Word Play
A cornucopia of puns, anagrams and other contortions and curiosities of the English language
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Word Play
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Narrated by:
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Gyles Brandreth
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By:
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Gyles Brandreth
About this listen
The aim of this audiobook is entertainment - and surprise - but there will be a fair bit of erudition and incidental education along the way. We discover the oldest words, the newest, the longest, the shortest, the most frequently used, the costliest (yes, words can come with a price attached), the funniest, the most fatal, the most unusual...from the words Shakespeare gave us to the latest in sexting, the best and the worst, the most amusing and amazing words are here.
Full of puns, palindromes, pangrams, acrostics, malaprops, famous (and infamous) last words and featuring extracts recorded live at his 2015 Edinburgh Fringe show, in Word Play, Gyles Brandreth leads us through an A - Z and a Z - A of the wonderful world of words.
©2015 Gyles Brandreth (P)2015 Hodder & StoughtonListeners also enjoyed...
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Made me smile.
- By Lyvon Netherton on 04-13-24
By: Stan Hardy
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Ex Libris
- Confessions of a Common Reader
- By: Anne Fadiman
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 4 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 99
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 62
Anyone who has ever loved a book will relish this playful, yet deeply literate collection of essays celebrating the joy of reading. From building castles with books as a child, to the trauma of joining her library with her husband's, the author reveals, with much warmth and humor, the intimate details of her lifelong affair with books. For Anne Fadiman, books are not built for function, and certainly not for decoration. They are close personal friends who never fail to delight and amaze.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Reading IS fun!
- By Diana on 04-14-05
By: Anne Fadiman
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Born to Kvetch
- Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods
- By: Michael Wex
- Narrated by: Michael Wex
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 174
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4 out of 5 stars 93
As the main spoken language of the Jews for more than a thousand years, Yiddish has had plenty to lament, plenty to conceal. Its phrases and expressions paint a comprehensive picture of the mind-set that enabled the Jews of Europe to survive persecution: they never stopped kvetching about God, gentiles, children, and everything else.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating, but...
- By Christopher B. on 04-05-16
By: Michael Wex
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Bookworm
- A Memoir of Childhood Reading
- By: Lucy Mangan
- Narrated by: Lucy Mangan
- Length: 7 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 33
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4 out of 5 stars 31
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children.
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2 out of 5 stars
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The author’s sarcasm
- By Phil B. on 10-01-24
By: Lucy Mangan
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44 Scotland Street
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Robert Ian Mackenzie
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,792
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,422
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,418
The brilliant Alexander McCall Smith became an international sensation with his New York Times best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. His award-winning wit, made famous through that series, is fully on display in 44 Scotland Street.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Smith's answer to Maupin
- By Amazon Customer on 10-23-05
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,054
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,401
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,387
E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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5 out of 5 stars
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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The Possessed
- Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
- By: Elif Batuman
- Narrated by: Elif Batuman
- Length: 9 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
In The Possessed we watch Elif Batuman investigate a possible murder at Tolstoy's ancestral estate. We go with her to Stanford, Switzerland, and St. Petersburg; retrace Pushkin's wanderings in the Caucasus; learn why Old Uzbek has 100 different words for crying; and see an 18th-century ice palace reconstructed on the Neva. Love and the novel, the individual in history, the existential plight of the graduate student: all find their places in The Possessed.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Dear Russian Literary Diary...
- By Darwin8u on 08-29-17
By: Elif Batuman
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Cocaine Blues
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Stephanie Daniel
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 4,042
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,493
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,484
It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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The Hunting of the Snark
- By: Lewis Carroll
- Narrated by: Boris Karloff
- Length: 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 34
But what is a Snark? "Humpty Dumpty's theory, of two meanings packed into one word like a portmanteau, seems to me the right explanation for all." (Lewis Carroll)
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4 out of 5 stars
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Savory & Strange--but Missing a Fit!!!
- By Jefferson on 10-17-10
By: Lewis Carroll
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Artful
- By: Ali Smith
- Narrated by: Ali Smith
- Length: 4 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 32
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
In 2012, Ali Smith delivered the Weidenfeld lectures on European comparative literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford. Those lectures, presented here, took the shape of discursive stories that refused to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form. Thus, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted - literally - by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature. A hypnotic dialogue unfolds between storytelling and a meditation on art that encompasses love, grief, memory, and revitalization.
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3 out of 5 stars
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#Reality/Loss/Mythology
- By Ellen K. on 11-14-18
By: Ali Smith
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The Mother Tongue
- By: Bill Bryson
- Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,279
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,107
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,101
With dazzling wit and astonishing insight, Bill Bryson - the acclaimed author of The Lost Continent - brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience, and sheer fun of the English language. From the first descent of the larynx into the throat (why you can talk but your dog can't) to the fine lost art of swearing, Bryson tells the fascinating, often uproarious story of an inadequate, second-rate tongue of peasants that developed into one of the world's largest growth industries.
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3 out of 5 stars
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More satire than history
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 12-18-15
By: Bill Bryson
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The Dark Flood Rises
- A Novel
- By: Dame Margaret Drabble
- Narrated by: Anna Bentinck
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 136
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 124
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Story4 out of 5 stars 125
Francesca Stubbs has a very full life. A highly regarded expert on housing for the elderly who is herself getting on in age, she drives restlessly round England. Amid the professional conferences she attends, she fits in visits to old friends, brings home-cooked dinners to her ex-husband, texts her son, who is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend, and drops in on her daughter, a quirky young woman who lives in a floodplain in the West Country.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Life Observed By An Exceptional Writer
- By Sara on 03-22-17
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The Memoir Project
- A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text For Writing & Life
- By: Marion Roach Smith
- Narrated by: Marion Roach Smith
- Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 196
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 169
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 167
Whether or not one has lived an exceptional or dramatic life, we inherently understand that writing memoir—whether it’s a book, blog, or just a letter to a child - is the single greatest portal to self-examination. Stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind “writer’s block” and learn how to write with intent. Marion Roach Smith’s disarmingly frank but wildly fun tactics offer you simple and effective guidelines that work. Your legacy beings now.
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5 out of 5 stars
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amazing what you can learn from brevity
- By Schwartz-Burrill on 09-15-11
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I Can't Complain
- (All Too) Personal Essays
- By: Elinor Lipman
- Narrated by: Elinor Lipman
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 29
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 29
Elinor Lipman has populated her fictional universe with characters so utterly real that we feel like they're old friends. Now she shares an even more intimate world with us - her own - in essays that offer a candid, charming take on modern life. Looking back and forging ahead, she considers the subjects that matter most: childhood and condiments, long marriage and solo living, career and politics. Here you'll find the lighthearted: a celebration of four decades of All My Children, a reflection on being Jewish in heavily Irish-Catholic Lowell on St. Patrick's Day, a hilariously unflinching account of her tiptoe into online dating.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Fabulous!
- By Louise on 09-15-19
By: Elinor Lipman
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Ask a Historian
- 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know
- By: Greg Jenner
- Narrated by: Dan Schreiber, Greg Jenner, Janina Ramirez, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 49
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 47
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 47
Responding to fifty genuine questions from the public, Greg Jenner takes you on an entertaining tour through history from the Stone Age to the Swinging Sixties, revealing the best and most surprising stories, facts and historical characters from the past. From ancient joke books, African empires and the invention of meringues, to mummies, mirrors and menstrual pads—Ask A Historian is a deliciously amusing and informative smorgasbord of historical curiosities.
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5 out of 5 stars
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best bonus content ever!
- By Matthew K Wendelken on 03-24-22
By: Greg Jenner
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Letters
- By: C. S. Lewis
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 194
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 171
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 170
This volume of short essays and other pieces by C. S. Lewis is part of a larger collection, C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces. In addition to his many books, letters, and poems, C. S. Lewis wrote a great number of essays and shorter pieces on various subjects. He wrote extensively on Christian theology and the defense of faith but also on ethical issues and the nature of literature and storytelling. Within this audiobook is a treasure trove of Lewis' reflections on diverse topics.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Just Lewis
- By William on 02-07-21
By: C. S. Lewis