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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.

(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.

PHOTOS: MANILLA PRESS, ATLANTIC BOOKS, HARPERVIA

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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.

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