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.