Miscellany – December 2007 Bonus Issue

Yes, there were other books consumed in the dying days of December!

1. Diana Wynne Jones's The Pinhoe Egg is another Chrestomanci tale. This one combines elements of The Homeward Bounders and Hexwood as far as geometry is concerned. It's the interesting tale of the people who live around Chrestomanci Castle, and how they have been surviving their closeness with the arbiter of magic. Of course, Cat Chant is involved, as are the other castle denizens. I think it's better than Harry Potter any day.

2. Joe Haldeman's A Separate War & Other Stories is one more collection by this most excellent of SF writers. Haldeman has always scored big with me, with short and very powerful novels such as The Forever War, Mindbridge and All My Sins Remembered. The first one is officially a classic; his first novel and one which has won all the available awards. The third one speaks to me most of all; how one serves a faceless hierarchy until one is a useless and worn down tool, even though the best of its kind.

3. James Ward's Dragonfrigate Wizard Halcyon Blithe is what you get when you mix dragons, magic, Napoleonic-era naval warfare and C S Forester together, and let a game designer write it up. It's fun to read, and not as heavy on the political subtext as Naomi Norvik's Temeraire series.

4. Ng Pak Tee and Jason Tan have edited a compendium of views on Singapore's Education System from 1997 to 2007. It's called Thinking Schools, Learning Nation: Contemporary Issues & Challenges. It's pretty eye-opening as author after author dissects the system for inconsistencies and accuracies, failures and successes, hype and under-hype. It's published by Pearson and supposed to be available from 1 Jan 2008. I got an advance copy. Of particular interest are the chapters about new school and curriculum types, sex education, and the desperate lives of teachers.

And that's it for 2007! See you again sometime in mid-January.