his literary reading.
The Brothers Karamazov
King Lear
The Grapes of Wrath
Crime and Punishment
Hamlet
Blood Meridian
Pride and Prejudice
In Cold Blood
The Color Purple
East of Eden
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Beloved
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Notes from the Underground
No Country For Old Men
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The Poisonwood Bible
Sula
As I Lay Dying
The Joy Luck Club
The Old Man and the Sea
Giovanni’s Room
Macbeth
Death of a Salesman
Jane Eyre
Persuasion
The Bell Jar
Walden
To Kill a Mockingbird
All the Pretty Horses
Life of Pi
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Anna Karenina
Catch-22
If Beale Street Could Talk
Our Town
A Streetcar Named Desire
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Road
The Sound and the Fury
Waiting for Godot
Fahrenheit 451
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Metamorphosis
The Handmaid’s Tale
Wuthering Heights
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The Last Picture Show
The Shining
Doctor Zhivago
Cat’s Cradle
Fences
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Frankenstein
Richard III
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Misery
To the Lighthouse
Julius Caesar
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
Dubliners
Emma
Invisible Man
Go Tell It on the Mountain
The Trial
Black Boy
The Piano Lesson
Lord of the Flies
Of Mice and Men
Brave New World
A Farewell to Arms
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Awakening
The Stranger
The Color of Water
The Importance of Being Earnest
Animal Farm
Little Women
On the Road
Great Expectations
Sense and Sensibility
The Year of Magical Thinking
The Catcher in the Rye
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Death on the Nile
The Great Gatsby
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Cherry Orchard
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Maltese Falcon
The Iceman Cometh
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Dracula
Oliver Twist
The Tempest
There There
Things Fall Apart
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Lady Windermere’s Fan
Salomé
Heart of Darkness
The Giver
Dune
Candide
The Jungle Book
Hatchet
The Hobbit
The Call of the Wild
A Christmas Carol
A Clockwork Orange
The Lord of the Rings
The Long Walk to Water
Into the Wild
Lolita
Moby Dick
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Comedy of Errors
Ender’s Game
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
The Illustrated Man
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Crucible
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Treasure Island
At the Mountains of Madness
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Angry Black White Boy
The Pearl
He may have added several books to this list since sending it to us last week. For the record, I have assigned many books for my university students to read over the years, but I did not assign Truman any of these.
I am reminded of a scene in that 1996 Danny DeVito film Matilda in which Matilda tells her teacher Miss Honey which loads of books she’s read “just this past week.”
Here’s the list Matilda gives:
• Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens)
• Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)
• Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë)
• Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)
• Moby-Dick (Herman Melville)
• The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
• The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
We later learn that Matilda is six and a half years old. I’m glad that Truman wasn’t taking on all those tomes at that age. He would have had no time to play!
Happy birthday on Friday, September 26th, Truman! We sent you a book that’s not on your list!
It rained today and UC Davis has restarted, so summer is officially over! I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. Festivity will abound! Today’s pub quiz is a muscular 807 words, if we count the answers. The answers always count
In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: faraway countries, NFL football, robots, flowers, scenic drives, titles that start with the letter I and the letter M, glasses, legacy shows, possibilities, metals, demands for music, German culture, sacks, the Indian subcontinent, Athens, foreign sports teams, Berkeley, wonders, murals, rivers, TikTok musicians, coming of age dramas, beers, locations of sustained belief, lakes, popular late-night hosts, religious traditions, deforestation results, cousins, planes, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.
For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.
Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion. My new paid Substack Subscriber is Anne Da Vigo. Check out her mysteries! Thanks to new subscriber Carol Lynn Stevenson Grellas.
Best,
Dr. Andy
P.S. Three questions from last week:
- Mottos and Slogans. Founded in 1989, what company uses the slogan “Hand-crafted in Davis, California”?
- Internet Culture. Roku recently announced its first TV projector. What is the size of its biggest screen: 15 inches, 150 inches, or 1,500 inches?
- Newspaper Headlines. Today the Fed cut rates for the first time this year. By what percentage was its benchmark interest rate cut?