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ARTS&LEISURE
January15
Real Estate Realities
Ku Swee Swong
Subtitled “Accommodating the Investment Needs of Today’s Society”
Don’t think you’re living in a true luxury
apartment unless it’s in District 9, 10 or certain
parts of 11 such as Goldhill, Chancery and
Bukit Timah (up to the Farrer Road junction),
says Mr Ku. As he rather crushingly points
out, “full marble flooring in … Sengkang does
not a luxury apartment make”. Something
else I learnt in the first chapter of
Real Estate
Realities
is that the top three luxury residential
addresses are Nassim Road, Bishopsgate and
Chatsworth Road, and that “[these] locations
trumps [sic] the rest of sardine-packed
Singapore”.
If you’re at all interested in the Singapore
real estate market (and can get over the at
times woeful grammar), this collection of
articles previously published in
TODAY
and
The Business Times
is well worth a read. They
touch on both public housing and private properties, real estate investment both
here and overseas, and ponder the implications of Singapore’s Master Plan 2014.
Vanessa Harvey
If you're looking for a good
read this month, here are our
thoughts on a selection of
recent releases.
PAGE
The Global Expatriate’s
Guide to Investing
Andrew Hallam
Wiley
Are you worried – like so many
of us who live in a country other
than our own – that you don’t or
won’t have an adequate pension or
other reliable safety net? From the
bestselling author of the bestselling
Millionaire Teacher
, this book
promises to show expats how much
they should be saving; how much
they need for retirement; and how
to find a reputable financial advisor,
or how to invest their money on
their own. Don’t be fooled by the
breezy, humorous style – this clear,
readable and practical guide is full
of impressive research and real-life
examples designed to empower
you to achieve the kind of financial
freedom we all aspire to.
Vanessa Harvey
The Silkworm
Robert Galbraith
Little, Brown | 455 pages
She’s done it again! – she being Harry
Potter author, J K Rowling, writing as
Robert Galbraith, whose first novel
The
Cuckoo’s Calling
was our introduction to
the oddly attractive detective Cormoran
Strike and his plucky sidekick Robin
Ellacott. (Interesting to discover in the
author’s acknowledgements that the
Cuckoo made it to number one as
an audio-book even before its mega-
famous author was unmasked.)
As it’s set in the world of literary
publishing, one might think that
The
Silkworm
was an easy gig. But it can’t
have been. The plot centres around the
libellous contents of an unpublished
manuscript, so the author had to first
devise the (wildly violent and bizarre)
plot for this manuscript before working
it into her own complex and well-devised
plot.
The result is a fascinating, warts-
and-all glimpse into the environment
of contemporary publishing, a field
peopled with egotistical, fear-driven
authors, drunken editors and greedy
agents, not to mention their put-upon
spouses and partners. Direct parallels
with Jacobean revenge tragedy remind
us that extreme violence in literature, far
from being a modern invention, goes
back a long way.
It’s “a damn good read”, says
The
Guardian
, and I agree; I couldn’t put the
book down. Excellent news, then, that as
a series of seven is contemplated, there
are five more to go.
Verne Maree