Top Ten Books with Colours in the Title (Plus! A Lot of Really Bad Colour Puns)

It’s Top Ten Tuesday time again. Because today’s prompt was delightfully open to interpretation, I decided to think long and hard about how I could be creative with it.

But after about two minutes of strained cogitation I decided that was too difficult, so I just combed through my Goodreads list until I found ten books with colours in the title. So here they are. Forgive me if my choices come a little… out of the blue. I hope I won’t come out of this too red-faced. Then again, I’ve always been a bit of a black sheep.

(WARNING: there will be a lot more of this. I make no apologies. I’m just showing you my true colours.)

Top Ten Books with Colours in the Title

Gold

1. The Golden Bough, by James Frazer

Added to my TBR list on the basis that I don’t have enough multi-volume works of Victorian nonfiction on there, making Frazer’s book a golden opportunity to become more familiar with it. (Still not sorry.)

Black

2. Black Cats and Evil Eyes, by Chloe Rhodes

I read this short collection of superstitions recently, but lacked the drive to actually review it. If only reviewing a book were a black and white business…

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3. Black Rock White City, by A. S. Patrić

A two-for-one here. Given to me by my sister several years ago on the basis that I’m interested in books from the ex-Yugoslav diaspora and also… rocks, I guess? Still sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.

4. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West

Another two-for-one title, and another book I feel extremely bad about not getting around to, my only excuse being that it’s over a thousand pages long and I still haven’t managed to finish watching the last season of Orange is the New Black.

(Incidentally, do I get extra points for citing a TV show with colours in the titlle? :D)

Red

5. Dream of the Red Chamber, by Xueqin Cao

Ok, so I genuinely feel bad about not having re(a)d this yet (Ok, I think I’m getting a little out of control…), as supposedly it’s one of the best novels in the history of Chinese culture. Plus, you have to admit that “the red chamber” does suggest to the reader that the content is a lot more salacious than the blurb promises. So I honestly don’t know why I haven’t got to it yet.

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6. The Red and the Black, by Stendhal

I know for a fact that there is some salacious stuff in Stendhal’s famous novel, so despite my deeply ingrained suspicion of French novels, which I seem to have absorbed through voracious and sustained reading of British literature over the years, I will definitely be getting to this book at some point in the near future.

White

7. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith

I know, I know, I must be one of the few people on the planet who’s yet to read any Zadie Smith. I could say that I’ve planned to read it for two summers now, but that would be a white lie.

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Green

8. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by an anonymous author

This book has stuck in my memory, not only because I love Arthurian legends and this bad boy is the Real Deal, written in the actual Middle Ages, but also because we studied it at uni and had to read the original Old English. Oh, yeah. I’m not green when it comes to Old English poetry.

9. Under the Greenwood Tree, by Thomas Hardy

Green is not the colour I usually associate with reading Thomas Hardy, unless it’s the green of the envy that I feel for people who are not currently forcing themselves to read Thomas Hardy. Look forward to a review full of… colourful language.

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10. The Girl Green as Elderflower, by Randolph Stow

This is one of the few books from this list that I’ve actually read rather than promised myself I would read. And despite not feeling a particular enthusiasm for Australian authors in general, I’ve got to admit, although I do feel rather – last one, I swear – green about the gills in doing so, that this book is really rather excellent.

There you have it. Congratulations if you managed to make it all the way to the end of this post. I honestly don’t know how you did it. Colour me impressed.