Mama Squirrel's Reading List, and a decor game

Currently in the middle of:

Alton Locke, by Charles Kingsley

10 Philosophical Mistakes, by Mortimer J. Adler (I'm only up to the third mistake so far)

Plutarch's Coriolanus

Shakespeare's Coriolanus

The July/August issue of House Beautiful, which Ponytails and I amused ourselves with one evening by comparing it with a flyer from a local bed-and-bath store.  (House Beautiful itself isn't all that expensive, which surprises me.  Some of the vintagey decorating magazines cost twice as much, which is why I hardly ever buy them new.)  It's surprising how many of the same colours and patterns trickle down from the Billy-Baldwin-quoting decorators to...er...the rest of us.

One example: this rug.  It's between $50 and $400, depending on size, which isn't yard-sale price but isn't exactly designer either, right?  About average for new stuff.  Anyway, take a good look at the colours, the pattern, the size of the pattern.  Then flip through a current decorating magazine or fashion magazine, or a sale catalogue, and see where the same colours and patterns pop up again.  Might be a dress, a shower curtain, wallpaper.  I'm wondering what that does to our minds, having certain images (that most of us don't even notice) thrust at us from so many directions.  Do we eventually start dreaming in "splashes of red against a deep black and rich browns?"