.. vim: ft=rst:

Victoria Finlay -- Color: A natural history of the palette
============================================================

Lots of shaggy dog stories -- entertaining, yes, but pointless.  At
the end of the first few such stories, I'd ask myself, so what's the
point?  Was I supposed to learn something here?  But, after a while,
I realized that there really wasn't much point or purpose to the
stories and I just tried to learn to enjoy them.

Suppose a naturalist showed you a beetle, and said, "Here is a very
interesting beetle."  And, you said, "Yes, quite interesting."  Then
he said, "And, here is another interesting beetle."  And, so on with
beetle after beetle.  After a bit, you're going to become
exasperated and say, "Enough beetles, already."  So, I say, "Enough
color stories, already."

This book contains lots of stories, loosely held together around the
subject of pigments and colors, and arranged into chapters on
individual colors: ochre, black and brown, white, red, etc.  Since
much of the book is about where colors, pigments, and dyes came
from, it reads like a book of travel stories.  If you enjoy travel
stories and stories about exotic times and places, then it's likely
that this is a book for you.

Much of it is informative, but I'm not sure that there is much of a
cohesive point to all these stories.  For someone like me, who has a
limited attention span and a limited capacity to absorb and retain
lots of facts, this book is a struggle.

If you want to know more about colors, especially where they come
from and, historically, where the came from, then this is the book
for you.  You will also enjoy this book if you enjoy learning about
strange, and not so strange, parts of the world and some of the
strange people in it.

I'm a bit color-limited (those of you who are rude call me
color-blind), so I was especially thankful that there was a chapter
on brown and black.  Those of us who enjoy drawings and sketches
will be interested to learn that even pencils and pens and ink was a
struggle to develop.

Like any other book, there are multiple ways to read this one.  One
way is to treat it as an (informal) reference work on colors.  For
example, I was recently able to view one engrossment of Magna Carta
at the Legion of Honor art museum in San Francisco.  The description
there mentioned that "iron gall ink" was used to write it.  So, I
looked up and re-read the section on that color in "Color".