pickKurin has two objectives: One is to trace the history of the gem, from its acquisition by Tavernier (I‘m related to him which is partly why I read the book) through its time in royal French and British circles to its transfer to the United States and its gifting to the Smithsonian. The second objective is to dispel the claims of a curse affecting the Hope‘s owners and explore the story of how the the curse claim evolved over the 20th century.
pick#ArtfulAugust Day 1: This one definitely #IncludesAMap. I don‘t know if it is because the protagonist is a young science genius and brilliant mapmaker that made me appreciate the novel, despite its daunting thickness. I find myself naturally gravitating towards stories of outliers, particularly those in the farthest-high-end of the bell curve. My review: https://wp.me/pDlzr-7rA
Weekend trip that has been filled with good food and museums! I managed to find a kindred spirit at the National Art Museum. #washingtondc #smithsonian
pickGreat children‘s book about the creation of the African American history museum!
I love that I figured out my library loans out coffee table books. This is a painting of my Ohio River, no wonder I was drawn to it! ☺️
#NovelNovember Update
🍁 Read The Last Story of Mina Lee. I wanted to know what was going to happen so I read this quickly!
🍁 Finished A Fool‘s Errand. This is such an interesting look into all aspects of creating the NMAAHC: staff, donors, artifacts, events, curators, architects, politicians, etc. I was moved by the founding director‘s stories and hard work in making this museum a reality.
This came in today! It‘s fantastic! #History #Smithsonian Did you know that it was James K. Polk who legislated the Smithsonian?
Day 6 of #owlsreadathonsnaps2020 Your favorite bookish map. I love #bookishmaps 📚 🗺️ I will buy a book just because it has a beautiful map! I have a decent collection of book maps, but the one that's my prized possession is my spell map from Universal Studios. *BTE, anyone else participating in the impromptu #magicalallnighter today? I'm reading The Breakdown and finishing up Circe! What're you reading?** #magicalreadathon2020 #owlsreadathon2020
pickGreat children‘s book about how to build a African American museum!
bailedDNF
Reads better than a straight-up text book. *But* it's hard to for me to fully embrace this when the author falls into the old-white-expert category. The introduction is written by an indigenous person explaining even though that the author is a white-guy, he really is a good-white-guy. Next time, I'll seek out an indigenious author. I might keep this now that I'm homeschooling. The illustrations and photos are valuable.
