Can you identify a classic novel...

[Nick Armstrong]

... from a single paragraph on its 69th page?

Try the quiz:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/may/30/the-page-69-quiz-can-you-identify-the-classic-book-from-a-single-paragraph?CMP=share_btn_fb

What's your score?

I got eight

[EdgeleyRob]

5

[Barbirollians]

9

[french frank]

I got 7 right, out of which I had only actually read one; the rest were guesses, most of them stabs in the dark. Three and a half I got wrong even though I'd read the novel (in one case only half before I gave it up, bored). I won't mention any names, of course .

[Richard Barrett]

I got eight

So did I, some by chance. I guess my idea of a "classic novel" isn't quite the same as the compiler's. It includes almost nothing from the 19th century for example.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

11 - but I knew only five; two others were wild guesses and four were worked out from a sense of the writer's style. And I know my Terry Pratchett better than I do my Jane Austen!

[Nick Armstrong]

11 - but I knew only five; two others were wild guesses and four were worked out from a sense of the writer's style. And I know my Terry Pratchett better than I do my Jane Austen!

[Padraig]

6

[Daniel]

Five. Interesting though, I felt I knew the quote from Cormac Mcarthy's The Road almost word for word (although there's a typo in the Guardian ) which showed me just how much it got under my skin, it being few years since I read it.

[Richard Barrett]

I know my Terry Pratchett better than I do my Jane Austen!

That's one up on me then...

[Conchis]

7

I'd dispute how many of those novels are 'classic', though.

[Barbirollians]

7

I'd dispute how many of those novels are 'classic', though.

Me too - Agatha Christie ??? . I haven't a clue about Pratchett either so no surprise to get that one wrong .

[jean]

Only 5. But I wasn't really trying.

They could have found a better translation of Utopia than one that made More write a man would have to be actually crazy...

[Sir Velo]

They could have found a better translation of Utopia than one that made More write a man would have to be actually crazy...

To say nothing of being termed a "novel" over two hundred years avant la lettre.

[Richard Tarleton]

5. Read very few of these. One or two (eg White Teeth, How Late etc...) I've read but completely forgotten. A few more I've tried but tossed over my shoulder in the manner of the chap at Snipcock and Tweed (see Private Eye) - Amis, Self.... Mostly I was guessing, wrongly

Aeons ago, the Monty Python annual (I think it was) reckoned that most novels were getting a bit dull by about page 17, and came up with a racy all-purpose page 17 that could be inserted into any novel to liven it up a bit.