#26, aired 2024-01-23 | I'M JUST KEN $1500: While working the night shift at a hospital, Ken Kesey got the idea for this novel, which later became a Best Picture winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest |
#8982, aired 2023-11-28 | A CAPITAL IDEA? $1000: A vacuum cleaner salesman & spy named Jim Wormold is the protagonist of this Graham Greene novel Our Man in Havana |
#8697, aired 2022-09-13 | DO YOU FEEL A FIRST DRAFT? $800: F. Scott Fitzgerald called his 1922 short story "Winter Dreams" "a sort of first draft" of the idea for this novel from 3 years later The Great Gatsby |
#8693, aired 2022-07-27 | FICTION $1000: This Anthony Doerr novel is tied together by the idea of a paradise for birds, also found in an Aristophanes play Cloud Cuckoo Land |
#8685, aired 2022-07-15 | NOVEL "T"s $400: Stephenie Meyer said the idea for this first novel came to her in a dream Twilight |
#8472, aired 2021-09-21 | ONE-WORD BOOK TITLES $800: Stephen King said a dream gave him the idea for this novel about a woman who holds a writer prisoner Misery |
#7612, aired 2017-10-17 | A NOVEL IDEA $400: There's a lot more to Mr. Wednesday than meets the eye in this 2001 Neil Gaiman novel American Gods |
#7612, aired 2017-10-17 | A NOVEL IDEA $800: Pendleton Work Farm & an "institute of psychology" are settings in this 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest |
#7612, aired 2017-10-17 | A NOVEL IDEA $1000: His 1903 novel "The Ambassadors" is about a Yank in Europe convincing a wayward son to come home Henry James |
#7612, aired 2017-10-17 | A NOVEL IDEA $4,000 (Daily Double): Chapters in this classic include "5 June 1832" & "Marius Enters the Darkness" Les Miserables |
#7568, aired 2017-07-05 | LITERARY SPOILER ALERT! $2,000 (Daily Double): In this Dennis Lehane novel, the investigator is really an inmate & the docs are letting him live out a fantasy Shutter Island |
#7546, aired 2017-06-05 | NOVELS $1,000 (Daily Double): "The fathers of Chingachgook have not lied!" is a line in this historical novel The Last of the Mohicans |
#7412, aired 2016-11-29 | 1960s COMPUTING $800: E.A. Johnson came up with this tactile idea in a 1965 article subtitled "A Novel Input/Output Device" a touchscreen |
#7384, aired 2016-10-20 | BOOKS BY MEN $1200: The idea of this Joyce novel is that history is cyclic; the book begins with a sentence that is unfinished on the last page Finnegans Wake |
#6503, aired 2012-12-19 | A LITTLE LIT $2,400 (Daily Double): Umberto Eco wrote a parody of this novel, having Umberto Umberto fall for the aged Granita Lolita |
#6475, aired 2012-11-09 | REMEMBER BOOKSTORES? $800: A common sight at small bookstores is an in-house one of these animals, like the late Silas at A Novel Idea in Lincoln, Nebraska cats |
#6127, aired 2011-04-12 | A CAPITAL IDEA? $600: A vacuum cleaner salesman & spy named Jim Wormold is the protagonist of this Graham Greene novel Our Man in Havana |
#5894, aired 2010-04-08 | THE NOVEL'S FIRST DRAFT? $400: "Y'know, Arthur", Hester said, "Roger's gonna be home soon. & I think having an affair in this town is a bad, bad idea" The Scarlet Letter |
#5527, aired 2008-09-23 | BRITISH AUTHORS $3,000 (Daily Double): She opened a 1938 novel with the line "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" Daphne du Maurier |
#4420, aired 2003-11-21 | GRAPHIC NOVELS $2,000 (Daily Double): This graphic novel about 1930s gangsters by Collins & Rayner became a Tom Hanks film Road to Perdition |
#3000, aired 1997-09-19 | ACTORS & ROLES $1,100 (Daily Double): (I'm Sam Waterston.) I played Nick Carraway in the 1974 film version of this famous novel The Great Gatsby |
#1407, aired 1990-10-16 | WOMEN AUTHORS $700 (Daily Double): This author of "Second Chances" shares her name with a Booth Tarkenton novel Alice Adams |
#1062, aired 1989-03-28 | STARTS WITH "C" $500: Holden Caulfield fantasized about being this, a "novel" idea Catcher in the Rye |
#918, aired 1988-09-07 | WORLD LITERATURE $400: A nightmare gave Mary Shelley the idea for this novel Frankenstein |