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Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch
- Let Verbs Power Your Writing
- Narrated by: Eva Wilhelm
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
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Publisher's summary
A writing handbook that celebrates the infinite pizzazz of verbs.
Writers know it instinctively: Verbs make a sentence zing. Grammar gurus agree: Drama in writing emerges from the interplay of a subject (noun) and a predicate (verb). Constance Hale, the best-selling author of Sin and Syntax, zooms in on the colorful world of verbs.
Synthesizing the pedagogical and the popular, the scholarly and the scandalous, Hale combines the wit of Bill Bryson with the practical wisdom of William Zinsser. She marches through linguistic history to paint a layered picture of our language - from before it really existed to the quirky usages we see online today. She warns about habits to avoid and inspires with samples of brilliant writing. A veteran teacher, Hale gives writing prompts along the way, helping listeners "try, do, write, play". Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch guides us to more powerful writing by demonstrating how to use great verbs with style.
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McPhee is the Craft
- By Darwin8u on 09-19-17
By: John McPhee
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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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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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amazing what you can learn from brevity
- By Schwartz-Burrill on 09-15-11
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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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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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More satire than history
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 12-18-15
By: Bill Bryson
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On Elizabeth Bishop
- By: Colm Tóibín
- Narrated by: John Keating
- Length: 5 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In this book novelist Colm Tóibín offers a deeply personal introduction to the work and life of one of his most important literary influences - the American poet Elizabeth Bishop. Ranging across her poetry, prose, letters, and biography, Tóibín creates a vivid picture of Bishop while also revealing how her work has helped shape his sensibility as a novelist and how her experiences of loss and exile resonate with his own.
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ELIZABETH BISHOP
- By chetyarbrough.blog on 05-19-16
By: Colm Tóibín
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Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue
- The Untold History of English
- By: John McWhorter
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar. Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural values? Delving into these provocative topics and more, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue distills hundreds of years of fascinating lore into one lively history.
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Great for casual linguists
- By Bertie on 01-11-10
By: John McWhorter
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The Grammar of God
- A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
- By: Aviya Kushner
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In this eye-opening chronicle, Kushner tells the story of her vibrant relationship to the Bible and along the way illustrates how the differences in translation affect our understanding of our culture's most important written work.
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a sobering read
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-17
By: Aviya Kushner
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The Story of English in 100 Words
- By: David Crystal
- Narrated by: David Crystal
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In this unique new history of the world's most ubiquitous language, linguistics expert David Crystal draws on words that best illustrate the huge variety of sources, influences, and events that have helped to shape our vernacular since the first definitively English word was written down in the fifth century ("roe", in case you are wondering). Featuring Latinate and Celtic words, weasel words and nonce-words, ancient words ("loaf") to cutting edge ("twittersphere") and spanning the indispensable words that shape our tongue ("and", "what") to the more fanciful ("fopdoodle"), Crystal takes us along the winding byways of language.
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Random but entertaining
- By Sean on 04-01-13
By: David Crystal
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Montaigne in Barn Boots
- An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy
- By: Michael Perry
- Narrated by: Michael Perry
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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"The journey began on a gurney", writes Michael Perry, describing the debilitating kidney stone that led him to discover the essays of Michel de Montaigne. Reading the philosopher in a manner he equates to chickens pecking at scraps - including those eye-blinking moments when the bird gobbles something too big to swallow - Perry attempts to learn what he can (good and bad) about himself as compared to a long-dead French nobleman who began speaking Latin at the age of two.
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A beacon in a dark time
- By Kelsey on 01-13-18
By: Michael Perry
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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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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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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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How to Speak and Write Correctly
- By: Joseph Devlin
- Narrated by: Shawn Grisden
- Length: 4 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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This book has no pretension about it whatever -- it is neither a Manual of Rhetoric, expatiating on the dogmas of style, nor a Grammar full of arbitrary rules and exceptions. It is merely an effort to help ordinary, everyday people to express themselves in ordinary, everyday language, in a proper manner.
By: Joseph Devlin
What listeners say about Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- N
- 03-19-14
Original Narrator was Good, New One Fine
What made the experience of listening to Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch the most enjoyable?
I liked the first narrator, Anna Lathrop, and I was surprised by the change in narrator. Wilhelm is good too. Anyway, this is a great resource and will add agility to your prose. I highly recommend it.
What other book might you compare Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch to and why?
Sin and Syntax
Which character – as performed by Eva Wilhelm – was your favorite?
N/A
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No. It's too dense, but it's a great listen for 30-45 minutes at a time.
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- GH
- 07-13-13
Chafe, curse, demolish, adore – I heart the book
Whether it is nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous monotonic verbs or to take arms against the sea of unvarnished writers that is Constance Hales’ question. I did not expect to like this book as much as I do. I love books but a grammarian I am not. Hale extends a hand hoping to lead us on a stroll through the land of verbs with craggy cliffs and slippery slopes. This is a journey not a lecture.
This work appeals to writers to transform their sentences into dynamic buds of interest elevating story and provides tools and examples. I recommend this book heartily.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Beachy Booky
- 06-25-14
Too literary for me.
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
Author spends too much time waxing poetically about verbs. Not my cup of tea. But if you're a word lover - a trivia maven - a lover of metaphor and quotes, then you might really like this book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- John
- 07-12-13
This is brutal to listen too!
What did you like best about Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch? What did you like least?
The content is great, I have really tried to get through the narration which is a real mission. The narration is the ONLY thing i dont like about this book, the monotone, nasal performance is just grating.
I dont understand, with the amount of narrators in the world, how you can really go wrong. There must be a process of hearing the first samples and saying ok, does this narrators pitch, tone and even annunciation of words land on the ear with ease?
There is pitch rises in strange places that just doesn't sit well, it just sounds like the narrator is trying to perform the reading in a slightly better tone than there natural tone. A narration should be transparent to a degree, but this is the only thing I could focus on
What was one of the most memorable moments of Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch?
The content is great, all good information that I could clearly use
How could the performance have been better?
A different narrator would solve the problem of this book rather quickly
If this book were a movie would you go see it?
No
Any additional comments?
I feel bad as this is my first review but I was so disappointed after waiting fro this on pre order. We really need a sample test to check for things like this in advanced. I would be interested to see if other find the narration annoying as well
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5 people found this helpful