05-07-2025
TBR (To Be Read): Books about bookshops seem to have lost their bite
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(From left) Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa, The Library Book by Susan Orlean and Umberto Eco's 1980 debut, The Name Of The Rose.
SINGAPORE – Book-lined spaces are the closest analogues to temples in a secular context. Especially when one is a bookworm.
Throughout my reading life, there have been favourite book-lined spaces, beginning with the old red-brick National Library building in Stamford Road and the similarly red-hued MPH Bookstores across from it, to the floral-scented hush of London's Hatchards bookshop and the bad gym stink of the old Forbidden Planet bookstore in Tottenham Court Road.
