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Stoned Audiobook by Aja Raden
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Title: Stoned
Subtitle: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World
Author: Aja Raden
Narrator: Justine Eyre
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
Language: English
Release date: 02-16-16
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 103 votes
Genres: History, World
Publisher's Summary:
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, glamour 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.
Critic Reviews:
"Stoned is an intriguing take on world history with plenty of adornment and anecdote to entertain us along the way." (Self Awareness)
Members Reviews:
Cringe-inducing, vapid, and self-conscious
I have been a passionate reader of gemology and jewellery history books since I was a young girl. At last count, the family library contained over 200 volumes on these subjects, and I'm always looking for new additions. I hoped this might become one of them, but I have rarely regretted reading a book so much.
Not only is there nothing new here, but the author intrusion is insufferable! When I began the book, I thought perhaps it would be personal and emotive in the style of Victoria Findlay's "Jewels." That would have been great. But sadly, the author is so in love with the sound of her own voice and trying to be cute that the information on gemstones is obscured.
Every few paragraphs there is a narrative-stopping heading such as, "Did the earth move?" and "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," and "Money, that's what I want." A little of that goes a long way and a third of the way into the book, I realized most of the author's random and meaningless observations are not worthy of a tweet, far less inclusion in a book. Even listening to the section about my favorite stone, emerald, was painful.
But Raden doesn't just mistake puerile and trite sound bites for wit. She is truly offensive in a great many things she writes. For example, Ferdinand and Isabella "Put the 'ick' in Catholic." Do you find this amusing? I wonder if her publisher would have thought it was a great idea to say, "Puts the 'ew' in Jew." I think not.
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Title: Stoned
Subtitle: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World
Author: Aja Raden
Narrator: Justine Eyre
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
Language: English
Release date: 02-16-16
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 103 votes
Genres: History, World
Publisher's Summary:
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, glamour 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.
Critic Reviews:
"Stoned is an intriguing take on world history with plenty of adornment and anecdote to entertain us along the way." (Self Awareness)
Members Reviews:
Cringe-inducing, vapid, and self-conscious
I have been a passionate reader of gemology and jewellery history books since I was a young girl. At last count, the family library contained over 200 volumes on these subjects, and I'm always looking for new additions. I hoped this might become one of them, but I have rarely regretted reading a book so much.
Not only is there nothing new here, but the author intrusion is insufferable! When I began the book, I thought perhaps it would be personal and emotive in the style of Victoria Findlay's "Jewels." That would have been great. But sadly, the author is so in love with the sound of her own voice and trying to be cute that the information on gemstones is obscured.
Every few paragraphs there is a narrative-stopping heading such as, "Did the earth move?" and "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition," and "Money, that's what I want." A little of that goes a long way and a third of the way into the book, I realized most of the author's random and meaningless observations are not worthy of a tweet, far less inclusion in a book. Even listening to the section about my favorite stone, emerald, was painful.
But Raden doesn't just mistake puerile and trite sound bites for wit. She is truly offensive in a great many things she writes. For example, Ferdinand and Isabella "Put the 'ick' in Catholic." Do you find this amusing? I wonder if her publisher would have thought it was a great idea to say, "Puts the 'ew' in Jew." I think not.