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Are You Even Literary? Fill in the Blank Book Titles

Can you fill the blanks in these famous book titles?
Warning: this will not be easy unless you are very well read.
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: November 27, 2019
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First submittedNovember 27, 2019
Times taken29,162
Average score40.0%
Rating4.23
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Author
First published
Book
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1879
The Brothers Karamazov
Emily Brontë
1847
Wuthering Heights
Harriet Beecher Stowe
1852
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Gabriel García Márquez
1967
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gustave Flaubert
1856
Madame Bovary
Voltaire
1759
Candide, ou l'Optimisme
William Makepeace Thackeray
1847
Vanity Fair
Unknown
2100 B.C.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
William Styron
1979
Sophie's Choice
John Kennedy Toole
1980
A Confederacy of Dunces
Thomas Mann
1912
Death in Venice
Milan Kundera
1984
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
D. H. Lawrence
1928
Lady Chatterley's Lover
H. G. Wells
1896
The Island of Doctor Moreau
Edith Wharton
1905
The House of Mirth
Norman Mailer
1948
The Naked and the Dead
Laurence Sterne
1762
The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Kingsley Amis
1954
Lucky Jim
Junot Díaz
2007
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Jonathan Safran Foer
2005
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Marcel Proust
1913–1927
(series)
In Search of Lost Time
W. Somerset Maugham
1915
Of Human Bondage
Raymond Chandler
1939
The Big Sleep
Thomas Pynchon
1973
Gravity's Rainbow
Amy Tan
1989
The Joy Luck Club
Virginia Woolf
1927
To the Lighthouse
David Mitchell
2004
Cloud Atlas
Mikhail Bulgakov
1967
The Master and Margarita
David Foster Wallace
1996
Infinite Jest
Pearl S. Buck
1931
The Good Earth
+5
Level 89
Nov 27, 2019
The Shakespearean Remembrance Of Things Past still sounds far better to the ears. In Search Of Lost Time sounds like H.G. Wells or a Fabio-adorned romance novel.
+3
Level 21
May 20, 2022
Well Shakespeare really wrote this title, whereas Proust is translated.............
+3
Level 83
Dec 9, 2022
But that's what 'A la recherche du temps perdu' literally translates to
+2
Level 65
Nov 12, 2023
To be fair, it seems "In Search of Lost Time" is a relatively recent change from "Remembrance of Things Past". There are adaptations that use the old translation after the publisher switched to the new translation. I suppose this is a ~difficult~ quiz but it still seems like an odd choice.
+8
Level 68
Nov 27, 2019
I got 3, may need to read more
+7
Level 72
Nov 28, 2019
I got 17 and from those I missed I only knew one more. I enjoyed the inclusion of non-English authors (language, not nationality) and especially the presence of Bulgakov. His book is a masterpiece (no pun intended).
+7
Level 82
Nov 28, 2019
I'm glad there's some love for Bulgakov. One of my favourite books, sad to see so few guessing it.
+2
Level 72
Feb 13, 2020
While we're talking about translations, faithful or otherwise, the first published translation of M&M in English turned "dentist" into "Dante scholar." You definitely don't want one of those pulling your teeth.
+2
Level 66
Feb 13, 2020
An incredible book. I also think 'The Heart of a Dog' is one of the best books I've ever read.
+2
Level 75
Feb 13, 2020
I agree about Bulgakov, but he's still one of the least known here. A shame.
+6
Level 60
Nov 28, 2019
only knew part, mostly non american ones, and then in original language or translation into a non english one....
+4
Level 82
Feb 13, 2020
Maybe you should stop excluding a whole continent from your reading selections?
+3
Level 60
Feb 13, 2020
Two actually.
+1
Level 76
Nov 22, 2023
Depends on who you ask. There's no scientific of "continent," only various cultural and conventional ones.
+1
Level 21
May 20, 2022
I looked for one translation on Google. I had tried some synonyms but couldn't get it!
+6
Level 71
Nov 28, 2019
Am I the only one that tried 'The Big Lebowski'.......
+1
Level 78
Dec 1, 2019
Nope !
+1
Level 79
Jul 15, 2021
No you weren't
+2
Level 65
May 23, 2022
Tried that and Chill
+1
Level 54
Nov 14, 2023
Such a good movie.
+4
Level 76
Nov 30, 2019
The only titles for the Voltaire here I've seen/read is ______ without the end part. Should've guessed, though.
+3
Level 73
Dec 4, 2019
Favorite authors? Mine are Edith Wharton and Henry James.
+3
Level 69
Dec 7, 2019
Call me old fashioned, but Dickens.
+5
Level 78
Feb 13, 2020
Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Kazuo Ishiguro, Stefan Zweig, Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Heinrich von Kleist.
+2
Level 73
Feb 13, 2020
Interesting list. The Magic Mountain is a meisterstuck; I need to read more Mann; someday when I retire, I hope to do more reading than I currently do.
+1
Level 54
Nov 14, 2023
The Magic Mountain is by far my favourite book, even though it was slow.
+3
Level 75
Feb 13, 2020
Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy.
+1
Level 78
Feb 14, 2020
I only drudged through Sense and Sensibility, but found both Pride and Prejudice and The History of England quite funny.
+1
Level 81
Jan 9, 2020
I am decidedly not literary. 10/30. Literature and art would kill me on Jeopardy.
+1
Level 66
Feb 13, 2020
Same I have hardly read any of the classics (I read though, just not famous books, I think animal farm is the only one I can think of ow and the clockwork orange but no pride and prejudice etc) but I knew 12 though missed a couple. I ve read sophie's choice and I believe unbearable lightness of being (the translation).
+5
Level 82
Feb 13, 2020
Started out pretty easy; got more challenging half way through.
+4
Level 70
Feb 13, 2020
My first ever 100%! Yay!
+6
Level 79
Feb 13, 2020
You got 100% the first time on this quiz? You're weird.
+2
Level 61
Feb 13, 2020
Apparently, I am not very literary. Started strong, finished weak.
+2
Level 82
Feb 13, 2020
I didn't think I was especially literary (I've only read like a third of these), but I found this quiz really easy. Apparently I've been paying more attention than most, even though I haven't actually been reading that much!
+1
Level 77
Oct 16, 2020
oof...this was tough.
+1
Level 83
Jan 19, 2021
Got 21 and I have only read one of these books ( Vanity Fair ) and seen movies of about five or six . You don't have to have read a book to have heard of it.
+1
Level 56
Apr 5, 2022
I guess I'm not.
+3
Level 71
May 20, 2022
Oscar Wao is so low? It's a book I'd definitely recommend. I know it stands out a bit on a list filled with classics, but it's still quite witty and rather interesting.
+1
Level 56
May 21, 2022
I needed a guide to understand a lot of the slang of the Dominican Republic and many of the references. Well worth the time and effort.

http://www.annotated-oscar-wao.com/chapter1.html

+2
Level 72
May 20, 2022
I kept thinking of Proust's lesser known work, "In Search of Lost Luggage."
+1
Level 54
May 20, 2022
Not that hard, I read about half of these books and the rest were pretty popular.

But I will give it to you -- it's a decent literary cross-section and many of these books are cannon -- anyone with traditional liberal arts college education should have read.

+4
Level 58
May 20, 2022
When I checked the stats I discovered that I had taken this quiz before and that I had got one fewer today than I did 2 years ago. If present trends continue I will eventually know nothing at all.
+1
Level 62
May 21, 2022
Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is one of my favorite literary characters of all time.
+1
Level 58
Sep 6, 2022
I just couldn't figure out in which kind of structure Uncle Tom lived...

The german title, "Onkel Tom's Hütte" brought me to hut, then I tried shack, shed, barrack and den, but cabin didn't come to my mind...

+1
Level 22
Nov 13, 2023
Are you serious? Speaking so much english yourself, here?

Uncle Tom's Blitzkrieg.

Pretty much the same thing. Uncle Tom was heroic in that story, but his name has become a huge insult.

+2
Level 66
Aug 16, 2023
The first time I took this, some years ago, I named 25. Today I only got 20....must be losing it!

Have only read 15 of these, but a few of those I've read more than once. Vanity Fair is just fun! To the Lighthouse was required in one of my classes for Masters at SMU (Dallas)...it's weird, but so was the unhappy author. Tristram Shandy was required in another class about comic literature. (I confess I didn't quite get it!)

Love the Bulgakov and Amis.

Thanks for an interesting assortment............

+1
Level 67
Sep 29, 2023
Just got the 1st 9 and Joy Luck Club. Tough
+2
Level 75
Oct 28, 2023
I was certain that one of the answers was "The Big Gatsby", lesser known prequel to "The Great Gatsby"...
+1
Level 64
Nov 12, 2023
What about "The Large Gatsby"?
+1
Level 44
Nov 12, 2023
Name 10 books
+1
Level 22
Nov 13, 2023
I'm illiterate, I guess! Shame, shame.
+1
Level 22
Nov 13, 2023
Great quiz, though. When I start reading again, as I used to a million years ago, there are some legit suggestions here.

I would love to read a Virginia Woolf. Someone who ended their life so tragically.