Colorstrology by Michele Bernhardt
| Colorstrology by Michele Bernhardt | |
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| Category: Reference | |
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Reviewer: Rachel Holmes
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| Summary: A fun little guide to birthday colours, based on a combination of astrology and numerology, suggesting ways in which specific colours can benefit you as an individual in your everyday life. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 432 | Date: April 2014 |
| Publisher: Quirk Books | |
| ISBN: 978-1-59474-691-8 | |
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First impressions of this book left me slightly worried that I would have little to go on to write any kind of helpful review; it was basically a little book of colour swatches, resembling something of a home décor paint guide. Flicking through, I saw that each page represented a day, allowing the reader to refer to their birthday to gain information relating to their character, rather like a horoscope. So all I had to go on was, effectively, a painting guide to star signs. With this is mind (and with fairly low expectations) I began reading from the beginning, refraining from jumping straight in to analyse my birthday characteristics.
Bernhardt's introduction to Colorstrology was very brief and lacked any real detail as to how the individual birthday colours are worked out. She mentions how Colorstrology combines astrology, numerology and the elements but doesn't explain why, when put together, they create one specific colour for a birth date. This seems to make the concept less credible, especially as we humans often need some sort of scientific proof for the existence of all things mystical. However, I continued reading Bernhardt's guide to using the book which explained the information presented on each page – personal colour, key words, personal profile and compatible birthdays. She also suggested different ways of using the system and benefiting from, not just your own colour, but monthly colours and colours of significant dates. This was quite refreshing as I had come to the conclusion that once I'd read my own personal profile (plus my other half to check for compatibility, obviously) the rest of it would be meaningless. So, armed with my background knowledge, albeit quite limited, I began looking up days.
Each page of Colorstrology has the same layout, which is easy to read, and the background colour is that of the day it represents in the year. The colour name is at the top of the page and these ranged from basic shades such as Dark Purple and Pastel Green to the slightly wacky Canyon Sunset and, my own colour, Turkish Tile. After a bit of research, I learnt that these are based on the swatches used by Pantone, a colour communications company. The three key words are under the header, followed by the personal profile and how your colour might benefit you. Compatible birthdays are listed at the bottom, however, these do not seem to correspond between dates. For example, my compatible dates were listed as March 28, August 12 and November 19, but none of these pages listed my birthday as compatible. Perhaps they are not all meant to cross-reference but an explanation of this would have been helpful. As for the personal profiles, I did find some of these quite uncannily true for various friends and family. Where star signs can be too general, these seemed to be more specific and tailored to the individual. As a test, I took the book out with me one night and asked everyone their opinion on each others' profile. Needless to say, I did get mixed reactions and individuals were more likely to agree with the positive aspects of their character! One particular aspect that I thought gave the book a unique feature, were the tear-out colour swatches at the back. These are designed to take with you as a reminder of your birthday colour and can be used when choosing items of clothing, house decorations or flowers, for example.
Overall, I found Colorstrology to be a fun, unusual, interesting little book, if a little lacking in background information about the concept. If the reader is able to keep an open mind and is willing to try experimenting with their birthday colour, this makes a nice little reference guide, not to mention a great talking point for next time you have friends round!
Thank you to the publisher for the copy of this book.
If this book appeals then you might also like to look at:
The Hidden Geometry of Life by Karen French
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You can read more book reviews or buy Colorstrology by Michele Bernhardt at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Colorstrology by Michele Bernhardt at Amazon.com.
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