Quiz. Food for thought.

Some people are fond of reading, while others consider it to be a waste of time.

What kind of reader are you?

If you find reading an amusing and worthy pastime, then join our quiz “Food for Thought”.

Let’s get started.

1. What do all these people have in common?

Ivan Fyodorov              William Caxton             Johann Guttenberg

a) they were the first to print books

b) they were all famous poets

c) they were the first to invent the alphabet

Correct answer is a. Ivan Fyodorov was the first to print books in Russia in 1564. The first printing press in England was set up by William Caxton at Westminster in 1476. Johann Gutenberg from Germany invented the printing press in 1450.

2. Where was the paper invented?

a) in China

b) in Japan

c) in Greece

Correct answer is a. Paper was invented around 100 BC in China.

3. When is the World Book Day celebrated?

a) June, 12

b) April, 23

c) September, 6

Correct answer is b. April, 23

4. Put all these genres of books into two columns.

Fiction: novel, fairy-tale, fantasy, thriller, adventure, detective

Non-fiction: dictionary, atlas, encyclopedia, biography, diary

5. In which of the non-fiction books would you:

a. look up the meaning of a word?

b. look up the height of Niagara Falls?

c. find a detailed map of China?

Now check yourselves.

a) dictionary

b) encyclopedia

c) atlas

6. Which of the following books would you buy in the situations below:

a cookery book / a travel guide / a children's book / an autobiography?

1. You don't like fiction. You prefer to read about the life stories of real people, written by the people themselves.

2. You are 20 years old and are leaving home to share a flat with some friends. You've never cooked for yourself before.

3. You don't know what to buy your seven-year-old nephew for his birthday.

4. You are going to Warsaw for holidays. You've never been there before.

Now check yourselves.

an autobiography

a cookery book

a children's book

a travel guide

7. Use these words to complete the text below: poems / poetry / poet / verses / recite.

When we did poetry at school, we had to learn whole poems by heart and then recite them for the whole class.

Sergey Mayakovski was my favourite poet.

I remember the longest poem I had to learn had over 20 verses!

8. Match the authors and their books.

9. Do you know where the term Yahoo comes from?

a) Yahoos are the human-like creatures in the novel Gulliver's Travels by Johann Swift.

b) Yahoo! is an Internet portal. The term was invented by its founders Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994.

c) Yahoo is the name of the city in South America.

Correct answer is a. Nowadays the term is used to a person, who is very rude, loud or stupid.

10. What is the size of the smallest book in the world?

a) 1mm x 1mm

b) 5mm x 5mm

c) 1 cm x 1 cm

Correct answer is a. The smallest book in the Welsh National Library is Old King Cole. It measures 1mm x 1mm and the pages can only be turned with a needle.

11. Ernest Vincent is an author of the novel “Gadsby” (1939). It contains 50,000 words. What is his novel famous for?

a) It has no ending.

b) There is no the ‘e’ letter in the whole novel;

c) It was Vincent’s 7 years old son, who wrote the book.

Correct answer is b. There is no the ‘e’ letter in the whole novel.

12. Look at this scrambled picture. What well known English writer is depicted in it?

a) Anton Chekhov

b) Agatha Christie

c) William Shakespeare

Correct answer is c. William Shakespeare

13. Complete the words by R.D. Cumming: A good book has no ____________.

a) price

b) fame

c) ending

Correct answer is c. A good book has no ending.

14. Complete the saying: Don’t judge a book by its ________.

Find all the words on the topic “Books and Reading” and make up the key word from the rest of the letters.

Now check yourselves: title, content, volume, page, review, essay, epigraph, plot, character, print.

Don’t judge a book by its cover.

15. Do the puzzle.

Correct answer is a bestseller.

16. Read the following extract and guess its genre:

“Levine walked down another hill and found another river. Something was moving in the grass. An animal the size of mouse came out. Levine looked at it. Greenish skin without hair, large eyes, like a lizard but… Levine knew about this small animal from its bones, but now he was looking at a real, living dinosaur!”

(The Lost World. Jurassic Park. Michael Crichton)

The Lost World belongs to science fiction and fantasy genres.

17. What do you call someone who finds all books worth reading. He feels interested whatever, whenever and wherever he reads.

a) a bookeater

b) a bookdust

c) a bookworm

Correct answer is c) a bookworm.

I hope that most of you answered the questions correctly and the quiz was a good exercise to your mind.

Or even if you gave a couple of wrong answers, you’ve learnt something new.

Reading develops your imagination! TV and computer games have their place, but they are more like amusement.

Amusement comes from two words "a" [non] and "muse" [think]. Amusement is non-thinking activities. But with reading, a person can go anywhere in the world...or even out of it!