I Can Bench Press Brontë

Hoohah! After eight years of trying, I finally won at Ex Libris- a taxing game of bluff for bookish types with expendable English degrees.

This literary Geek Core game is quite simple. Someone reads a brief synopsis of a novel: anything from Emily Brontë to Roald Dahl- then asks the players to write the first or last sentence of the book, in a believable style. All the sentences are then read out, and then you have to guess which sounds like the right one. Whoever's fake sentence is chosen wins a point.

Sadly, as the red wine kicks in, by the third round all my sentences usually devolve into Victorian bodice-rippers, with words like; "tumescent", "member", or "heaving bosom"- no matter what the novel.

This time I eschewed the red wine, and won by one point, in an epic, pugilistic, LitGeek nail-biter, not unlike the climax of Rocky IV. Or perhaps not.

Sadly, my virile literary prowess failed to arouse any of my female opponents into a zealous bodice-ripping session behind the rhododendron bush.