60 free Reading trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
53 free reading trivia questions with answers. This is trivia about reading rather than about any one book: how the eye actually moves across a line, why silent reading once seemed remarkable, how Louis Braille built a tactile alphabet at fifteen, and what dyslexia is. It also covers the machinery that put words in front of readers: Chinese porcelain type, the Gutenberg Bible, the codex, sixpenny Penguins, the ISBN, the Kindle, and the audiobook. The rest is the culture of reading. Libraries from Alexandria to Carnegie's 1,689, the Dewey Decimal System, Jefferson's books rescuing Congress's collection, Reading Rainbow, Oprah's Book Club, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, Little Free Libraries, Banned Books Week, and the Dr. Seuss books written from tiny word lists to kill off Dick and Jane. Fifty-three questions, roughly a third easy enough for a school library quiz, the rest for teachers, librarians and book-club regulars. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the people, institutions and inventions involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many raised dots make up a full braille cell?
Six
That gives 64 possible combinations, counting the empty cell used as a word space.
Q 02How old was Louis Braille when he first presented his tactile reading code in 1824?
15
He had been blinded at three by an accident with an awl in his father's harness workshop.
Q 03Braille's code was an improvement on 'night writing', a tactile system invented by whom?
Charles Barbier
The system got its name when it was considered as a way for soldiers to communicate silently in the dark.
Q 04What term did Émile Javal coin for the short, rapid jumps the eyes make while reading?
Saccades
He discovered them in 1879 with a mirror placed beside the page, disproving the idea that eyes glide smoothly along a line.
Q 05In his Confessions, Saint Augustine remarks on which bishop's then-unusual habit of reading silently?
Ambrose
Reading aloud was the norm in antiquity, and silent reading stayed remarkable until spaces between words came back in the late Middle Ages.
Q 06Which teacher coined 'speed reading' and launched Reading Dynamics in Washington, D.C. in 1959?
Evelyn Wood
She noticed in 1958 that sweeping her hand across a page helped her eyes move more smoothly, and built a method on it.
Q 07Roughly how fast do people read normally for comprehension?
200–230 words per minute
Skimming runs at 700 words per minute and above, but comprehension drops sharply.
Q 08Roughly what share of the population has dyslexia?
3–7%
Up to 20% of people may show some degree of the symptoms, and it was once called word blindness.
Q 09Bi Sheng invented the world's first movable type around 1040. What was it made of?
Porcelain
The oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type is the Korean Jikji of 1377.
Q 10In which city did Johannes Gutenberg print his Bible in the 1450s?
Mainz
Of the 158 to 180 copies printed, 49 survive in substantial part and 21 are complete.
Q 11The Gutenberg Bible is also known by the number of lines on most of its pages. How many?
42
The first pages had 40 lines; the count was raised part-way through, presumably to save paper.
Q 12Which Buddhist text, printed on 11 May 868, is considered the oldest dated printed book?
The Diamond Sutra
It was found in the Dunhuang caves in 1900 by a Daoist monk and sold to the explorer Aurel Stein in 1907.
Q 13What is the name for the paged book format that gradually replaced the scroll in the ancient world?
The codex
The word comes from the Latin caudex, a tree trunk; the poet Martial praised the format's convenience in the first century.
Q 21The first modern tax-supported public library, opened in 1833, was in which small New Hampshire town?
Peterborough
Boston's public library followed in 1848, and Andrew Carnegie later paid for 1,689 libraries across the United States.
Q 22Which Roman accidentally burned part of the Library of Alexandria during his civil war in 48 BC?
Julius Caesar
Estimates of the library's holdings run from 40,000 to 700,000 scrolls, and it seems to have survived or been rebuilt afterwards.
Q 23The Book of Kells, an illuminated Gospel book from around 800 AD, is on display at which library?
Trinity College Dublin
Q 14Before paper, the pages of early codices were typically parchment or vellum, made from what?
Animal hides
Parchment was rarely used for scrolls because it made them too heavy.
Q 15The first Penguin paperbacks of 1935 were sold through Woolworths for what price?
Sixpence
Allen Lane said the idea came from the dismal reading on offer at Exeter St Davids railway station.
Q 16Which German publisher's 1931 format, with colour-coded genre covers, did Penguin copy?
Albatross Books
The Second World War cut the Albatross experiment short, but its standard size and typographic covers lived on.
Q 17Melvil Dewey developed his decimal classification in 1873 while working at the library of which college?
Amherst
He published it in 1876, and by 2009 it was in use in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries.
Q 18Whose 6,487 books did Congress buy to rebuild its library after the British burned Washington in 1814?
Thomas Jefferson
Another fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of those books; the main building now carries his name.
Q 19The Bodleian Library, founded in 1602, is the main research library of which university?
Oxford
With over 13 million printed items it is Britain's second-largest library after the British Library.
Q 20The Bodleian is one of how many legal deposit libraries entitled to a copy of every UK publication?
Six
Under Irish law it may also request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland.
Visitors see two pages at a time, rotated every twelve weeks; the leaves are high-quality calf vellum.
Q 24How many digits has an ISBN had since the standard changed in 2007?
13
The scheme grew out of a nine-digit Standard Book Number that WHSmith planned in 1965.
Q 25In which year did Amazon launch the first Kindle e-reader?
2007
The device was developed by Amazon's Lab126 subsidiary, and a larger-screened Kindle DX followed in 2009.
Q 26What was Amazon's internal codename for the original Kindle?
Fiona
The Kindle name itself came from branding consultants Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma, who liked that it means to light a fire.
Q 27UNESCO's World Book Day, 23 April, was fixed on the death date of which author?
Miguel de Cervantes
Spain first marked it on his birthday, 7 October, in 1926; in Catalonia it merges with Sant Jordi, the day of books and roses.
Q 28On which date is International Literacy Day observed each year?
8 September
UNESCO declared it in 1966 and first celebrated it the following year.
Q 29Which 1943 novella is the second most translated work ever published, behind only the Bible?
The Little Prince
By November 2024 it existed in 600 languages and dialects; its author's works were banned in Vichy France.
Q 30Which seven-volume French novel holds the Guinness World Record for longest novel?
In Search of Lost Time
Proust's first volume, Swann's Way, was rejected by several publishers in 1913, and its madeleine episode is the book's most famous passage.