Joining The Rainbow Joining The Rainbow

There are books that arrive with quiet dignity, and then there is Joining the Rainbow Joining the Rainbow by Tim Norwood, a title so determined it says itself twice, just in case the first rainbow did not fully take.

Published in 2008 by Lulu, which is itself a marvellous badge of slightly ungovernable literary independence, this is exactly the sort of book Crappy Old Books loves: a little mysterious, a little earnest, and just unusual enough to make you stop mid-shelf and think, “Well now I absolutely need to know what on earth this is.” That doubled title is doing tremendous work. It suggests emphasis, commitment, and perhaps the possibility that one rainbow alone simply wasn’t sufficient for the ambitions of the project.

And really, that is part of the charm. Joining the Rainbow Joining the Rainbow sounds less like an ordinary book and more like an instruction, an invitation, a slogan, or perhaps the sort of phrase you would find painted on the side of a minibus belonging to a very sincere movement in 1993. It has the glorious confidence of self-published work that has not stopped to ask whether the world is ready, because it has already gone ahead and printed itself.

Tim Norwood, meanwhile, deserves credit for understanding that blandness is the enemy. Plenty of books vanish into history with titles like Thoughts on Life or Selected Reflections. This one does not vanish. This one lingers. This one announces itself twice and waits for you to catch up. There is something rather admirable about that. In a culture built on timid subtitles and overexplained branding, here is a book prepared to be gloriously, repeatedly itself.

As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in good condition, which means the physical object has survived the years rather better than many more famous and heavily marketed volumes. It has made it from 2008 to the present with enough dignity intact to remain shelf-worthy, readable, and intriguingly browseable. That matters with a book like this, because part of the delight is in the object itself: a real-world survivor from the age when Lulu gave authors everywhere the power to say, “Actually, yes, I shall make this into a book,” and then do exactly that.

And that, in truth, is part of the wider romance here. This is not some corporate publishing committee’s idea of a market-tested product. This is a book that exists because somebody wanted it to exist. That is increasingly rare, and rather lovely. There is a wonderful democratic oddness to Lulu-era publishing: books appearing not because a boardroom detected a trend, but because a person had a thought, a plan, a manuscript, and sufficient persistence to shepherd it into paperback form. The result is often far more interesting than the polished, forgettable sludge that tumbles out of mainstream publishing by the tonne.

What exactly is Joining the Rainbow Joining the Rainbow about? Ah, but that is where the fun begins. A book like this gains power from its air of unresolved promise. It could be spiritual. It could be autobiographical. It could be visionary, uplifting, niche, eccentric, heartfelt, or all of these at once. It may contain wisdom. It may contain intensity. It may contain the sort of sentences that only truly independent publishing can give us: sentences that no editor dared to flatten into obedience. Whatever lies inside, you can be certain it was put there deliberately.

This makes it a particularly fine find for collectors of obscure modern paperbacks, self-published curiosities, offbeat spiritual or reflective works, and books that radiate a very specific kind of early-21st-century sincerity. It also suits anyone who enjoys owning titles that prompt questions from visitors. Few books can match this one for conversational potential. Put it on a shelf and people will notice. They may not know what it is, but they will notice, and that is more than can be said for a depressing number of Booker blurbs.

There is also a quiet irony in the fact that the repetition in the title makes the whole thing more memorable, not less. It feels like a printing error, yet also like a deliberate artistic statement. It hovers beautifully between accident and intention, which is a very rich place for a book to live. Is it emphatic? Mystical? Redundant? Brilliant? Quite possibly all four. Crappy Old Books refuses to rush to judgement when a title is this magnificently committed to its own atmosphere.

So here we have a good-condition 2008 paperback with no ISBN, a doubled title, a Lulu imprint, and exactly the kind of independent spirit that makes second-hand bookselling worthwhile. It is unusual without trying too hard, peculiar without apology, and memorable in a way slicker books can only dream of. Whether you are buying it to read, to collect, to puzzle over, or simply to enjoy the fact that it exists at all, it has already achieved something important: it has escaped the swamp of the forgettable.

Joining the Rainbow Joining the Rainbow is, in the end, less a mere book than a small printed act of determination. It stands as proof that somewhere, at some point, Tim Norwood had a vision, Lulu had a print queue, and the rainbow—apparently—needed joining twice. Crappy Old Books is delighted to pass this charmingly enigmatic survivor on to its next curious custodian.

Keep browsing: See more Religion books Other books by Tim Norwood