Growing up, my family’s idea of a vacation was to drive all day, see the local sites, find a cheap motel, repeat. Understandably, Burma Shave was a rare treat so the kids in the back seat filled in with observational games. This was when finding out-of-state license plates was a classic (first time we went to Reno it blew my mind) or the uneven alphabet game where the letter “Q” provided hours of disappointment long before the Game Boy.
But there was a lesser known game, based on a popular song I believe, that had us looking for red cars and the high-scoring yellow convertible. I know it’s been a long time since cars came in colors other than shades of black and white with a touch of beige (yes, there were blue and green but they were so dark they easily passed for black) but when I was growing up they even had three-toned cars: pink, yellow, and gray was a popular combination
I want more color … more fun!
Back when I was fooling around with photography, one of the specialty magazines suggested an exercise to pick a single color and create a photo-montage spotlighting that color. The example given was “yellow” and the different photos showed taxicabs, Yield signs, fruit stands, various dresses, flower gardens, etc. I loved the idea but as a photographer was way too shy to pull it off. Back then each photo was a commitment; nowadays people with smart phones take hundreds of pictures without concern for the subjects’ privacy, the cost of film or developing, the esthetics of the pose. or the quality of the composition.
So my suggestion is to bring back cars with real colors and to re-do the photographic essay on a single color in a digital age.
And also consider whether any of these titles suggested last month are looking good.
- 07-01-23 – The Late Americans — Brandon Taylor
- 07-02-23 – Raintree County — Ross Lockridge Jr.
- 07-03-23 – All Maps Are Fiction — Clyde Witt
- 07-04-23 – The Garden of Seven Twilights — Miguel de Palol.
- 07-05-23 – All Souls — Javier Marias
- 07-06-23 – Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI — David Grann
- 07-07-23 – Crank — Ellen Hopkins
- 07-08-23 – All I Did Was Shoot My Man — Walter Mosley
- 07-09-23 – Fatherland — Burkhard Bilger
- 07-10-23 – Manhunt — Gretchen Felker-Martin
- 07-11-23 – Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir — Jane Wong
- 07-12-23 – Ghost Wall — Sarah Moss
- 07-13-23 – Heart Sutra — Yan Lianke
- 07-14-23 – On Gold Mountain — Lisa See
- 07-15-23 – How to Love Your Daughter – Hila Blum
- 07-16-23 – City of Quartz — Mike Davis
- 07-17-23 – The Chinese Groove — Kathryn Ma
- 07-18-23 – The Los Angeles Plaza — William D. Estrada
- 07-19-23 – House of Cotton — Monica Brashears
- 07-20-23 – Text and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll — Simon Warner
- 07-21-23 – A Flaw in the Design — Nathan Oates
- 07-22-23 – The Lost Wife — Susanna Moore
- 07-23-23 – Independence Square — Martin Cruz Smith
- 07-24-23 – Sister Outsider — Audre Lorde
- 07-25-23 – The Vegan — Andrew Lipstein
- 07-26-23 – Loot — Tania James
- 07-27-23 – Greek Lessons — Han Kang
- 07-28-23 – The People of Paper — Salvador Plascencia
- 07-29-23 – Messalina: Empress, Adulteress, Libertine: The Story of the Most Notorious Woman of the Roman World — Honor Cargill-Martin
- 07-30-23 – Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology — David L. Ulin
- 07-31-23 – Once Upon A Prime:: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature — Sarah Hart
A Celebration of Reading 