The picture above proves that we had at least one sunny day this summer...or that we had a summer at all.
When the weather's continuously grey and depressive, there isn't much else to do but drink tea and read. I started Evelyn Waugh's Scoop some time ago because I had heard that it's a funny book - maybe even his funniest. Being a fan of Waugh's, I eventually picked it up - and have been making quite a slow read of it. Knowing his style, I wasn't expecting a silly laugh-out-loud romp ala Wodehouse, more that kind of book you can quietly smirk into.
I'm now halfway through and I've only smirked once or twice. It may be the weather, or perhaps my smirking muscles are suffering from paralysis - or it may just be the fact that I cannot in any way relate to the book. Basically it's a story of a gormless English squire who is sent to the heart of Africa to cover a local civil war for a newspaper called The Beast. My biggest problem with the narrative is that it isn't particularly subtle when it comes to depictions of the natives (or any other Others for that matter).
Anyhoo, the reason I brought up the book was actually an etymological discovery it helped me to make. What sparked this sidestep toward the OED was the phrase "a heap of crapulous black servants". Having only a faint notion of what might be going on, I looked up 'crapulous' . Turns out that like the Finnish word krapula (a colloquial term for hangover), it originates from the Greek word kraipale, 'drunken headache'. In Latin, the word is crapula, from which comes the English term for inebriation, crapulent, and its adjective form crapulous.
And yes, I am very easily amused.
When the weather's continuously grey and depressive, there isn't much else to do but drink tea and read. I started Evelyn Waugh's Scoop some time ago because I had heard that it's a funny book - maybe even his funniest. Being a fan of Waugh's, I eventually picked it up - and have been making quite a slow read of it. Knowing his style, I wasn't expecting a silly laugh-out-loud romp ala Wodehouse, more that kind of book you can quietly smirk into.
I'm now halfway through and I've only smirked once or twice. It may be the weather, or perhaps my smirking muscles are suffering from paralysis - or it may just be the fact that I cannot in any way relate to the book. Basically it's a story of a gormless English squire who is sent to the heart of Africa to cover a local civil war for a newspaper called The Beast. My biggest problem with the narrative is that it isn't particularly subtle when it comes to depictions of the natives (or any other Others for that matter).
Anyhoo, the reason I brought up the book was actually an etymological discovery it helped me to make. What sparked this sidestep toward the OED was the phrase "a heap of crapulous black servants". Having only a faint notion of what might be going on, I looked up 'crapulous' . Turns out that like the Finnish word krapula (a colloquial term for hangover), it originates from the Greek word kraipale, 'drunken headache'. In Latin, the word is crapula, from which comes the English term for inebriation, crapulent, and its adjective form crapulous.
And yes, I am very easily amused.
