Miscellany – August 2007

It is coming to mid-August and I shall soon be forty. So before I am over the hill, here are August's readings.

1. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's The Book of the Dead: That peculiar FBI Agent Pendergast and the equally odd version of the New York Museum of Natural History are back again. This particular caper is a bit too far-fetched even for me, but it is certainly an excellent summer thriller, with ancient Egyptian curses (really) and something almost like The Night of the Living Dead but with better sound effects.

2. Dave Freedman's Natural Selection: Does a good job of making natural selection look really really unnerving. It's a lot like the Flying Piranha movies (believe it or not, this was a James Cameron effort) but somehow less dramatic. And despite the gloriously monstrous protagonist, it doesn't beat that old Benchley classic, Jaws.

3. Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind: An excellent Gothic novel set in Barcelona. Walled-up ladies, death in gruesome and effective ways, burning books (argh argh!), love, romance, teenage angst, adult terror, brutality, cruelty and beauty... ah, this one has to be read in one sitting. It is a lot like the Captain Alatriste books by Pérez-Reverte, but much grimmer and sadder.

4. Walter Moers's Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures and The City of Dreaming Books: Both are entertaining reads, although Rumo is a lot less entertaining than the author's Captain Bluebear and has a bit less character. The romantic theme is a lot more powerful though, and Rumo as a bit-player in the earlier book is properly fleshed out here. City is altogether a different kettle of fish. It is claustrophobic and peculiarly inventive, almost like a cartoon version of Zafón's novel. It appeals to the bibliophile in me.

5. Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist: Reads like the prequel to Freakonomics by explaining just how economists think, and why there is an economist hiding in your head. Wonderful book. Much better than my pre-university Economics textbook. I might not have switched to Physics if I had read Harford earlier.

6. Tan Siok Sun's Goh Keng Swee: A Portrait: Dr Goh was to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew as Jekyll was to Hyde, or Loki was to Odin, depending on which account you prefer. Urbane and very clever, but 'not a good judge of character' (Lee's words), the economic architect of the modern city-state did so many things that Lee declared him indispensable and told his parliament that without Goh, Singapore as they knew it would not exist. Goh's extended family tree is interesting too; you will find people like the artiste Dick Lee and the acting brothers Lim Kay Siu and Lim Kay Tong here.