Last year my good friend Peter went on a Himalayan hiking holiday and had a copy of The New World Order in his backpack as he gazed down on Everest Base Camp.
This year, on behalf of Guildford Town Centre Chaplaincy, he ended up on top of Kilimanjaro. And this time he thought to take a picture of his holiday reading.
Well worth the £20 I sponsored him for.
He points out that I now have until summer 2012 to get another book out, which is when he’s hoping to do the Inca trail.
If it happens two years running then it’s annual, right? Thus the now annual Mostly Bookbrains Literary Quiz, held last night at the Manor School in aid of Friends of Abingdon Museum. I maintain that coming 5= out of 12 teams is a perfectly respectable position. I mean, anyone could mistake a picture of Stieg Larsson for Mark Haddon or forget that the hero of C.J. Sansom’s series of Reformation crime novels is Matthew Shardlake, not Shadwell.
I take no pride in knowing who wrote the Wheel of Time series – though perhaps a small shred of it in not having read any – but I felt quietly smug for knowing that 2001: A Space Odyssey was based on “The Sentinel”. In that particular round, a bit of music commonly associated with a movie was played and we had to name the literary original that the movie came from. Thus for the theme from Schindler’s List, the correct answer was Schindler’s Ark, geddit?
For 2001, though there is a novel of the same name, it was written concurrent with the film and I thought it worth mentioning that technically “The Sentinel” would be the right answer. And got a bonus point.
Which was lost later on in the same round by what some might call the strange confusion of Henry V (modern version) and Porterhouse Blue. The confusion is that both feature quite a catchy earwormy Latin number. From Branagh’s Henry V:
(Look closely and you might see Inspector Wallander carrying a dead teenage Batman across the battlefield, in a single 4-minute take: cudos to Christian Bale for not sneezing.)
And from Porterhouse Blue:
See? Easy mistake to make.
For the completists, the Henry V words are: Non nobis domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam, i.e. “Not to us O Lord but to your name give glory.”
The Porterhouse Blue words are too long to put here but are translated here, and despite being made up were well in keeping with the spirit of the series. That’s one of the things that made it such a good show to watch: that, and Ian Richardson, and David Jason, and the college exploding under a load of gas-filled condoms.
From ghoulies and ghostiesAnd long-leggedy beastiesAnd things that go bump in the night,Good Lord, deliver us!
Almighty God,
who hast knit together thine elect
in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of Your Son, Christ our Lord:
Give us grace so to follow Your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living,
that we may come
to those ineffable joys
that thou hast prepared for those
who unfeignedly love thee;
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord,
who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth,
one God, in glory everlasting. Amen
(Book of Common Prayer, 1979)
O Lord our heavenly Father,almighty and everlasting God,who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day;defend us in the same with thy mighty power;and grant that this day we fall into no sin,neither run into any kind of danger,but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance,to do always that is righteous in thy sight;through Jesus Christ our Lord.