Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones

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These are stories about rocks, it’s not a geological textbook, but I learned a hell of a lot on the way, mostly I learned how little I know about geology and how cool rocks are.

The content was also very interesting and fun to read, the stones really came to life through 2-3 page stories of their history. We are told of incredible creations and decorations, large and small, carved from these prized stones.

Journeying from granite and old red sandstone, rocks formed deep within the Earth's crust, to the moon rock samples that only recently revealed how Earth's only satellite was formed, and through the realms of art, myth, geology, philosophy and power, from the Stone Age onwards, Lapidarium is a dazzling, epoch-spanning story of humanity, told through the minerals and materials that have shaped us and inspired us.

Through the realms of art, myth, geology, philosophy and power, the story of humanity can be told through the minerals and materials that have allowed us to evolve and create. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I would have appreciated photographs of some of the wonders described - it would have been handier than having to use Google.In her fascinating book, Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones, Hettie Judah explores the hidden history of these lithic marvels, from their role in ancient cultures to their modern-day influences and uses. The moment I stopped reading, it literally left my head and I couldn't tell you a single thing that had been mentioned so far. Our advancement as a species came about by forging stone tools even now the Industrial Revolution was possible because of coal. In Lapidarium , renowned art critic Hettie Judah explores the unexpected stories behind sixty stones that have shaped and inspired human history, from Dorset fossil-hunters to Chinese philosophers, Catherine the Great to Michelangelo. It is visually stunning with very high-quality illustrations and an overall fantastic design of the book.

Judah doesn't pretend to be writing a true scientific work here, and I'm sure that a geologist would find this a very glancing overview here, but she is instead writing at the intersection of geology, history, art history, and philosophy.And though I read this book straight through from start to finish, this is absolutely the sort of bibliomantic tome that one might flip through at random, choosing a chapter based on mood or whim: learn a weird rock fact, let it lodge in your brain like a wayward pebble in your shoe, and allow it to guide your energies for the day. We are reminded of the brave men and women charged and challenged with unearthing these prized minerals often with little to no reward. Then electricity is brought up again (without the connection back to elektron) and we are taken through a jarring summary of the discovery of amber's properties with a profusion of unexplained quotes.

As a broadcaster she can been heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Art That Made Us. It is a series of essays, each with a different rock or mineral highlighted, that delves into history, geology, culture, or anthropology. It is split into six sections (Stones and Power, Sacred Stones, Stones and Stories, Stone Technology, Shapes in Stone, and Living Stones), and each section reveals a chapter devoted to unearthing an individual stone with imaginative, artful descriptions and a pretty wild, or wildly fascinating story connected to each stone. While the diversity of the stones and the geology are fascinating, what I particularly enjoyed was learning about the ways in which humans have used these stones, from the Malachite Room in Russia’s Winter Palace to the giant stone Medusa heads in the underground cisterns in Istanbul to the ‘meat stone’ that draws crowds in Taipei.

Het boek doet wat denken aan het boek van Kassia St Clair over kleuren , maar dan met bevlogen verhalen over gesteenten die toch wat deden nadenken Bv over de invloed van de prijs van de aflaten of over de PlayStation war , die de verhalen niet altijd even licht maken . Writing with humor, compassion, and wit (I cackled out loud more times than I can count), Hettie leads us sure-footedly on our craggy journey down a glittering path of 60 mineralogical eccentricities, ancient souvenirs of deep-Earth drama, and travelogues that cross the strata of time as well as space. The selections struck me as arbitrary, despite the author’s explanations as to why certain things belonged in one chapter rather than another. She has a great eye for the kind of story that's going to most appeal to the general reader, and provides a fascinating set of introductions to various objects and places: from Mongolian Deer Stones to Maltese Mother Goddesses to the Meat-Shaped Stone of Taiwan.