Saturated Reads: The Museum of Intangible Things

A few months ago, I posted about how I wish more authors wrote using color in their descriptions, since I attach emotions and even characters to color. After some discussion on the comment threads, particularly with Kelley @ Oh! The Books, I was pointed to something called synesthesia, and I have a type that connects emotions with colors. Every Wednesday, I’ll pick a book or character, and show a palette of the colors I see or associate with the book/character. Basically, imagine the saying, “I feel blue,” but applied to the entire color spectrum. Hopefully that makes sense!

The Saturated Reads book for this week is… The Museum of Intangible Things by Wendy Wunder.

What colors do I associate with the book?

The first color I see is a dark gray, because the story is actually a lot darker than the real cover suggests. It’s dim and reading it is like you’re walking through shadows, trying to understand what’s really going on. And then there’s a muddy yellow – yellow is something I usually associate with happiness and joy – and the muddiness is for how distorted and convoluted the happiness the main characters are pursuing becomes.

Now the galaxy is a bit different for me (by the way, isn’t it cool?? I downloaded a free trial of photoshop elements and it kicks butt as far as the potential to really get the nuances of color and texture I’m searching for), and it’s far less prominent than the first two colors. It’s the very thin afterthought, and really only exists in the last few paragraphs of the whole book. Despite the gloominess of the story, the ending is bitterly hopeful, and the galaxy is intrinsically linked with the fates of the characters.

Does the cover match my colors?

Not at all! I thought I’d be getting a sweet, summery road trip between friends, but the true story is a lot darker and deals with some heavy subjects. So here’s what I did to fix it:

Instead of recoloring the whole thing, I thought that making it a bit more jarring would do the trick. It still has that semi-whimsical and not-quite-real quality that I felt from the book, but the boldness and fuzziness of the colors match the main issue of the book (bi-polar disorder) a lot better.

What do you think of the colors? Do you prefer the original cover or my remixed version?

If you have any books (or even characters!) that you want to see Saturated, leave a comment below! Check out my GoodReads shelf to see what I’ve read.