the map village street editors

One of the many delights of travel, for those who enjoy simple pleasures, is that moment when you stumble across an unassuming bookstore tucked away in a charismatic pocket of a foreign metropolis. The kind of place where, from the moment the bell above the doorway delicately announces your arrival, you enter a wonderful world of imagination, illustration and thousands of pages just waiting to be turned. Such a nook beckons you to linger for hours on end, the day’s itinerary swept away by the promise of imaginative fodder, and it’s one you return to with fondness upon each visit back to that same city. When in Paris, it might be The Red Wheelbarrow; in Tokyo, Shibuya Publishing Booksellers or Cow Books; in Brussels, Posada. But when in Singapore, it’s BooksActually where travellers go to rest their weary feet and excercise the depths of their imaginations.“Once upon a time, there is a little bookstore named BooksActually nestled in an old-fashioned shophouse at the corner of a street,” begins the tale inscribed upon the store’s name plate. “In this bookstore, there is often found a bookseller girl who likes to read Mr. Vladimir Nabokov, amongst other things (like hopping on train tracks, apple-milk, films and breakfast picnics on grass). This bookseller girl is Karen Wai. She also smiles secretly when there is company in the lovely white + green store that is BooksActually.” From Palaunik to Tolstoy, Babar to Gatsby, this literary haven is a pleasant surprise amongst the boutique sartorial and design locales that it lies neighbour to in Singapore’s fashionable Ann Siang Hill district. And for those with an eye for vintage stationery, typography and notebooks in all manner of forms, you’ll no doubt be lingering long past closing time.