A Cool Million - 31 March 2025
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You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett.

There's nothing like opening a book and falling in love at first line. What is it that draws you in or makes that first line so powerful or effective or irresistible? I'm thinking, Grant, of first lines like, It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13. You know, the first line of 1984. It just makes me want to keep going. Or even, Where's Papa going with that app?

Oh. From Charlotte's Web, right? Mm-hmm. And I've been puzzling lately over what makes a great first line, and I think that the writer Alice McDermott has a really good answer. In her book of essays called What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction, she says that the one thing great first lines have in common...

is authority. What all these memorable first sentences convey in all their variety is confidence. No equivocation, no building up to the good stuff. Listen, they say. I have a story to tell. I know how to tell it. Trust me. And Grant, I've been looking over lots of great first lines, and I think that that authority factor is really, really key. I think you're right. Or how about this one?

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 1813. 1813! A classic line. And that one sentence sets up the entire book. And you know what you're in for. The whole book is laid out in one sentence. Right.

Right. With that air of authority, you just want to just relax into the storytelling. McDermott makes the same point about Moby Dick in Call Me Ishmael. I mean, what he could have said was, I suppose you could say I've gone by a lot of different names in my life. I was picked on as a kid, you know, but

Call me Ishmael. There's something about grabbing that microphone, being authoritative, having that confidence that I think is just really compelling. And how can you not go to the next line? Especially compared to the rest of the book where he doesn't have that kind of economy of words. Yeah.

Not at all. Not at all. Oh, it's time to read that again. Martha and I would love, absolutely love to see your favorite opening lines from books, be they classics or modern fiction or anything. You

You can send them to us at words at waywardradio.org. Share them on social media. You can find our handles on our website. Or call us and read them in your best radio voice or audio book voice to 1-877-929-9673. Or share them as an audio note on social media or on WhatsApp.

- Hello, you have a way with words. - Hi, my name is Joyce Miller. I am in Omaha, Nebraska. - Well, hello Omaha. What can we do for you?

I like to listen to radio classics on satellite radio after a long, hard day. And I happen to be listening to a detective show from, I believe, the 50s. And the detective was telling us about being slipped a mickey.

And waking up with a headache. It occurred to me that I know a Mickey is a tranquilizer, but why is it Mickey? Who is Mickey? Martha, Mickey's got a heck of a tail behind it. It really does. I mean, it goes back apparently to a specific Mickey.

It refers to Mickey Finn, who was the manager of the Lone Star Saloon in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th century. And he was notorious for supposedly drugging certain customers and then waiting for them to pass out and relieving them of their valuables. He would have people...

Help him out doing that. And so to slip someone a Mickey or to slip someone a Mickey Finn was to doctor a drink and give it to somebody. But, you know, Joyce, you mentioned it being a tranquilizer. It wasn't always a tranquilizer or a sedative, though, because sometimes those drugs were strong laxatives.

or emetics. Oh, my Lord. Yeah, emetics that would cause vomiting. And in fact...

In 1918, there were a bunch of waiters in Chicago who were arrested on charges of conspiracy and assault to do bodily harm using what was called a Mickey Finn powder, which was a strong emetic. That is, it would make somebody vomit like crazy. And apparently what happened was the waiters union purchased it.

this drug from a supplier for 20 cents and then upsold it to the waiters in the union for 25 cents. And then if a regular patron of a hotel or cafe persistently forgot to tip the waiters or was otherwise just kind of obnoxious or overly demanding, they would get slipped a mickey.

Yes. Wow. Absolutely. You know, this absolutely cracks me up because I grew up 35 miles southwest of Chicago, so we went into the city quite a bit. And it just cracks me up that I, you know, I'm from Chicago and I didn't know Mickey was from Chicago. Yeah, he was kind of famous in his time. He made the newspapers. All right. You take care of yourself, all right?

Thank you. And make sure you cover your drink when you step away from the bar. No kidding. All right. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much. Bye. Take care. Bye, Joyce. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, Grant. This is Brian, and I'm calling you from Laramie, Wyoming. Hi, Brian and Laramie. What's going on? Well, the other day I was standing in a line, and there was a young lady in front of me who was interestingly dressed, and I happened to mention to her only—

partially joking that her outfit was very unique, all the way from her boots to her scarf. I said it all matched. And she fortunately was a humorous type person and thanked me. And we both chuckled. And I said, now we have to come up with an adjective to describe this. And I said, how would we describe it? And she and I both joked around and said, well, indie girl,

And then I thought, well, avant-garde. And then I said, bohemian. And she said, what does that mean? So I guess the younger folks don't use that much anymore. Nobody seems to know where it is. You and I would know it's part of Czechoslovakia next to Poland. But I wondered how the phrase bohemian for a radical political type.

would be used or how it came about. Brian, so tell us more about how she was dressed. You said that everything matched, but what are we talking about? What kind of fabrics and colors? Oh, gosh, it's been a while, Grant. Let me think. Are we talking silks or furs or corduroys or flowing? I mean, was she dressed like a hippie or did she look like an artist? No.

Yeah, the artist. There we go. There was no bedspread dress, and it's the middle of winter, so there were no Birkenstocks or socks. Right.

Oh, let me think. I imagine she might have had Doc Martens on. She had some style, though. Did she look like a current and modern? Current, modern. She could have been in Greenwich Village. She could have been in West Los Angeles. Okay. Yeah, it was nothing bad. She looked good. She dressed up to be seen. She was dressed to be seen, yes. Okay. Yes. Okay.

The term bohemian comes from French. In France, the term la bohème was applied to the Romani people, the folks who are also known as the Roma. Oh. The traditionally, yeah, the itinerant people who originated in northern India. And they were thought to...

to have arrived in France in the 15th century via Bohemia, what is now the western part of the modern Czech Republic.

And in the early 19th century, this French word for Bohemia, bohème, was applied to people who had similar characteristics or were perceived to have similar characteristics of sort of being on the edges, as you said, of society. And bohemian bohème came to apply to folks who were, you know, all about art and creativity and

and individual self-expression, sexual freedom, and maybe not living in traditional living arrangements. And this became the subject of a lot of literature and music. There was an 1851 book called Scenes de la Vie de Bohème, or Scenes of Bohemian Life, which was about a group of people like that. And of course, we have the opera by Puccini, La Bohème. And

And then the term bohemian was also romanticized in the U.S. as well, you know, applying to poets and artists and writers and even journalists. Even Mark Twain described himself as being of bohemia. And did you ever see the play Rent or see the movie Rent? No.

Oh, I've heard of it, yes. But no, I never saw it. I never saw it. Yeah, you might take a look at it. It came out in the mid-1990s. And there's a show-stopping song in it called La Vie Boheme. And it's got this scene where all these bohemian types are toasting to their, you know, to the way they lived and to their days of inspiration playing hooky, making something out of nothing.

the need to express, to communicate, to going against the grain. They're toasting all these things that are characteristic of the way that they live. And so it goes back to the French word for bohemia. How about that? How about that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much, folks. Sure. Brian, take care of yourself. I shall. You folks, too. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Well, whether you're a Wyoming cowgirl or you're a bohemian Paris, give us a call. You can find our WhatsApp number on our website. Or if you're in Canada or United States, you can call toll-free 877-929-9673. But if you prefer text messaging, there is a text message number on our website. I'm not going to read it here, but you can find it on our website, waywardradio.org. ♪♪♪

All right, an opening line quiz for you, Martha. What book does this come from? I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me or to any other. It's from 1914, if that helps. It's been made into a movie probably a dozen or more times and a television show multiple times. What? And an animated movie. What? Yeah.

I don't know, but it sets a mood that makes me want to hear what the next sentence is. It's Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs. What's funny about the story, the story itself is far more serious than a lot of the different versions that have been made into films and television, which tend to be often more lighthearted or a different kind of drama than the

Mm-hmm. The book is more traumatic, maybe, even, than some of the films. Traumatic or dramatic? Traumatic, yeah, or more of a thriller, even. Send us your favorite first lines, words at waywardradio.org. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebbgliss.

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Or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Martha Barnett.

And I'm Grant Barrett. And bouncing in on a pogo stick and wearing a park ranger's outfit, it's our quiz guy, John Chinesky. Oh, I'm just so lucky that these ceilings are so high. Oh, I get it. The kangaroos are off exhibit and you're filling in. Yeah, I'm trying to make them feel more at home.

You know, when you're listening to the radio in the car, as people do, you can check the dashboard display to see the title of the song that's playing and the artist and the station. For a while, though, these displays were a kind of a digital display that would only show the first dozen or so letters in the title. Yeah. It was possible to be listening to a song and you'd check the display and the title would say, Brother, Can You Spar?,

It sounds like a song about guys in a boxing gym, but it's really the American standard, brother, can you spare a dime? Yes, exactly. I always found that disconnect to be rather fun. So let's take a drive together and listen to some tunes. I'll describe the song and then what the title seems to be. See if you can deduce both the truncated title and the real title.

Now, for our purposes, the truncated titles can be anywhere from eight letters or longer, depending on the size of your display, of course. Ready? Here we go. Now, I agree with Johnny Cash that love is a burning thing.

But the display says he went down, down, down into a circle of Christmas trees? I went down, down, down to the burning ring of fur. Burning ring of fur. Yes. Again, only one letter different. The ring of fire. Ring of fire, yes. This song from my Wizard of Oz soundtrack sounds pretty straightforward, but the display makes it sound as if the scarecrow is in need of a support garment? Ha ha ha ha.

If I only had a bra. If I only had a bra. You know, he is made of straw. You could just take some straw out. I need a little lift. Yeah. If I only had a brain. Right. My ghost soundtrack either has this Righteous Brothers love song or, according to the display, a song about movie director Brooks given complete creative control. Okay, so Mel Brooks. Right. Oh. Mel Brooks.

Unchained Mel? Unchained Mel. That's good. Instead of Unchained Melody, that's good. That's it, yes. Oh, my love, my darling. He was always off the chain. Mel Brooks is off the chain, yes. Finally, perhaps Lady Gaga is singing about your love and all your lover's revenge, but the display makes it seem like she's singing about Caligula, ooh la la.

Okay, Caligula was little boots in Latin, but what does it have to do? Oh, bad Roman. Bad romance. You and me could write a bad Roman. Bad Roman. Bad romance, yes. This is terrible. Very good. Well, you know, I'm going to drive this car back to the shop and have that display looked at.

You guys did fantastic. Well done. Thanks, John. All right. Don't forget your pogo stick. Let's go. Bye. Take care. We'll see you next week. Well, we talk about all kinds of words, whether they're truncated or very, very long. And we also talk about lots of

other aspects of language from grammar to slang, and we'd love to talk with you. So give us a call 877-929-9673 or reach out to us by email words at waywardradio.org. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Rich in Tucson, Arizona.

Hey, Rich. What's up? Well, I am an audiobook narrator, so pronouncing words correctly is really important for my job. And recently, in one of the many online spaces that we narrators tend to inhabit, somebody posted a link to the Merriam-Webster entry for a certain condiment that is spelled A-I-O-L-I. It was

it was clear that they were upset about the pronunciation that Merriam-Webster had for that word. And I looked at it and I thought, well, I have always pronounced that as "ay-oh-lee" and the pronunciation that Merriam-Webster has is "eye-oh-lee."

and most of the people commenting on this post were in agreement that, well, that's just wrong. But then I looked at the word for a few minutes, and knowing a little bit about Latin and a little bit about diphthongs, I thought,

You know, actually, it seems like that's probably more accurate. But most important, it just got me thinking about how do lexicographers decide what pronunciation to put in a dictionary? Because clearly there are a bunch of people here who think that this entry is just incorrect. So we do a lot of first-person digging for this show, and my first-person answer for this is...

It depends. And I think the main problem with what you've gathered from the people in your forum is that the sample size is too small. And the second problem with this is that the sample size isn't from the right people. So when dictionary editors put their pronunciation data together, they gather it from people in the fields that are relevant to the word that they need to pronounce. Right.

So, for example, food words would come from people who work on those fields. They would gather them from chefs. They would gather them from food producers. They would gather them from perhaps the person who coined the word or the person who introduced it into the language. They would do a variety of things like that. So this word, aioli, aeoli, however you want to say it, came into...

English from French. And so its pronunciation is somewhat influenced by French, more so than from Latin. And so that has something to do with it. And many of our food words are from French, and they have a French flair to them, even though we've anglicized the pronunciation. So that has some say here. So you're not getting that in your audiobook form. You're not getting that extra layer of data that a dictionary puts

maker would have. And that's fine. But there's also things like pronunciation surveys. They will literally send out to greet upon groups of people packets and say, here are the words that we have. How would you pronounce this to people who matter? Wow. Crowdsourcing. Literally. But I mean, they do it differently now, obviously, in the digital age. But they did this in the paper era, too.

Before the internet even existed, before computers they did it. Now, obviously, sometimes they fall behind. Old pronunciations persist long after the pronunciation has changed. Merriam-Webster is very good about being on the curve or even a little bit ahead of the curve. And given that most dictionary publishers have either closed or been bought out, Merriam-Webster is the only North American general interest English language dictionary publisher

in existence today, they're the only one that matters in North America. There are no other dictionary publishers in North America making English language general interest dictionaries. But they do a very good job. Something that will surprise a lot of people, that dictionaries actually are a small-c conservative force. They mostly...

are behind the curve of change. Even Merriam-Webster, this does tend to be more than other dictionaries. Um, and I'm comparing them to say British dictionaries, uh, on or ahead of the curve for the most part is behind the curve. Um,

So that might be why your group is outraged the pronunciation doesn't match theirs. Your group is ahead of the curve. Your group is contemporary. And it might be another 10, 20 years before Merriam-Webster catches up to your group. And that's okay. Well, Grant, I have a question. I'm looking at their entry online. And the first one listed is Aeoli. The second one listed is Aeoli. But

I mean, you always have to list one of the pronunciations first, right? Yeah. I mean, do you always assume that the first pronunciation listed is the best? That is not a word that dictionary publishers use. It depends on the dictionary, but generally the first one is, it's either preferred or more common. And more common is probably what you should assume.

So best isn't the word to use. It's not a judgment that we're looking at here, but preferred might be maybe safer is the better word. Hmm.

Yeah, so I guess it just boils down to consistency then. Consistency is huge. Yeah, and if a word appears multiple times in a book, you're almost guaranteed to get a correction if you use two different pronunciations. Right. Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Lovely, Rich. Thank you so much, my friend. Take care of yourself. Bye.

Talk to us, 877-929-9673. Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, my name's Pat McCrory, and I live in Muncie, Indiana, but I'm originally from Akron, Ohio, and I was calling to talk to you guys about, to ask you guys about JoJo's. JoJo's? Yeah, where I grew up in Akron, Ohio, and most places where you could get, like, chicken wings or pizza,

They have a side dish that's known as JoJo's. It's kind of like seasoned potato wedges, fried potato wedges. I've lived here in central Indiana for 20 some years now. And after, I don't know, five years or so, I thought, you know, I'd like to buy some JoJo's. And I realized JoJo's aren't a thing that anyone knows about here in central Indiana.

So when I heard your radio show, I thought, I wonder if they would know about the origin and how far JoJo spread besides Akron, Ohio, if they knew anything about JoJo. Yeah, JoJo Potatoes, J-O-J-O. Yeah, I could do with some of those right now. I mean, you were describing them as they're sort of like dipped in seasoned batter, right?

Right? And then fried up? I believe they're seasoned and fried. It's been 20 years since I've had a good JoJo. So are they the same as home fries to you? You know, when I think of home fries, I think more of like cubed fries.

fried or roasted or maybe pan fried. But maybe some people call them that. Yeah, well, Pat, there is a story behind this name JoJo, and we're usually spelling it J-O-J-O. And it has to do with the company that originally produced them, which was the Flavor Crisp Company, that was known for its seasoned coatings and marinades for frying up chicken and frying up fish. And

And we know about this story because of a wonderful researcher named Barry Poppock. And you can see a lot of his work online at BarryPoppock.com. Several years ago, Barry Poppock reached out to a guy at the Flava Crisp company named Brad French.

And Brad French told him the story of how back in the early 1960s, there was a restaurant trade show in Chicago. And so there were representatives of the Flavor Crisp company there, and they were frying up chicken and fish as samples to give out to people.

And in between frying the batches of chicken and frying the batches of fish, they would throw in a bunch of potatoes into the fat to sort of cleanse the flavor. And at the time, the sales representatives just thought of them as junk potatoes. Some of them called them junk potatoes, and they just threw them out.

But one day somebody put the potatoes on the table alongside the free fried chicken and people didn't know any better. They started picking them up and eating them and saying, oh, this is great. What do you call these? And the sales reps were like, well, we can't call them junk potatoes. So somebody apparently just blurted out, oh, they're JoJo potatoes. And that name stuck. And now you can find them everywhere.

in the northern United States.

A few other places. Yeah, Ohio, Utah, the Pacific Northwest. It's places where the restaurants did business with that company. They're the ones that picked up the idea of JoJo Potatoes. But apparently not Muncie. No, apparently not Muncie. I haven't seen it anywhere in Indiana. I've been outside, you know. I haven't only been to Muncie for the last 20 years, but I haven't noticed JoJo's other places. So that's interesting to know that they're elsewhere.

Yeah, if you look in the newspapers, just suddenly in 1962, restaurants start advertising JoJo potatoes. And they first start in Utah and Ohio. And then they start spreading and you start to see them in these other states. Then it's all about who did business with that one company. Isn't that interesting? Interesting. Yeah, that is great. Thank you for explaining that. They sound like a very indulgent treat. I get why that food item is kind of connected to...

comfort and home for you. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Well, it's related to home to Akron, Ohio for me. Well, it sounds like you've got an opening for a business opportunity there in Muncie. There you go. Yeah.

That's a great idea. All right. Thank you. Take care of yourself. Okay. Thanks, Pat. Bye-bye. Bye. You can call us with any language question, but if you've got a food and language question, boy, that's a plus. 877-929-9673. Email words at waywardradio.org. And we're all over social media. You can find all of our handles and nicknames on our website at waywardradio.org.

Hey there, you have a way with words. Hi, this is Matthew from Arlington, Texas. Yeah, excellent. Well, what can we do for you, Matthew? Well, I had a question about the word cool. So, as an older millennial, I've been describing things as cool basically since I could talk. But there's another sense of the word that I was curious about, which is describing a sum of money where

You know, someone makes a deal and they got a cool million off of it. Now, I'd never really thought about it. I'm not sure that I've ever, you know, heard anybody use that in real life. But I came across it in a kind of surprising place. So then catching up on some classics and in Great Expectations, the Charles Dickens novel, at one point the...

sort of the stepdad figure, comes into some money. And he describes it as a cool 4,000 pounds. And I thought that was interesting because Great Expectations was written in the 1860s. So I was curious about

Do those two uses of the word cool have anything to do with each other? And did one of them come first? Yeah, so they are related, but cool is complicated, just like hot is complicated, because these two very basic adjectives have been used in figurative ways so much in English that, of course, they're related, because they all go back to, we compare so many things to heat and cool.

You know, all languages, as far as I know, that I've ever studied, use them metaphorically or figuratively. And so, yeah, they're related. But I don't really want to get into all the meanings of cool because there's so many. We could be here for weeks talking about it. But I will say that there's one really interesting thing when we talk about cool language.

With relationship to money, we talk about a cool 4,000 pounds or a cool million. And that is, it emphasizes that it's significant. And it's also explaining that we're not exaggerating. So often when we talk about money, we exaggerate. We'll say, he won like a million dollars. And that word like in there indicates that we're probably rounding up.

But if we say he won a cool million dollars, we're indicating that he not only won a million dollars, it's probably more than a million dollars. And so it's saying he definitely won a million dollars and we're understating it. And that means it sounds even better than if we were exaggerating.

Right. That he walked away with. He walked away with it. Exactly. So it's a weird, interesting way of emphasizing because ordinarily we use hot to emphasize. But in this case, we're using cool to emphasize. Well, that is really cool. Thank you so much. Yeah. Hey, take care of yourself and call us again sometime. All right. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. All right. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.

Well, we know that you have been reading a book and you stumbled across a word just like Matthew did. And you're thinking, hmm, I never thought about the way that word was used. We'd love to talk with you about it. 877-929-9673. There's more A Way With Words on the way. Stay tuned.

When we are fired here.

See how you can save on wireless and streaming versus the other big guys at T-Mobile.com slash switch. Apple intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. You're listening to A Way With Words, the show about language and how we use it. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. We were talking earlier in the show about great opening lines in books, and I wanted to share a great opening first paragraph in a book that I read recently. Just sit back and listen to this one.

Perfume was the first to go, but I'd been expecting that. Scented detergent followed, then dryer sheets. I wasn't sorry to give up raw onions or hot sauce. Not adding extra salt was rough at first, tolerable for a bit, then miserable. When I went out to eat, everything tasted like it had been doused in brine.

Losing Listerine wasn't so bad. Replacing it with a rinse of citric acid solution and watered-down whiskey was. I went through a dark phase when I cut out coffee, but by that point I was used to being a little slow in the morning.

Daytime sobriety was ancient history, along with all hot liquids, the enamel on my teeth, and my Advil supply. Now, Grant, that's so puzzling, but you're also sucked into it, I think, by the sensuality of this. This is the beginning of a book called Cork Dork, and it's about learning to become a sommelier. It's by Bianca Bosker, and I just really liked it. Wow. Yeah, that's a setup, because you're like...

I mean, if you started the book, you know what it's about because of the title and you probably picked it. But still...

I have so many questions. I have to read on, right? Right. Yeah. And even that very first line, perfume was the first to go, but I'd been expecting that. Why did it go? Why were you expecting it? And as a writer, I can hear the hard work she put into that. She must have worked her tail off on those lines. Good for her. She did the job. She did the work.

Yeah, and Becoming a Somalier. I mean, it's a fascinating book. It's nothing that I would have set out to read, but I was hooked by that first paragraph. I always say I don't care what the topic is. If your writing is very, very well done, I will read you. Yes.

I wanted to share an opening line. This is a paragraph, but it's also a single sentence, and you will recognize it as soon as I start, but most people don't know it beyond the first few words. You ready for this? Yeah. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity.

It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. We had everything before us. We had nothing before us. We were all going direct to heaven. We were all going direct the other way. In short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received for good or for evil in the superlative degree of comparison only.

That's A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens from 1859.

Right. And you're right. What you usually think of is those first few words, but there's so much more. I mean, the guy was getting paid by the word, right? Right. Some of his writing does tend to be a little flabby. I feel so bad saying that about Dickens, who is a classic writer, but you can just tell he was padding out some of his paragraphs and some of his works. But still, it sets a scene. It just, it settles you into a chair, I think. I think that's what I'm thinking about.

There's a rhythm to it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. On the one hand, on the other. We want your opening lines from your favorite works. What's the words and sentences, the paragraphs?

that snagged you, that made you read a book or a series or fall in love with an author, 877-929-9673, words at waywardradio.org. Or if you're somewhere else and you want to talk to us a different way, there are lots of ways to do it. And you can find them all on our website, easy to get to, waywardradio.org.

Hello, you have a way with words. Hi, my name is Siri. I'm calling from Vermont. Hi, Siri in Vermont. What's happening? I have kind of a situation. I am an avid reader. I read every day various formats of books. It's really my go-to self-care, but I also make a big effort to read diversely and explore important social issues through my reading. My

to-be-read list has gotten to an unmanageable point. Oh, boy. We understand this. Yeah. And, you know, I looked at a

method of kind of paring down some of your reading lists with age and page number, but I'm fairly young and I want to broaden my horizons and still try a lot of different kinds of books. So I'm not sure what to do. Yeah, I could see that. Martha, what's your strategy? You and I have had more experience than Siri has, but

What do you do to manage that? Oh, this is such a big question. Well, I'm curious about Siri. I mean, how do you read? I read every morning, usually with a regular book. And then I travel a lot for work. So I also usually have at least one audio book going. Okay, an audio book. And what about electronic versions of books? Haven't tried any of that.

Yeah, I'm just always curious how people read because I think that a lot of times I feel like I have the same sense that you do that, you know, I mean, I mean, there's a reason that there are t-shirts out there that say so many books, so little time, you know, how do you make those decisions and then

I think I get hung up by feeling like I'm skimming. Like I really want to get through a book really quickly so I can get on to the next one. And do you have that sensation as well? Yeah. This year I felt that towards the end of the year. Like, am I, am I even giving these books the time and energy that I should? Yeah. Yeah. I feel sometimes like I'm racing and, and I don't think that that's doing the book justice because,

Have you read anything by Marianne Wolfe? No. She's a reading specialist and she recently wrote a book called Reader Come Home, The Reading Brain in a Digital World.

And she offers some reassurance there. I mean, if you're having a hard time reading deeply, which is what I've started to try to make myself do, you need to understand that our brains weren't meant to read. I mean, it's an unnatural act, right? I mean, you really have to discipline yourself.

To read if you if you want to read deeply. Martha, so you're saying she should add another book to her list? Is that what I heard? Yes. You know, Siri, I once heard this described as reading mortality, the dawning awareness that you will never read all the wonderful books.

And that there will be more wonderful books that appear after you are gone. But the thing about it is, that's true for all wonderful things. The animals and people we will never know, and the spring meadows we'll never see, and the stars we'll never count. And that's why we have spirituality and religion and belief and hope that there's something after this. And

I think for me, that's kind of what my reading list is. It's this reservoir of things that I have pre-chosen for me that is kind of this stockpile

of hope, the stockpile of wonderful things that I chose for me and that it's kind of predetermined to have a really high likelihood that there's something in it special for me. It's not like when you go to the bookstore and it's kind of too broad and too in specific. My reading pile was chosen by a past me and it's

pretty good. And so I kind of treat it like a bookstore or a used bookstore and I browse it with the same exact attitude that I do a bookstore and shop my own book pile. Great. You're making me think about how...

There are several people I depend on for recommendations. Some of them are our listeners. I'll get a recommendation here and there from various listeners, and I can usually trust what they're suggesting to me. I mean, do you...

Do you take recommendations from other people, Siri? It sounds like you're really trying to have a balanced diet of all kinds of different, you know, eating your vegetables, but also eating things that are really delicious. Well, vegetables are delicious, but, you know, like treats. Like, how do you pace yourself? Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's also been something I've thought about because I do have some great friends and professionals I take recommendations from. And I've kind of sampled my way through so many genres. I have narrowed it down a little bit to figure out what I like best, but it still leaves me such a broad selection. Yeah, being a book omnivore is hard, isn't it, Siri? Yeah, omnivore.

Yeah, but I think as Grant suggested, I think you're on the right track, just reading widely and figuring out what you like and narrowing it down that way. I mean, there are some kinds of books that I probably won't ever pick up again in my life, but I'm also learning what I really do like. There's another idea I want to leave you with, Siri, and the idea is that you are

curating a list that is yours. And I don't know if you share your list on Goodreads or somewhere else, or if you actually have physical books in your house, but I like the idea that that's yours and it's the Museum of Siri. And then whatever happens to you or that book pile, that you are making an archive of you.

That is a version of you. I like that. I like that idea. Oh, good. I'm glad that if we could help you a little bit, because I think mostly we're just saying we have the same problem. You're not alone. Yeah, it is very comforting to know I'm not alone. And, you know, thinking about it like any other experience in life, you just, you never can see it all and do it all. Right. And Siri, happy reading.

Thank you. All right. Bye-bye. Okay. Thanks. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

We had a voicemail from Rex Childhouse in Ramona, California, and he said he came across a word in his reading that he now uses all the time. He was reading The House at the End of the World by Dean Koons when he learned a word that he now applies when he walks his dog, and that word is snifari. Snifari, of course. Yeah. A dog sees the world differently than we do because their nose is this extrasensory layer.

Yeah, it's a combination of safari and sniffing. And as you suggested, Grant, a dog has many, many more sensory receptor sites than a human. And that's why a lot of dog experts will tell you, just let your dog go on a sniffari. Just sniff and sniff and, you know, don't necessarily have a root in mind.

because when they do that, they get worn out very quickly because their noses are doing so much work. So Rex now refers to those walks as snifaris. I call it checking the pee mail. Oh, I've heard you say that before. My dog checks his pee mail. Same thing. Well, you can send us Gmail, hopefully, and not pee mail to words at waywardradio.org.

Hi, you have a way with words. Hello, this is Suzanne and I'm calling from Tucson, Arizona.

Hey, Suzanne. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you? When I was little, probably I learned it when I was eight or nine, my mom used to say this one word, you know, kind of strung together series of words. And I've always asked other people if they've heard it, and I've never heard anyone else say it or recognize it. And so this is how it goes. Okay.

Will you won't you, can I coax you? Ah, come on, you said you would, you promised me. You think you might? Won't your mama let you, huh?

And what kind of context would she say this in? Yeah, what's happening when she says that? She just taught it to me maybe as we were doing some chore in the house or something like that. Okay, so it didn't really happen in response to an action. It was just a kind of thing to say in passing? Yeah, and I don't even know that my other family members knew about it.

I'm a book artist, and, you know, so words are really important to me as well as image making. And I made a little miniature book that had all these things in it. Oh, lovely. Things our mothers, yeah, things our mothers said. Will you say that again? What is the saying? Will you want to? How does it go? Will you want you? Can't I coax you? Oh, come on. You said you would.

You think you might? You promised me. Won't your mama let you, huh? Okay.

I think I've got that. All right. All right. I have it. I think I've got a source for you. No way. Well, first of all, if you search for variations on this, you're going to find a ton of them because this pops up in college yearbooks and high school yearbooks and newspapers and different places over the years. You'll even find a version of it in a 1968 song by the band Cream in their song, What a Bring Down. Ha ha ha.

You'll find it in military newspapers from the 1920s. But you'll also find it in Alice in Wonderland, a version that goes, will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? But older than that still...

is in the novel Dr. Thorne by Anthony Troll of 1858. There's a moment where the character Frank Gresham, who is the heir to Greshambury, and Mary Thorne, the niece of Dr. Thorne, they're talking and Frank confesses his love for Mary in an impassioned and somewhat desperate way. And he presses her for an answer about her feelings for him.

And he says, oh, Mary, do you love me? Don't you love me? Won't you love me? Say you will. Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, will you? Won't you? Do you? Don't you? Come now. You have a right to give a fellow an answer. And now I don't want to overstate the case.

But Anthony Trollope's novels were huge. And now this novel, Dr. Thorne, is part of this whole set of the Barsetshire series, which was set in this imaginary English county of Barsetshire.

And there's just all this complicated drama. It's basically the soap opera of its time from the mid-1800s. And these were widely reprinted in newspapers and magazines and widely read and quite influential.

And I believe that this ultimately is the source of this rhyme. Maybe so. Don't you love me? Won't you love me? Say you will, oh Mary, dearest Mary. Will you? Won't you? Do you? Don't you? Come now. You have a right to give a fellow an answer. And what's funny is the one in 1922 from the military newspaper is, Will you? Won't you? Can't I coax you? All go on. You said you would. Won't your mother let you?

Oh, that's the most similar. Yeah, and that's 100 years ago. How about that? Yeah. There's always this notion in there about getting the other person to consent to marriage or a dance or a date or a kiss or something like that.

Yeah, I'm looking at a newspaper from 1929 where somebody says this to their boss. Will you, won't you, can I coax you? Gee, I got to ask you soon. I know you could if you just would excuse me Friday afternoon. People have done all kinds of... That's a heck of a way to ask for a day off. Right?

I have to write new versions when I'm asking the favor. Yeah, that sounds like fun. Hopefully with your artistic style comes writing style. Yeah. Well, Suzanne, thank you so much for sharing your stories with us. Okay. Thanks a lot. All right. Take care of yourself. Bye-bye. Okay. You too. Bye. Bye, Suzanne. Bye.

Will you, won't you, can't we coax you? Oh, come on, you said you would call us. The number is 877-929-9673 or send your thoughts about language to words at waywardradio.org.

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877-929-9673. A Wayward Words is an independent nonprofit production of Wayward, Inc. It's supported by listeners and organizations who are changing the way the world talks about language. Although we're not a part of NPR, we thank NPR stations throughout the United States that carry the show. And special thanks to our nonprofits volunteer board.

Michael Breslauer, Josh Eccles, Claire Grotting, Meryl Perlman, Bruce Rogo, Rick Seidenworm, and Betty Willis. Thanks for listening. I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. Until next time, goodbye. So long.