Although I spend a great deal of time in front of computers (and in airports), books remain my preferred mode of relaxation and information transfer.
Amazon has made the process of finding books painless with their recommendations, and the Wishlist feature is a convenient way of keeping track of pending acquisitions. Unfortunately, Amazon's shipping charges to Singapore mean that they end up doing all the work but local stores and online services get the actual business.
For getting a book right now, nothing beats Kinokuniya at Ngee Ann City on Orchard Road. With the death of Borders, they are "it" for finding a book in stock.
A pale imitation of Amazon, and with a truly bad website, Acmamall is thankfully no longer the only local offering. Searching on their web site is a hit and miss affair. Somehow a straight search on an authour's name can fail, while the title works. It takes persistence to find what you are after.
A site called NoQ store has been started byTimes Publishing, the Singapore government-controlled book and newspaper publisher. No comment.
Two other sites are available - Open Trolley and Book Depository. Haven't tried them yet, but other blogs have reviewed them positively. At least we have choice now.
Having figured out how to get books, the next challange is how to keep them all organized.
A free, online service called LibraryThing has made it possible to enter all your books by ISBN or any other identifier. It is then possbile to sort and filter as desired. In addition, LibraryThing adds an element of social networking, allowing you to see how many other people share the same books, and who has similar interests to your own.
LT has a mobile client which is great for looking up your collection while in the bookstore to avoid duplicates, and widgets like the one below for web sites.
