Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson [Kindle, Amazon]

This book was recommended a long time back by my son’s 3rd grade teacher, it sat on my Amazon Wish List for a couple years until I took the plunge.

It’s a rollicking coming-of-age tale of dysfunction in a young girl’s family, growing up in California with a desire for Fame. It has hints of the flavor of A Confederacy of Dunces, filled with eccentric characters and odd life choices. I enjoyed the story even if the characters were only marginally relatable to me.

The writing was engaging, though, and this was odd, there were an unusual number of typ-os in the Kindle version. Not misspellings, but random character errors that any spellchecker would have flagged. (e.g., “tbe” instead of “the”). Was this an amateurishly produced book, or was there corruption in the digital copy? I’ve never run across that before.

Regardless, I recommend the book if you’re into… I dunno. Dunces, maybe. It sort of reminds me of The Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen a bit. Maybe the Moon? Bits and pieces of those, I guess.