My fave bookshop

Nah, it is NOT Kinokuniya.

Kinokuniya may always have the largest in terms of area and book collection and everything, but apparently size isn't everything when it comes to a bookshop's likeableness.

Instead, if I am to nominate my most favourite bookshop, it would be Borders.

If I am to compare which bookshop has the larger collection of books, it would no doubt be Kinokuniya. No matter where it resides, Kinokuniya always seem to hold the top spot in their book collection (the Kino bookshop in New York occupies an entire city block, do you know that? Such a size is more or less equal to the Mal Taman Anggrek in West Jakarta!).

The Kino I often visited in Takashimaya was per se the largest bookshop I had visited. For my Indonesian readers, it was by comparison 4 times larger than the Kino in Plaza Senayan, South Jakarta.

Too bad Jakarta has no Borders yet. So let me get to the one I visited in other country as to make my point.

It has been nigh 2 years since I last visited the Borders in Singapore, but I would try to recall as many details as possible.

The only Borders bookshop I have visited was the one adjacent to Orchard MRT station, but I have loved it from my first visit. Starting from the moment we enter its sliding doors, visitors are greeted with a handful collection of audio CDs and the newest collection of DVDs as displayed on its LCD screens.

A mild woody fragrance (Or was it some other fragrance? Forgive my poor memory. Duh) filled the shop with a sense of homey ambiance. This is in good alignment with the bookshop's strong presence of the wood element in their shelves, floors, and everything else.

In direct contrast to the Kino bookshop located 500 metres away where browsing books seemed to be discouraged, Borders seemed to put "browsing books" as the top priority in their selling-point. This is proven by the abundance of seats available on every corners of the shop.

I once said that I could literally spend a whole day in Kinokuniya. Well, that would be a tiring day indeed if I were to spend one, because I have to compete with other visitors for the limited seats available, otherwise I would have to sit on the rug instead.

But in Borders, I could literally enjoy my whole day there. Borders is indeed the comfiest bookshop in the world, and it's so fortunate of me that its headquarter is in the States that I am going to visit one in the near future.

This is one of the several things that make me look forward to my moving there.