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As I may have mentioned somewhere in this blog, I’m very big on book/music tourism. Which is to say, whenever I travel to another country, my sightseeing activities inevitably include bookstores and CD stores – particularly in Singapore, which I get to at least four times a year and have seen the majority of the sites worth seeing.
Which means more time for books and CDs stores. Especially this trip, since I basically had Saturday and Sunday all to myself. So naturally I spent them covering every decent book store in town, including a few I didn’t know about before, but which a friend and fellow book nerd recommended I check out.
Result: not quite the same pile as last time (which was the product of a dirt-cheap Borders clearance sale), but a respectable haul, much of it comics-related (let’s just say you’ll be hearing about my opinion of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run in the next few months).
And I mention this primarily so I can bring up three big surprises I came across:
1. Harris Planerds
The last time I visited this bookstore, it was a plain Harris outlet. Between then and now, it’s transformed into a specialty bookshop that deals primarily in SF/fantasy, comics and related merchandise.
Which is cool, of course. What strikes me about it is that this isn’t the usual small indie outfit that runs such specialty stores – Harris is a Singapore-based chain owned by Popular Holdings, a book publisher that also runs its own retail outlets, primarily for educational books. I’ve never heard of a retail book chain opening a specialty SF/F/comics store.
Maybe you have them in yr community, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something like it. It’d be like Waldenbooks opening an SF store. (And I’m assuming that hasn't happened somewhere.)
2. San Bookshop lives
Way back when I first started to travel to Singapore on a regular basis in the late 90s, one of my regular stops was San bookshop, a local store in Marina Square that dealt in new and used books. You could “rent” books by paying the sticker price for them and then returning them for the fixed buy-back price on the book, which worked out to a rental of a few Singapore dollars.
San had a nice broad selection, but it disappeared over a decade years ago after Marina Square started doing renovations. But on a chance visit to Vivocity (a galleria complex next to the Sentosa Island resort, where I went to meet good friend Agent K for lunch Friday), I found out there was a San shop there. And after that I found out actually there’s a few of them around Singapore.
On the downside, the selection at the Vivocity store was smaller than the one I remembered. On the bright side, I got a nice discount on Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Anyway, it’s nice to know they’re still around.
3. Borders is still open.
Apparently that huge clearance sale wasn’t related to the bankruptcy proceedings. So I may have misinformed you on that score.
That said, it might as well be closed. They’ve redone it inside, but it hasn’t really helped make it a better option than the competition. I walked in, browsed, and walked out wondering why I bothered to walk in.
The end.
Up next: Gambling!
I read books,
This is dF
Which means more time for books and CDs stores. Especially this trip, since I basically had Saturday and Sunday all to myself. So naturally I spent them covering every decent book store in town, including a few I didn’t know about before, but which a friend and fellow book nerd recommended I check out.
Result: not quite the same pile as last time (which was the product of a dirt-cheap Borders clearance sale), but a respectable haul, much of it comics-related (let’s just say you’ll be hearing about my opinion of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run in the next few months).
And I mention this primarily so I can bring up three big surprises I came across:
1. Harris Planerds
The last time I visited this bookstore, it was a plain Harris outlet. Between then and now, it’s transformed into a specialty bookshop that deals primarily in SF/fantasy, comics and related merchandise.
Which is cool, of course. What strikes me about it is that this isn’t the usual small indie outfit that runs such specialty stores – Harris is a Singapore-based chain owned by Popular Holdings, a book publisher that also runs its own retail outlets, primarily for educational books. I’ve never heard of a retail book chain opening a specialty SF/F/comics store.
Maybe you have them in yr community, but it’s the first time I’ve seen something like it. It’d be like Waldenbooks opening an SF store. (And I’m assuming that hasn't happened somewhere.)
2. San Bookshop lives
Way back when I first started to travel to Singapore on a regular basis in the late 90s, one of my regular stops was San bookshop, a local store in Marina Square that dealt in new and used books. You could “rent” books by paying the sticker price for them and then returning them for the fixed buy-back price on the book, which worked out to a rental of a few Singapore dollars.
San had a nice broad selection, but it disappeared over a decade years ago after Marina Square started doing renovations. But on a chance visit to Vivocity (a galleria complex next to the Sentosa Island resort, where I went to meet good friend Agent K for lunch Friday), I found out there was a San shop there. And after that I found out actually there’s a few of them around Singapore.
On the downside, the selection at the Vivocity store was smaller than the one I remembered. On the bright side, I got a nice discount on Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. Anyway, it’s nice to know they’re still around.
3. Borders is still open.
Apparently that huge clearance sale wasn’t related to the bankruptcy proceedings. So I may have misinformed you on that score.
That said, it might as well be closed. They’ve redone it inside, but it hasn’t really helped make it a better option than the competition. I walked in, browsed, and walked out wondering why I bothered to walk in.
The end.
Up next: Gambling!
I read books,
This is dF
