Saturday, August 23, 2014

Petula Clark sings one of my favorite songs, "Color My World" and so does Kermit the Frog with "The Rainbow Connection" so it came as no surprise when Color: a Natural History of the Palette, by Victoria Finlay caught my eye on the shelf at the book store. What a great read it was! As it turns out, color (for dyes, and painting) can be very dangerous. Some were poisonous, some came from hard to access places (mines, before dynamite, etc). Some were so valuable that workers were searched every day when they left work. Many contained urine (there is one hysterical story about Londoners and the surrounding towns about this). The author goes on a world tour to find out the origins of colors, how they were discovered, created, and so forth, often times going in and out of war zones.

While Color was about paints and dyes, The Secret Language of Color: Science, Nature, History, Culture, Beauty of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue & Violet, by Joann Eckstut and Arielle Eckstut covers a wider spectrum of topics. There are chapters on the physics and chemistry of colors, of where the colors are found in nature, in animals, in the universe as well as paintings and dyes. Between the text and the pictures, you'll learn a lot!

On a recommendation from Constant Reader I read Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World, by Simon Garfield. I had no idea how important coal-tar was! Once considered waste material, it would be used to create something called a rain coat, ;-) in creosote on railroad ties, in medicines, and, (the reason for this book) dyes. Some of the colors still contained poison, causing rashes and other skin problems, and when used in sweets, making people sick. There was quite a bit of chemistry involved, obviously (!) which made it an excellent companion book to Color: a Natural History of the Palette.

The 'chemistry' aspect of Mauve brought to mind the Flavia books. Set in an old English manor house in 1950 the main character, Flavia de Luca, is an 11 year old girl who loves chemistry. (She especially enjoys poisons and taints her older sister's lipstick with poison ivy.) A dead bird, an old stamp, and a red-headed stranger sets the stage for the mystery in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first in the series by author Alan Bradley. A young adult read that is enjoyed by many of my friends, all of us 'a certain age'! :-)

Reading Hermit With Dog

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