It took me so long to read this book that some of the photos I included in this post are from April, almost two months after I started reading the book.

I finished it at the end of July.

How good could it be if it took me so long to read?

Well, I was savoring it.

The Secret Lives of Color, by Kassia St. Clair, was featured a ways back on a podcast called 99% Invisible. I first got the book from the library, but when I had to return it before I was finished, I ordered a copy. My reading pile was so high all spring and summer, and so many books were from library, that I had to focus on reading the borrowed books.

So instead of reading the book straight through, I used it as a palette cleanser between other books. I would read a page here, a page there, then take a break.

A lovely cultural history of art and color, the book’s individual sections were grouped by color and shade. Each color’s story stood on its own, so it was easy to dip in and out of the book. The stories St. Clair tells were varied and interesting.

The author used color on the pages themselves to demonstrate the shades she refers to, with lovely effect. There’s also a color-coded index in the back, and a listing of other interesting colors not featured in the book, with little colored dots next to the name of each color.When you read this one, make sure you check the footnotes at the back of the book. While a good deal of them are just references to sources, sprinkled in among those regular entries are additional tidbits and background that aren’t to be missed.

Like the design book I read recently, I often read this at bedtime and struggled to see the colors with my Himalayan salt bedside lamp. I kept having to turn on my cell phone flashlight and inspect the colors on the edges of each page, comparing them to one another. It was a small inconvenience for choosing to read this book after dark.

One thing I didn’t like was that because of the format of the book, the author makes many visual references (such as mentioning the name of a painting), but does not include any images. Sure, adding images would have been distracting to the format of the book, and making sure the edges of the pages perfectly color-matched the artwork would have been a total nightmare.

This means you have a choice – you can have a browser window or phone close by to look up the things she refers to, or you can trust that you aren’t missing anything. And if William the Hippo is any indication, then not looking up St. Clair’s art references would definitely be a loss.I also offer you Isabella Clara Eugenia, the woman behind the color Isabelline. I had my doubts about the actual use of the word Isabelline as the name of a color, but when I searched for the penguins mentioned in the same story, I found this (if you click on it, it will take you to the source of the photo, a Nat Geo article): How did Isabelle, and her Isabelline penguin become connected? If heaven is the way I imagine it is, Isabelle must be eternally full of mirth over her legacy. You’ll have to read the book to find out why.

Besides having to look up the artwork St. Clair referenced, I only have one other issue with the book, and I’m afraid it’s pretty vague. I had the sense reading it that the book was … lacking a meaningful awareness of race. It didn’t seem to be an intentional choice, but the stories and colors chosen tended to revolve around a Eurocentric model. This isn’t universally true; many of the featured colors take the reader back to ancient civilizations around the world.

But after reading a LOT of books, you start to sense where the book is coming from, and this one could have been more conscious of race, as it was a book about color. I hesitate to even mention it, because I don’t have an answer for what exactly was missing that left me feeling that way.

Since I read it over such a long period of time, I can’t even provide an example of anything “wrong,” but it couldn’t go without saying. Maybe one of you will read it, too, and understand what I mean and be able to express it more clearly than I just did.Overall, reading The Secret Lives of Color was a treat, and the way it is written lends itself to being savored over a long period of time. It was a great book to read a few pages at a time, knowing I wouldn’t have to remember any plots, names, or places, if I picked it up again a few weeks later.

The background for my first photo is by Six. One of the things his preschool report card noted this past school year was that he needed more practice sorting. I did nothing about this recommendation, and yet he is now a total pro. I don’t know what the lesson is here, but the well-ordered crayons made the perfect backdrop for a book about color.