I really like those books. I should read them again. Lot of wisdom and a really good story.
Funny - usually I spell it "grey" but it popped out "gray".
To me, grey with an e is more a coolish grey, and gray with an a is a warmer gray.
I like cool grey myself!
Wow! I thought I was the only one who felt that implication...though I also feel that grey seems "richer" than gray--which seems lighter and thinner somehow. I wonder how these feelings became attached to these spellings. Is it because of feelings toward the English (who use the grey spelling) versus Americans (gray is the American English spelling)? (Note that in HTML, only "lightgrey" is spelled with the "e"...because it's inherited from the older, X11 list....which had similar inconsistency in spelling [e.g., "LightSlateGray"].)
There is a shade of gray/grey that I have encountered only thrice...in some fossilized coral from Florida, in a girlfriend's eyes, and in the clouds of a storm. When I saw that storm, 13 years after last seeing that lady, I wrote a poem about it...and I have questioned ever since if it were some other quality than the shade of gray/grey that I saw. It had depth, warmth, softness... I wonder if I will ever see it again (never have found similar coral samples), but I hope I do. No color chits from a paint store ever bore that "hue," though I have looked, in case it were really a blueish-gray/grey or something.
And that's why I ponder the terminology so.
"...a philosopher's curiosity with aestheic appreciation...such is a geologist, for geology is neither science nor art alone. --Thomas Eleri
I started reading LOTR when I was in high school in the early seventies. I've read it more times than I can count. Great books.