I read The Road under similar circumstances (though the commute was more like ~30+ minutes on a stifling and oppressively densely packed underground train) - I felt numerous times that my vision, or my perception, or my perception of my vision, went from greyscale to vibrantly full colour when I looked away from my kindle to get ready to alight the train, and even in the grimy setting with the exhausted dejection of the commuters stuck where they didn't want to be, everything and everyone looked so optimistic and joyful and it all felt so, so happy to be in, compared to where I had been moments before.