Reading Update

It Never Rains On National Day by Jeremy Tiang

Another Singapore short-story collection. My favorite story was “Schwellenangst”, where a Singaporean teacher on a history trip in northern Germany gets a night away from her charges, hanging out with a Swedish couple she met at a rave. Think I’ve learned that civil servants either get a lot of PTO or really put off using it.

Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

Long novel set in Mumbai, covering the dual narratives of a Sikh police inspector and the Hindu gangster who’s motives he’s trying to uncover. Really dense, enjoyed the prose, even if I had to stop myself from excessive googling of terms. Looking up a map of India was useful.

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Assessment Of Men: Selection Of Personnel for the Office Of Strategic Services

The Office Of Strategic Services (OSS) was the US’s intelligence agency during WW2, engaging in espionage, propaganda, and the like on the front.

Candidates for the OSS ranged from military men to civilians, Americans to war refugees, some recommended by their branches/other contacts and some interested themselves. With the aid of clinical psychologists, the OSS had a go at attempting to assess these candidates on various traits, in order to either approve/deny their suitability for their proposed role and to send a description of them and their abilities to their future superiors.

This book covers that assessment process in incredible detail - the actual questionnaires are reproduced wherever possible, instructions for every test put to the candidates, the candidates’ schedules in the various assessments centers, a comparison of the assessment’s ratings of the candidates vs how they actually did in their jobs.

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Been posting various excerpts from the book here.