Tucked away in a row of conservation houses, Books Actually is a bookshop of much character, books with depth and well decorated with curious knick-knacks like old editions of penguin books, old film cameras and vintage typewriters from a bygone era. Private bookshops that do not belong to any huge conglomerate chain are relatively common in countries like Britain but to find one in Singapore makes Books Actually a real gem. The bookshop’s helpful staff who are well versed in literary knowledge and classics, Kenny and Karen, always greet customers with a friendly face, and stepping into this quaint little store is almost like stumbling upon someone’s private library collection. Although well-known and much loved by the Singapore literary circle, this bookshop is still relatively undiscovered by most of the proletariat masses, which is frankly quite a pity, since you can find books here that cannot be found in any of the major bookstores around like Borders and Kinokuniya and the prices are also competitive.

The shop is altruistic in promoting local writers, and if you are looking for a lesser known play written by Alfian Sa’at or poem written by Cyril Wong, this should definitely be your first spot. You might also stumble upon rarer editions of popular western literary canon classics, I found a beautiful pop-up version of Antoine de Saint-Exupery‘s The Little Prince that makes a wonderful gift for a special friend. There is also an entire closet of Moleskines under the stairs on the ground floor, so Moleskine fans, if you plan to rob them, you know where to look.

The shop also sells quaint stationary from “Birds & Co”, hand-bound notebooks and hand-printed journals; I was much amused by the Edward Lear postcards that have little bits of poetry on them, the postcard I bought for myself cost only about $1 and was pretty enough to frame:

You can also find “magic pencils” that might help you write better, since they have the names of illustrious authors like George Orwell and Sylvia Plath carved on them.

Occassionally, you might find a Writing guru wandering its shelves or a professor just sitting there giving a talk or engaging in discussion with the budding local young writers of Singapore. Currently Dr Gwee Li Sui is hosting a series of bi-weekly talks “On Being”, the previous talk was by Christine Lim SuChen and the coming up next will be Fong Hoe Fang 26 Feb 2010, Friday, 7.30 pm.

Visiting Books Actually for the first time can be a half a day outing, make it a little weekend outing, you might just find a couple of kindred souls who love books as much as you do and even strike up a conversation with them in such a cosy literary wonderland.

Books Actually is located at:
No. 86 Club Street
Singapore 069454
Tel: 62229195
www.booksactually.com
Opening hours:
Monday – Saturday: 11am – 9pm
Sunday: 12 noon – 6pm

Tags: books actually, moleskine, Singapore Literature, singapore writer

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