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Brain foggy? Try our quiz the book club

At last week's Roanoke Times Book Club open house, I gave a short trivia quiz based on our meetings and online discussions in 2004.

The company, of course, splurged on big-time prizes. We gave out lunchbags (the 2003 model) and some water bottles from 2001. We even gave away the rest of the RTBC promotional notebooks left over from 2002.

But no one cared. In fact, they proved what television producers and newspaper editors have long known: Everyone loves a quiz! Herewith are some of the questions (answers below), plus a few more:

1. What area writer and 2004 discussion leader recently nailed a glowing review in The New York Times Review of Books?

2. During our July fundraiser featuring Grundy native Lee Smith, how was Smith ferried to her podium seat?

3. What 2004 book selection prompted one book clubber and her daughter to go around the house spouting (in a British accent), "I am most seriously displeased!"

4. Which 2004 selection was universally loathed, save by me and that month's discussion leader?

5. Quick. Without looking at the answer, tell me: Who is Ina R. Bort?

Answers

1. Kurt Rheinheimer. The stories in his new collection, "Little Criminals," are poignant, eerie and funny (sometimes all at the same time) - with lines that should have those angst-ridden New Yorker writers watchin' their backs. (We got poetry and angst here in Big Lick, too, ya know.)

2. Lee Smith paddled out to the pontoon boat at Loch Haven Lake in a . . . canoe.

3. Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." Note to groupies (some of whom confessed to owning six copies of the book): Be sure to put our October 2005 selection, "The Jane Austen Book Club," on your calendar.

4. Lorrie Moore's "Self-Help," which, by the way, was selected by Rheinheimer. Among the more charitable comments on it: "I thought she should've named it 'Self-Pity' instead of 'Self-Help.'"

5. Bort is the The New York Law Journal lawyer/writer who thoroughly dissed Stuart judge Martin Clark's first book, calling it "easily the worst novel of the year 2000." When his second book (our May 2004 selection, "Plain Heathen Mischief") came out, Clark mailed her a copy of it, along with a promotional T-shirt.

Shortly afterward, an anonymous, one-star review was posted on amazon.com, which began: "I was heartened by the strong reviews, but after slogging through the novel myself (and I really had to push myself to finish), I'm stunned by the fact that anyone could recommend this ridiculous, laurel-and-hardy enterprise."

After analyzing the syntax of the online posting, Clark made a judgment: "It's Ina R. Bort. I'm sure of it."

- Beth Macy