Quntos KunQuest has been incarcerated at Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, since 1997. His new novel This Life (Bookshop|Amazon), which draws on his experiences there, has earned acclaim in The New Yorker. KunQuest’s characters are vividly rendered, and voice artist Sean Crisden does a superb job of bringing them to life in the audio version. Before the Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe and What Lies Beyond (Bookshop|Amazon), by cosmologist and theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton, is partly a memoir of her childhood and teenage years living under the totalitarian communist regime in Albania, and partly a discussion of her research into the possibility that our universe is just one of many multiverses. Voice artist Xe Sands brings a warmth and sure-footedness to the audio version, making even the most challenging scientific explanations a pleasure to listen to. This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Martha and Grant send occasional messages with language headlines, event announcements, linguistic tidbits, and episode reminders. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
