If you’re an avid or eclectic reader, you’ve landed in the right place. Singapore could be one of the best places in the region to find English books from the US, UK and Australia. In the heart of Orchard Road, Borders is a literary fan’s idea of heaven. (And even if you’re not, you might find a sudden attack of enthusiasm coming on when you hear that a local women’s magazine voted it one of the best places to pick up a girl or guy.) Borders also stocks stationery, mostly from UK’s Paperchase, magazines and a selection of music CDs and DVDs. Attached to it is a cafe that serves decent lattes, cakes, pastas and pizzas. The cafe also has liquor license and an alfresco area, so it’s a very pleasant place to spend an afternoon sipping on wine, reading your freshly-purchased book or just watching people go by.

Kinokuniya is one of the largest chains of bookshops in south-east Asia, and of its three outlets in Singapore, the one in Ngee Ann City is huge. It has over 500,000 book titles in various languages, and being a Japanese chain, it has a large Japanese section including shelves of manga. It also houses a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and serves up a wide selection of international and local magazines. You’ll also find Page One at VivoCity, a speciality bookshop that carries high quality coffee table books and even music scores.

Times The Bookshop and MPH are the two oldest homegrown chains of bookshops in Singapore. MPH was established in 1895 and Times in 1968. They stock mostly bestsellers, management and self-help books and popular magazines. Other chains that remain firm favourites with Singaporeans are Harris, who have two stores, and Popular, who have outlets all over the city-state as well as a great online shop. Bookaburra at Forum The Shopping Mall specialises in children’s books from Australia. The store often holds book-reading sessions for kids and also stocks costumes, games, DVDs and CDs.

Another speciality store is Basheer, which is something of an open secret in the advertising and graphic arts industries. Located in Bras Basah Complex and online at www.basheergraphic.com, they also ship worldwide.

Meanwhile, the internet has contributed to a revolutionary concept in reading – an online books rental service that was first invented in Singapore. Log on to www.bookcraves.com and you can rent books at nominal fees, have them delivered to you and collected again. Second-hand bookshops here often function as commercial libraries: they’ll give you a date by which you need to return a book in order to get at least 50% of your money back. The price of a second-hand book decreases each time is it loaned out.

The best magazine shop by far is Thambi Magazine store on the corner of Holland Road Avenue and Lorong Liput just at the mouth of Holland Village where you’ll find magazines stacked in towering piles. There’s also Mama Joe just across the street from Thambi which has a slightly smaller selection. Pornographic magazines are banned but rules regarding graphic content have been relaxed so you can get Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue and Singapore FHM. Even Cosmopolitan was recently allowed to sway into town in its stilettos...even if it does have to be shrink-wrapped and branded with a warning sticker declaring its graphic content.