Saturday Book Related Open Thread

(Posted by TheScythe)

Happy Saturday Book Clubbers all around the world! Fun stuff below the fold.  Inspired by Part 1 of Tangerine but having read is optional, with the exception that you won't know how cool the paraffin button really is unless you've made it to Chapter 7.  

​This is an 'Open Thread' meaning there is no such thing as an off-topic comment.

Setting.
Tangier is a major city in northwestern Morocco. It is on the Maghreb coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel.

Café Tingis and Cafe Hafa

Somewhat entertainingly poor quality video about Dean’s Bar, kinda.  Mostly jazz...

Bennington College in The Green Mountains of Vermont

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On the map of the world on the wall in your room, where have you been and where do you want to go? 

​I can relate to Lucy’s nerve-racking arrival in Morocco.  I was once travelling in Italia with my girlfriend at the time.  We were trying to catch a train and were running late. This can be hectic enough in your own home city, and it is probably just naturally more so when you are in a foreign country.  I think we were in Napoli trying to catch the train to Roma.  The train station has an entrance area and some booths for ticket sales and other services.   It takes forever and talking to three people in four languages in order to find where we pick up our pre-purchased tickets.  After that, we sprinted onto the platform and are trying to find which train is ours before it leaves, carrying a few heavy suitcases.  All stressed and bickering, we find the train and it’s about to depart.  We’re running like crazy to try to find what car we can get into and this short guy with a blue jacket and square grey cap comes up to us, looks at our ticket and motions for us to follow him quickly.  We chase after him and he grabs one of the heavy suitcases, takes us onto the train to our seats.  Relief!  He then holds out his hand, while still holding our suitcase.  I give what I thought was a tip.  He looks disappointed and makes it clear that if we want our suitcase back we will have to give him more.  Embarrassed, I shelled out some more money to get him to leave us alone and had to sit there while the late train didn’t depart for twenty minutes. Lesson learned -  always go slow in Europe.  
 
Anyway, some things travel books can’t prepare you for. But can you imagine the value of them back before it was so easy to get anywhere?
 
In Morocco by Edith Wharton
 
Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Chapter VII

“Tangier is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we have found foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always with things and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and so the novelty of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign—foreign from top to bottom—foreign from center to circumference—foreign inside and outside and all around—nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness—nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! In Tangier we have found it.”

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​I like Lucy because Lucy likes words.

(Lucy uses these words to try to describe her feelings for Alice and writes them down in her notebook.)
 
Affinity.  “A spontaneous or natural like or sympathy for something.  A similarity of characteristics suggesting a relationship.” - 
 
c. 1300, "relation by marriage" (as opposed to consanguinity), from Old French afinite "relationship, kinship; neighborhood, vicinity" (12c., Modern French affinité), from Latin affinitatem (nominative affinitas) "relationship by marriage; neighborhood," noun of state from affinis "adjoining, adjacent," also "kin by marriage," literally "bordering on," from ad "to" (see ad-) + finis "a border, a boundary" (see finish (v.)).
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Spelling was re-Latinized in early Modern English. Used figuratively in English since c. 1600 of structural relationships in chemistry, philology, geometry, etc. Meaning "natural liking or attraction, a relationship as close as family between persons not related by blood" is from 1610s.

Related Entries: Paraffin

paraffin!!! click that button!

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Similitude. (n.) COUNTERPART, DOUBLE a visible likeness (IMAGE) an imaginative comparison (SIMILE) correspondence in kind or quality; a point of comparison
 
Origin - late 14c., from Old French similitude "similarity, relationship, comparison" (13c.) and directly from Latin similitudinem (nominative similitudo) "likeness, resemblance," from similis "like, resembling, of the same kind" (see similar).

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​Inclination. (n.) A person's natural tendency or urge to act or feel in a particular way; a disposition.
 
"condition of being mentally disposed" (to do something), late 14c., from Middle French inclination (14c.) and directly from Latin inclinationem (nominative inclinatio) "a leaning, bending," figuratively "tendency, bias, favor," noun of action from past participle stem of inclinare "to bend, turn; cause to lean" (see incline (v.)).

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Covet. (Alice, about her feelings for Lucy.)
 
mid-13c., "to desire or wish for inordinately or without regard for the rights of others," from Old French coveitier "covet, desire, lust after" (12c., Modern French convoiter, influenced by con-words), probably ultimately from Latin cupiditas "passionate desire, eagerness, ambition," from cupidus "very desirous," from cupere "long for, desire" (see cupidity). From mid-14c. in a good sense, "desire or wish for eagerly, desire to obtain or possess." 

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petite. The word that comes to Lucy’s mind to describe Alice, a word she knows Alice would hate.

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Languid.  (How Lucy describes the air in Tangier.)
(Adj.) lacking in vigor or vitality; slack or slow: a languid manner. lacking in spirit or interest; listless; indifferent. drooping or flagging from weakness or fatigue; faint.
 
1590s, from Middle French languide (16c.) and directly from Latin languidus "faint, listless, and sluggish from weakness, fatigue, or want of energy," from languere "be weak, be fatigued, be faint, be listless," from PIE *langu-, from root *sleg- "be slack, be languid." Related: Languidly; languidness.

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Falsetto. 
 "artificially high voice," 1774, from Italian falsetto, diminutive of falso "false," from Latin falsus (see false). Earlier in an Englished form as falset (1707).

*It's important to note here the false in Italian is falso with an "s", not falce with a "c", which is a bad-ass m***** f***ing Scythe

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girl. (More than once Alice considers that girl is not the right word to describe Lucy, even in her Bennington years.  Youssef advises her not to be "that girl". I can’t help but think this is echoing John’s "those women".  The word girl has a really interesting eytomology:

c. 1300, gyrle "child, young person" (of either sex but most frequently of females), of unknown origin. One guess [OED] leans toward an unrecorded Old English *gyrele, from Proto-Germanic *gurwilon-, diminutive of *gurwjoz (apparently also represented by Low German gære "boy, girl," Norwegian dialectal gorre, Swedish dialectal gurre "small child," though the exact relationship, if any, between all these is obscure), from PIE *ghwrgh-, also found in Greek parthenos "virgin." But this involves some objectionable philology. 
 
Liberman (2008) writes: Girl does not go back to any Old English or Old Germanic form. It is part of a large group of Germanic words whose root begins with a g or k and ends in r. The final consonant in girl is a diminutive suffix. The g-r words denote young animals, children, and all kinds of creatures considered immature, worthless, or past their prime.

Another candidate is Old English gierela "garment" (for possible sense evolution in this theory, compare brat). A former folk-etymology derivation from Latin garrulus "chattering, talkative" is now discarded. Like boy, lass, lad it is of more or less obscure origin. "Probably most of them arose as jocular transferred uses of words that had originally different meaning" [OED].