***The Add-a-Little-Color-To-Your-Reading Challenge for November & December

In one last minor brainstorm for the year, I thought we might enjoy a light challenge, something relatively easy, for the end of the year so here it is:

For November or December, read a book that has the word color/colour or any individual color words in the title. Thus Colour by Rose Tremain qualifies, as would The Seine was Red, How Green Was My Valley, The Yellow Wallpaper, Your Blue-Eyed Boy, White Queen, The Color Purple,Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Black Water and so on.

We did this in a theme reading group back at the bookstore ages ago and it worked out pretty well. It allowed everyone to read whatever kind of book they wanted and still participate.

This will be perfect for me to finish reading Le rouge et le noir by Stendhal by the end of the year. I had to put it down when I was halfway through it earlier.

Fun! I was going to read Lemon by Cordelia Strube soonish - can it count as a colour, since lemon is a shade of yellow? :)

If not, I have White Teeth, The Red Tent, and Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West

See, it's easy, isn't it? I finished typing this and thought I might check some of the various TBR piles in the room I was in. Right on top of the first pile I spotted The Black Mirror.

I think any word that is being used as a color in the title qualifies, but I'm not going to patrol that:-)

And now that I think about it I've been reading Ryu Murakami's Almost Transparent Blue for a little while now and will be reading it till the end of the year and probably a little onward. Since I'm reading it in the original Japanese it's not something I'll finish anytime soon but I can state my progress.

I basically try to spend two hours at least every other day studying the Japanese out of this book which means completing about 2 to 3 pages at a time.

So far I'm on page 26 out of 159!

Hmm. I will have to give this some thought. The only book with a color in it in my "Hope to Read Soon" collection is Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, and I know I'm not going to get to that tome this year. Of course, I just might have to buy something . . .

Lot of choices here:

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthrone
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle by Matthew Klingle
The Golden Bowl by Henry James
The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams - though it's the third in a series I haven't started yet

Possible cheats:

The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

GREAT idea! I'm down for Eye of the Red Tsar.

Sounds like the perfect excuse to read Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey sooner, rather than later!

(Other possibilities from my unread pile: The Woman in White. White Apples, Black Sun Rising, The Black Company, and maybe A Passion for Mars: Intrepid Explorers of the Red Planet and Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red Planet, depending on how one feels about subtitles. Or Mars.)

I just realized I also have The White Castle and could read it for both this and the Reading Globally Turkish theme read. Now I just have to find it!

The Woman in White is tempting me to a reread...

>11 atimco: I just downloaded The Woman in Black on audio :-)

Great idea! I was planning to read White Coat Black Hat: Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine. Let me see what else might fit...

I can knock 8 books off the TBR list with this challenge!

Blue Aubergine, Yellow Wallpaper, Shades of Grey, Bluebeard's Egg, The Golden Bowl, Blacklist, Hackney, That Rose Red Empire and Novel on Yellow Paper.

12: oooh, that looks like a good one! *wishlists*

Two story collections appeal most: The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa and a half-cheat, Olive Kitteridge.

Right, I forgot about Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire! I haven't gotten very far into it, and could put it off until next month.

Nice reading challenge idea.

The Colour of Magic for anyone wanting to try a Terry Pratchett for the first time (are there any such people left in the world?...). It's Discworld book 1.

Simon Garfield Mauve: how one man invented a colour that changed the world about early dye manufacture in Victorian Britain. Sciencey and interesting.

I am going to put Phillip Ball Bright Earth: the invention of colour as I have it but haven't read it yet.

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I have The Bluest Eye to read in November. It will be my first Toni Morrison book.

Hmm... looks like I'll have to read my copy of Black Rain or Black Water , perhaps both in the near future.

Does quite make it into November, but I finished Black Mirror by Gail Jones. It was her first novel, after several collections.

I just jumped the gun a bit, myself, finishing Shades of Grey while still in October. Very strange book, even by my SF-loving standards, but entertaining.

I'll read something black or white in November.

If I can find my copy of Black Lamb and Gray Falcon I'm going to take that on. I suspect I won't find it in time, though, so my book will be Dream of the Red Chamber. tomcatMurr has said of the latter that it is tedious, though, so I may abandon it. I'll be starting as soon as I finish The Brothers Karamazov which'll be within a couple of days.

Robert

I found something to say about Eye of the Red Tsar in my thread...post #90.

All right, I did finish Jonathan Carroll's White Apples. I guess I'll copy my review of it here:

Vincent Ettrich thinks he's just living his normal life, until he realizes that he's already died. And that the woman he's seeing may be something other than human. Then he finds out his other girlfriend -- the one who really matters to him -- is pregnant. With a baby who talks to her. And from there things get really strange.

Jonathan Carroll's writing has this amazing dream-like sensibility to it, a feeling of being based in dream logic, that is simultaneously fascinating and frustrating. It's imaginative, well written, and full of rich symbolism, and yet, I have to admit, halfway through I found myself muttering, "Could you just explain what the heck is going on now, please?" But then, of course, whatever explanations and resolutions we're given are also mystical and dreamlike. I appreciate what Carroll's doing here, I think, but it's hard to say for sure whether it really works for me or not. I think I may be a little too attached to real-world logic to appreciate it completely.

Also complicating matters is the fact that I never could quite decide whether I liked any of the characters or not, particularly the main character. His attitudes towards women range from disgusting to oddly touching, and, disturbingly, it was sometimes difficult for me to decide which was which. Which is not actually a bad thing; it makes for complex and human characterization. But it certainly did not help me feel any less conflicted about the novel as a whole.

Rating: 3.5/5

I am reading The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa.

I've recently finished Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde and Blue Aubergine by Miral al-Tahawy - reviews in my thread.

Now I'm struggling with Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith.

I just finished reading Born On a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. If you can forgive a little less than excellent writing, you'll find a fascinating story.

This is the autobiography of a young man who has syneasthesia, Asperger's, and savant syndrome (the form of autism made more well known in the movie "Rain Main"). The most engaging part of this book for me was learning how Daniel decided to try to understand how "others" live and finally finding his place in "our" world. I would recommend this book for anyone who'd like to understand what ultimately makes people "different" and who want to develop empathy for those who might otherwise be "alone" in the world, at leat the way the majority of us see it.

Having spent the morning reading, I have now finished The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa. Like several of my favorite novels by Vargas Llosa, this one mixes characters, past and present, and conversations and actions not only within the same chapter, but even in the same sentence. I thought I had gotten the hang of reading these books, but I was confused throughout much of The Green House, one of Vargas LLosa's earliest works, and still, having finished it, feel I would have to go back to the beginning and reread it to grasp it more fully.

As far as I can tell, there are several major plots and themes: the exploitation of the environment and the varied indigenous peoples of the Peruvian jungle by white people, including rubber traders and the Catholic church; the exploitation of women by men, including in the Green House, the first and legendary brothel in a desert town; the contrast between the desert and the jungle; the lushness and power of nature in the jungle; corruption and innocence; and the power of music. How all this fits together, in the end, eluded me, although I enjoyed a great deal of the writing and wish I understood this book better.

I am now up to about 500 pages into Black Lamb and Gray Falcon and thought it might be time to start talking about it here. Soon I will be half way through it. The black lamb has made its first appearance, but little has been said about it.

Despite the monochromatic title, the book is full of color. The grand writing of Rebecca West can all by itself be called colorful, and what she describes she describes heavily in color: clothes, the landscape, buildings; there are lots of blue flowers. The connivances and politics of the various races can at a distance be called colorful, too, I think, tragic though they were at the time.

I think West's admiration of some things and detestation of others might be a little breathless, but this is lovely reading.

Robert

I"ve had Black Lamb and Gray Falcon on the TBR for years; at this point, I think it will be well into next year at the earliest before I tackle it, as there are other nonfiction books I want to read first. Maybe it would be a good tome for next summer.

I've finished and reviewed Blue Lightning by Ann Cleeves. It was wonderful. It's in my thread...post #208.

I neglected until now to mention here that I have finished Black Lamb and Gray Falcon and found it a special experience. I have The Dream of a Red Chamber by my bed; time will tell whether I actually read it.

Robert