Tuesday, August 10, 2010

word nerd stuff

Okay, I am reading this book, The last days of Dogtown, by Anita Diamant.  I like the book, in some ways, and in others it is haunting.
This story has all types of people in it, and some of them I could really do without reading about.  Most of the time I like to keep my reading very very lighthearted--like oh darn she did not get the guy, but you know what, she did find a good purse on sale--not, the boy was orphaned and had to live at his aunt's whorehouse where he was a servant and was badly beaten, one day one of the men who frequented the brothel stole all of the boy's spare change he (the boy) had been stealing all his life.
The former is a happy escape for me.
The latter reminds me that there are truly evil people, and there are fiction writers who can come up with these vivid stories about true evil.
There are some aspects of this book that I like--some sweet moments, the way that Anita Diamant writes are two of them.
Other than those two, and my absolute inability to put a book down once I start (vamos, unless it is truly bad), there are not other good aspects of this book to me..the setting is utterly depressing etc.
Okay so back to the word nerdiness.  Here are two words that I found in this book that caught by eye:
Catarrh (cognate of the spanish word catarro, which means, 'cold' (As in I have a cold).
AND French Pox--which is a blame filled name for syphillis.
So in searching for these words --via google--I found a cool blog with interesting history facts, and I found out that the word catarro came from greek.

Fun word nerd facts for tonight.  Now, I am off to get some lighthearted chick lit to read in the bed! :)



oh, and maybe I will post some pictures...why not now? :)
The one of Elena and the Capri sun--she was putting the straw into the empty spot where her tooth was!
The calm water in the background in the one with Eva? --the sound, silly! :)
What is V-man pointing at --can you guess?  Based on the information in my last post?

1 comment:

Bethany said...

I know! Dolphinth! And a baby dolphin! Love the capri sun trick - I. is doing that too, and it is funny. I can {almost} remember that feeling. Sweet babies!

Spot on!

Spot is our family's chihuahua.  He is what we call, "an evil dictator/stuffed animal come to life".  Sometimes, after he has ...