Saturday, January 16, 2016

Rainbow Reading

Our awesome library has started up its Cabin Fever Adult Winter Reading Club.  We have two months to curl up by the fire and read books (ah, if only life were really like that!).   This time one of the categories is “Color Me Reading” – we must read books with a color in the title. 

Nonplussed by that category, I went to Amazon and searched on the word “green”. 
The top result was

Green: A Field Guide to Marijuana

Not exactly my thing.  I decided to see what some of the top search results on Amazon are, for each color of the rainbow.

Red
Red: A History of the Redhead;
Books about Russians and cops

Orange
The top book is by a Japanese manga author.
Two prison memoirs: the famous “Orange is the New Black” and the related “Out of Orange.”

Yellow
Some fairly serious books –
Yellow Crocus, about a white child, daughter of a slave-owning family, raised by her enslaved wet  nurse;
The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, billed by one reviewer as “a collection of macabre short stories”;
a book on race relations in America;
a novel about civil war in Biafra, Africa;
a Holocaust novel for tweens.
Yellow is not for sissies!

Green
The aforementioned Green: A Field Guide to Marijuana;
Plenty of books about smoothies.  Green smoothies.  Blech.

Blue
There are four novels named Blue, including the top search result by Danielle Steel, to be released later this month.

Indigo
Five books about dye and textiles.
Four books about a type of personality, loosely defined as “a person with a warrior spirit, always questioning and challenging the ways of the world and has a strong sense of a higher purpose.”

Violet
Mostly children’s picture books.
Also two books in a series called “Mail Order Brides Stories,” including Violet's Mail Order Husband - A Clean Historical Mail Order Bride Story (Montana Brides Book 1).

* * * * * * * * *


It turns out that our library is so awesome that they even put together a list of much better books with colors in the title.  AND they have some of them available in Kindle format to borrow.  I’m so grateful!  Thanks, colorful librarians!

5 comments:

Patience_Crabstick said...

So, I guess everyone will turn up having read The Color Purple?
I'm scanning my own book list for color titles. You could try Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, but it's well over 1,000 pages. IIt's a good think your library is giving you suggestions!

The Crislers said...

I read "The Green Child" a few months ago, and although I loved the first third of the book, I soon became so confused I couldn't really enjoy the story through my bewilderment. I normally love genre-bending books, but this one was so whackadoodle my only conclusion was that the author started taking drugs about three-quarters of the way through and wrote the final pieces of the story in a shiny, chemical-induced haze. It's so well done, though, that I still feel like it's worth reading- just be prepared for frequent "WTF?" moments throughout.

Susan Jones said...

What an interesting idea - both the Cabin Fever reading group, and the color title thing . . . Well, I will say it, as probably everyone else is too polite to. You could try the Sixty Shades of Grey series . . . ha ha ha. Now, seriously, I will think about this. There is a wonderful movie called The Green Man, which I love. Surely that came from a novel . . . and a movie (ghost story) called The Blue Boy, with Emma Thompson, which Must have come from a book. Then, there's always Harold and the Purple Crayon. It's a classic that everyone should know and love. Well, I am out of smart ideas (but never out of a smart mouth!) so I will close for now. Will let you know if I think of or find any more . . .

Cassi said...

Hey, Good Reads actually has a list of books with colors in the titles! The Silver Chair, one of the chronicles of Narnia is on it, as is the Scarlett letter. Also the Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye, which is a great book.

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

Your post reminds me that I have Blue Like Jazz sitting on my to-read shelf in my bedroom.