Reading Update

[jaggedwolf]

The Calling (Dragon Age #2) by David Gaider

Not a high bar, but this was better than The Stolen Throne. Even if I did groan at Maric once more sleeping with an elven woman in the Deep Roads, and groaned more at him even running into the Deep Roads in the first place. Couldn’t care much about Maric or Fiona. Was moderately engaged by a young Duncan’s past as Orlesian street thief, not what one would guess from the first game. Don’t know how I feel about Genevieve’s whole thing. When I get to the relevant DLC in watching the Origins LP, I’m curious to see which characters recur.

Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames by Lara Maiklem

The Thames is a tidal river, and it turns out there are a bunch of people who go down there during low tide to see what they can pick up from the mudflats. Which turns out to be quite a lot! Our author alone is a mudlark who’s stumbled across printing press type, ordnance (!), mementos thrown out by prisoners on ships about to go out to Australia, and more.

The book is a fun read, going from west to east along the river, bits of London’s history and the history of Thames mudlarking uncovered as we travel.

The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie

The first Superintendent Battle book. One of Christie’s mediocre thrillers, but I entertained myself by figuring out one of the three hidden identities this book had.

Singapore: A Modern History by Michael D. Barr

I suppose I’ll just keep reading histories of Singapore forever. I’ve heard one of the author’s other books, The Ruling Elite of Singapore: Networks of Power and Influence, is very good, but alas my neighbourhood library lacked it and so I settled for this revisionist history.

Random points

• The leadership of independent Singapore has alway framed the miniscule size of Singapore as a threat to it, but it has strong benefits of its own. Something I do try to remind myself of when I unfavorably compare other cities to Singapore in certain regards.
• Perhaps obvious to many, but I don’t think I was fully aware of how early submarine cables were laid down across the world?? By 1872 all continents but Antartica were connected by them, and both today and in colonial days Singapore was a major node, situated as it is
• Singapore was not Raffles’ first or even second choice and it’s possible the EIC even changed its mind about wanting an outpost in that specific location at all. Raffles was looking for a point that wasn’t already claimed by the Dutch and had someone he could make a deal with.
• Apparently Singapore was often more profitable to private entrepreneurs than the British East India company itself, thanks to the whole free trade deal. The EIC relied on tax farming for a chunk of its revenue
• Economics is so far out of my wheelhouse that I don’t know what to make of this, but the author argues that even at the time of writing (2018), Singapore has struggled to improve productivity. It’s great at increasing the amount of labor, and providing more capital, but actual productivity increases aren’t great. Is this correct? No idea!

The book also mentioned the classic criticism of Singapore too often demolishing old buildings/changing landscapes, and I’m afraid that while I agree with many classic criticisms of Singapore, that still isn’t one of them. On my most recent visit, I spent a deranged day walking from a point on the northern coast to a point on the southern coast (25 miles at EoD, phew), and it was cool to see old railway stations preserved, but like, I don’t care about the old National Library building getting demolished when the new one exists.