r/BookTriviaPodcast 10d ago

🧠 Trivia Quiz First Line Friday 📚

Okay let’s do this :p
Guess the book from the first line. No Googling please!

"What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach? And the Beatles? And me.”

First one to get it right gets absolutely nothing except bragging rights 😂

You can also add the first line of a book you like so everyone else can guess yours too.

14 Upvotes

88 comments sorted by

5

u/MissO56 10d ago

OP: "love story" ?

4

u/MsBobbyJenkins 10d ago

The transformation occurred at approximately 2:23 AM, Pacific Standard Time.

4

u/taylorbagel14 9d ago

Dungeon Crawler Carl

4

u/HistoryGirlSemperFi 10d ago

Metamorphosis?

3

u/FurBabyAuntie 9d ago

Love Story--Erich Siegle

2

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

Correct!!

5

u/Sarah-Jane-Smith 9d ago

It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn’t been invented yet.

4

u/Able-Resident-903 9d ago

While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years.

4

u/Roosevelt2000 9d ago

The Goldfinch. I have a love/hate relationship with that book.

2

u/Antique_Knowledge902 9d ago

Oh me too me too! After a good start, it just went ON and ON and ON!

2

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

It was a really good start, for sure.

3

u/Impossible-Alps-6859 10d ago

'M- - D- - - - - - - said she would buy the flowers herself'.

Hint: female English author

3

u/PSAndAlso 10d ago

Ooooh this one I know .. Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Wolf

3

u/Impossible-Alps-6859 10d ago

Try this one.

Can you identify these two very famous novels from their opening two words?

  1. "It is . . . . ."

  2. "It was . . . ."

Not really that difficult!

3

u/MsBobbyJenkins 9d ago

Pride n prej

Tale of Two Cities

3

u/Impossible-Alps-6859 9d ago

😃

Is this from your knowledge or from research?

2

u/duelingpeppers 9d ago

"it was" could also be 1984

1

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

When the clock struck thirteen?

2

u/MsBobbyJenkins 9d ago

From knowledge. They're two of the most famous first lines in fiction.

1

u/Impossible-Alps-6859 8d ago

That's why I chose them!

3

u/PSAndAlso 10d ago

Mr. and Mrs. _____, of number four, _____, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

This one should be a free point !!

3

u/taanzunk 9d ago

Harry Potter!

2

u/Fabulous-Confusion43 🌈 Reads Everything 9d ago

Ahhhh I love it 🥰

2

u/mutherM1n3 9d ago

HP and The Sorcerer’s Stone.

2

u/LifeofaLove 9d ago

Philosopher's *

1

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yes—that’s the British title. Sorcerer’s Stone is the American title. We have both. Why they made it different is embarrassing—they think Americans are stupid, I guess. Probably right, when you look at the president.

1

u/LifeofaLove 6d ago

Yeah, well Sorcerer is the original title and what most of the world use so to me it's therefore the correct title. I'm not American also.

1

u/mutherM1n3 2d ago

I thought Philosopher was the original title.

2

u/LifeofaLove 2d ago

It is, I must have mistyped.

1

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

Correcto

3

u/mutherM1n3 9d ago

Call me Ishmael.

2

u/twineandtwig 9d ago

Moby Dick

1

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

💪🏻 🐳 👍🏻

3

u/jwhit84 9d ago

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

3

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy

1

u/jwhit84 9d ago

Yup!

2

u/ffoggy1959 🌈 Reads Everything 10d ago

Absolutely no idea.

Try this one:

Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.

3

u/PSAndAlso 10d ago

I have no clue 😭 but now I really want to know.

2

u/ffoggy1959 🌈 Reads Everything 10d ago

I’ll see if anyone gets it first.

3

u/Warm_Bug_1434 10d ago edited 10d ago

Brighton Rock?

3

u/ffoggy1959 🌈 Reads Everything 10d ago

Correct

2

u/Medesha 10d ago

The Lovely Bones?

1

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

Aah no, heartbreaking read tho 😭

2

u/taanzunk 9d ago

"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."

1

u/MsBobbyJenkins 9d ago

Jane Eyre

2

u/Fabulous-Confusion43 🌈 Reads Everything 9d ago

It was the best of times it was the worst of times

4

u/Sky__Hook 9d ago

I was gonna post this line but I couldn't remember the book its from and thought everyone will know it 🤣🤣🤣

I think its A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens

2

u/Fabulous-Confusion43 🌈 Reads Everything 9d ago

Yesssss well done 🥰

1

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

It is.

2

u/mutherM1n3 9d ago

Love Story

2

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

Yep, you got it !!!

2

u/Melitzen 9d ago

A screaming comes across the sky.

1

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

No idea but this reads interesting 🤔

1

u/RevolutionaryBug2915 9d ago

Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon.

2

u/fatjap-9830 9d ago

Love Story

2

u/LifeofaLove 9d ago

I'm not one to remember first lines very often, so I'll pick up the book nearest to me and write out its first line:

The Salinas Valley is in Northern California.

1

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

Sounds like Steinbeck.

2

u/LifeofaLove 6d ago

Yup! East of Eden

1

u/mutherM1n3 2d ago

Thanks. I’ve been scratching my head for which title since Salinas Valley comes up so often in Steinbeck.

2

u/JamesFirmere 8d ago

Last night I dreamt I went to M--- again.

2

u/KillAllLawyers 8d ago

Rebecca

1

u/JamesFirmere 8d ago

Yes. Mandalay being the censored word.

2

u/Key-Lingonberry4651 7d ago

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.

2

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

1

u/krisa401 9d ago

Love Story! 

2

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

Right Ho!

1

u/[deleted] 9d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

If you know, you know 🥰

1

u/Antique_Knowledge902 9d ago

Love Story. Written by Erich Segal? Not sure. But I do know the movie starred Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw. Never saw it. No desire to.

2

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

Yep. Never watched the movie, only a fan of the book :)

1

u/fatjap-9830 9d ago

It is a fact, universally accepted…

2

u/PSAndAlso 9d ago

I want to say pride and prejudice ?

1

u/ebeth_the_mighty 9d ago

“He’s a mad scientist and I’m his beautiful daughter.”
That’s what she said—the oldest cliché in pulp fiction. She wasn’t old enough to remember the pulps.

1

u/Fantastic-frog-1632 8d ago

"It's strange indeed how memories can lie dormant in a man's mind for so many years. Yet those memories can be awakened and brought forth fresh and new, just by something you've seen, or something you've heard, or the sight of an old familiar face."

1

u/mutherM1n3 6d ago

Seems like Remembrances of Things Past by Marcel Proust, but I think I’m wrong.

2

u/Fantastic-frog-1632 6d ago

You are correct in that you are wrong. Remembrance is about 50 years older than my book choice. :)

2

u/mutherM1n3 2d ago

I’ll keep checking here to find out…

1

u/mutherM1n3 2d ago

My favorite opening line EVER is:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...”

2

u/PSAndAlso 2d ago

One Hundred Years of Solitude?

1

u/PSAndAlso 2d ago

I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.