Book review: ACTUARIAL FAIRY TALES (John Lee)

John Lee, who gave us the eccentric joys of Confessions of an Actuarial Tutor, turns his brand of nerdy humour into re-telling well-known fairytales, such as The Three Little Pigs, Sleeping Beauty and Goldilocks, with an actuarial slant. The results are cerebral, engrossing and often laugh-out-loud hilarious.

Book review: CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTUARIAL TUTOR (John Lee)

As part of my job, I have to sit actuarial exams in tandem to working. I sat CM1 and CS1 in April, and CS2 in September (the M stands for Maths and S stands for Statistics). I have had the good fortune of having passed all three exams I sat this year (hence the rather extravagant Christmas present I got myself), but luck was only a small factor in why I was successful. John Lee, who’s expert tutelage I received for the two Statistics modules, played a huge part.

That's not him btw.

His new book, Confessions of an Actuarial Tutor, is a compendium of amusing things that happened to him in his ~20 years of teaching actuarial students. For anyone who’s ever met John, he writes as he speaks: a mixture of gallows humour, self-deprecatory banter, nerdy mathematical jokes and a sprinkle of that unique John Lee eccentricity.

My Gal Gadot piercing

As part of my job, I have to sit professional exams in order to become a qualified actuary. My first sitting for these exams were this April, where I sat two. I was fairly confident that I'd passed Statistics but almost certain that I failed Maths.

So, imagine my euphoria come results day in early July, when I saw my name on the pass list for both exams that I sat! An exam pass is so much more satisfying when you've made peace with yourself that you were going to fail it!

As a treat to myself for all that hard work I put into those passes (I was knee-deep in revision notes all the way through April; I didn't even know certain football matches had happened), I got the top of my ear pierced, as photographed below:

Given how passionate I am about films and film star culture, it should come as no surprise to you that I was inspired to get this cartilage piercing, after seeing it on Gal Gadot:

I'm not so vain and deluded that I consider myself remotely in even the same league as Ms. Gadot, but at least now I have something in common with my own pick for the most gorgeous woman in a 2016 film!

I like.

Vanity Fair's Atonement:



^^Joe Wright, James McAvoy & Keira Knightley.