We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange, a multitype system serving all types of libraries. We are here to help you find new books, for yourself or for your library.
This season we are moving through the state of Minnesota, looking at an interesting fact about each county and giving you a book prompt from that fact. We will share six book suggestions to meet that prompt, to get you started on reading new books. You can also take that prompt and find any other book to meet the challenge!
Blue Earth county is named for deposits of blue-green clay once evident along the banks of the Blue Earth River. To celebrate this county, this week you can read a book with jewelry.
We give you links to each of these books on our show notes page, taking you to Amazon.com. If you click on any of them, and buy anything at all – including a nice book – Amazon will send us a small percent of the profits they made on these sales. Thank you for supporting CMLE!
Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World, by Aja Raden
As entertaining as it is incisive, Stoned is a raucous journey through the history of human desire for what is rare, and therefore precious.
What makes a stone a jewel? What makes a jewel priceless? And why do we covet beautiful things? In this brilliant account of how eight jewels shaped the course of history, jeweler and scientist Aja Raden tells an original and often startling story about our unshakeable addiction to beauty and the darker side of human desire.
What moves the world is what moves each of us: desire. Jewelry—which has long served as a stand-in for wealth and power, glamor and success—has birthed cultural movements, launched political dynasties, and started wars. Masterfully weaving together pop science and history, Stoned breaks history into three categories—Want, Take, and Have—and explains what the diamond on your finger has to do with the GI Bill, why green-tinted jewelry has been exalted by so many cultures, why the glass beads that bought Manhattan for the Dutch were initially considered a fair trade, and how the French Revolution started over a coveted necklace.
Studded with lively personalities and fascinating details, Stoned tells the remarkable story of our abiding desire for the rare and extraordinary.
The Cartiers: The Untold Story of the Family Behind the Jewelry Empire, by Francesca Cartier Brickell
The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men’s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world’s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry.
Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family’s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more.
The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm’s most iconic jewelry—the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces—and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor.
Amber Beach (The Donovans Book 1), by Elizabeth Lowell
Honor Donovan is a shrewd businesswoman, yet she has been shut out of Donovan International, international jewelers, by her father and four brothers. When her favorite brother Kyle vanishes, along with a fortune in stolen amber, Honor’s questions are ignored by the Donovan males. Defying them, she heads to the San Juan Islands of the Pacific Northwest in search of answers.
Honor needs a guide because she knows nothing about running a boat — and she knows nothing about Jake Mallory until he answers her ad. One of the things she doesn’t know is that Jake is much more than a fishing guide. Until Kyle disappeared, Jake was brokering amber deals in the Baltic for Donovan International. Honor is completely unaware of the old wars, new politics, greed, and stolen amber that have lured ruthless, high-stakes players from around the globe.
Jake wants no part of the intrigue, or of a Donovan woman in his life, but he suspects the Donovans have set him up to take the fall for Kyle’s treachery. The way Jake sees it, some Donovan is going to pay for his troubles, it just may turn out to be Honor
Jake and Honor cast off on a journeys moldering with distrust, betrayal, vengeance… and temptation. A hunger grows between them that is as dangerous as the secrets they keep. Alone at sea, they pursue the stubborn mystery of the Amber Room, flee from relentless enemies, and fight against trusting each other. Yet when Honor and Jake dare to confide in one another, they face a final truth: the penalty for betrayal is death; the reward is a lifetime…together.
Bead on Trouble: A Kitzi Camden Mystery, Book 1, by Barbara Burnett Smith
Meet Kitzi Camden, former stateswoman. When she retired, Kitzi dreamed of doing what she loves best–beading. She certainly didn’t plan to try her hand at amateur sleuthing. But lately, trouble seems to find her wherever she goes–even deep into the woods.
When a young beader is killed at a beading retreat, Kitzi is faced with almost as many suspects as there are beads in her bag.
Andrew Grima: The Father of Modern Jewellery, by William Grant
The father of modern jewelry, the golden engineer, the King of Bling… These are just some of the epithets assigned to Andrew Grima, the British genius who marched in the vanguard of a 1960s London-based movement that created a new vocabulary for jewelry design.
Jeweler to the royals and the jet set, to the rule makers and the tastemakers, Grima was a feted celebrity who appeared on talk shows, in Pathé newsreels and in advertisements for Canada Dry. He won The Queen’s Award for Export, The Duke of Edinburgh’s Prize for Elegant Design and a record 11 De Beers Diamonds International Awards (the ‘Oscars’ of the jewelry world).
This book illuminates the career of a man who participated in a golden age of British creativity. It contains a dazzling array of never-before-seen sketches, designs and photographs from the Grima archives and includes a sparkling preface from the doyen of jewelry experts, TV celebrity Geoffrey Munn. A must-buy publication for art and jewelry lovers alike.
Diamond Jewelry: 700 Years of Glory and Glamour, by Diana Scarisbrick
Diamonds have long symbolized political power and authority in Europe. This book explores the individuals who commissioned and wore extraordinarily precious diamond ornaments from the mid-fourteenth century to the present day.
Exquisite paintings and breathtaking photography highlight the diamonds of figures as enduring as Louis XIV of France and Queen Elizabeth I of Great Britain, as well as screen icons such as Elizabeth Taylor. From Lisbon to London and Stockholm to St. Petersburg, these figures used diamond jewelry to reinforce their power. Like royal dress, diamonds were worn to dazzle and impress―at weddings, coronations, christenings, and state visits―and were presented as gifts, which often proved remarkably successful as instruments of diplomacy.
More than three hundred illustrations capture the changing styles of diamond jewelry that mirror the trends of the time: late Gothic naturalism, the culture of the Renaissance, Baroque splendor, Rococo elegance and the imperial grandeur of the First and Second Napoleonic Empires. This book offers a fascinating overview of one of the world’s most iconic gems.
CONCLUSION:
Thanks for joining us! We’ll be back next week with a look at the next county and the next book prompt!