7 stores · curated ORBIS register
Bras Basah
Design bookshop in Singapore's Bras Basah Complex, started in 1985 by Basheer Ahamed as a traveling book salesman and given a permanent storefront in 1991; still family-run by his son Abdul Nasser.
Best for Architecture, illustration and graphic-design books
City Hall
Singapore bookbinding and leather atelier founded in October 2014 by Winnie Chan and James Quan, building on Chan's family bindery dating to 1942. Offers personalized notebooks, leather goods and bookbinding workshops across multiple Singapore ateliers, and won the President's Design Award's Design of the Year in 2016.
Best for Personalized notebooks and leather bookbinding, Singapore atelier since 2014
Bynd Artisan was founded in October 2014 by Winnie Chan and James Quan, but its roots go back to 1942, when Chan's grandfather, Chan Koon Song, opened a small bindery workshop in Singapore. That business grew into the Goy Liang Book-Making Company, based at a Mohamed Sultan Road shophouse from 1947, and Winnie Chan joined the family trade as its third generation in 1994.
Chan and Quan began developing a new retail concept in 2012 and opened Bynd Artisan's first atelier two years later -- inside the Chan family's own factory in Boon Lay, after the founders were unable to secure retail space in a mall. The brand's flagship atelier followed at Holland Village in 2015, and the concept expanded to five Singapore stores by 2020, offering personalized and monogrammed notebooks, leather goods, travel accessories and bookbinding workshops built around traditional hand-binding techniques.
The brand has since collected local recognition, including the President's Design Award's Design of the Year in 2016 and the Singapore Tourism Board's "Best Shopping Experience" award in 2017, and in 2022 launched reBynd, an eco-conscious offshoot. Chan and Quan were also named Singapore Tourism Board 'Passion Made Possible' ambassadors in 2019.
Tiong Bahru
Independent gift and design shop established 2008 with a second location in Joo Chiat; known for its resident shop cats alongside books, paper goods and vintage bric-a-brac.
Best for Books, paper goods, and design objects since 2008
Cat Socrates opened in 2008 and has grown to two locations in Singapore: the original Tiong Bahru shop at 78 Yong Siak Street and a second store at 448 Joo Chiat Road. The shop sells books and paper goods, home decor, kitchenware, fabric and sewing supplies, plants, bags and accessories, and vintage bric-a-brac, an eclectic mix rather than a single specialty category. Both locations are known locally for resident shop cats that wander among the merchandise; at the Joo Chiat store in particular, a cat named Zoozoo is often found waiting by the door to greet customers or asleep on a stack of books. The combination of an independent, deliberately mismatched design-and-gift inventory with live shop cats has made the stores a recognizable stop within Tiong Bahru's cluster of independent retail, a neighbourhood built around Singapore's oldest public housing estate.
Outram
Founded in 1995 by writer and Cultural Medallion recipient Yeng Pway Ngon, this Chinese-language independent bookstore originally traded opposite the National Library before relocating in November 2014 to Bukit Pasoh Road; Yeng passed ownership in 2015 to Lim Jen Erh, Lim Yeong Shin and Lim Wooi Tee.
Best for Independent Chinese-language books and cultural space, since 1995.
Grassroots Book Room was founded in 1995 by Yeng Pway Ngon, a former journalist and Chinese-language poet and novelist later honored with Singapore's Cultural Medallion. The store began at the Qiaobei Centre, across from the National Library, as an outlet for Chinese-language literature, history, philosophy and art at a time when such independent stock was scarce in Singapore. In November 2014 it relocated to its current premises on Bukit Pasoh Road in the Chinatown/Outram area, close to Exit H of Outram Park MRT station. In 2015, Yeng passed the business on to three successors: Lim Jen Erh, a former journalist and dramatist; Lim Yeong Shin, who runs day-to-day operations; and Lim Wooi Tee, a medical doctor. Under their stewardship the shop has kept its core categories — Chinese and Western philosophy, Chinese modern literature, translated Japanese and Western literature, art and film — while adding newer sections such as picture books, food writing and lifestyle titles, maintaining its role as one of Singapore's few dedicated Chinese-language independent bookstores.
Tanjong Pagar
Independent bookshop opened in 2014 in a conservation shophouse at 20 Duxton Road near Tanjong Pagar, Singapore, curating literary fiction, crime, sci-fi/fantasy, travel writing and children's titles rather than bestseller-driven stock.
Best for General books in a two-storey conservation shophouse, since 2014
Littered with Books opened in 2014 in a two-storey conservation shophouse at 20 Duxton Road, close to Tanjong Pagar MRT station in Singapore's Duxton Hill / Chinatown conservation district. Shophouses of this kind - narrow street frontages opening into long, deep interiors - are a protected building type from Singapore's early-20th-century mixed-use architecture, and the shop's layout follows that footprint, with shelving running back through the building rather than spread across a wide frontage. Rather than trying to be a general-interest retailer, the shop curates a comparatively narrow list across literary fiction, crime and thrillers, science fiction and fantasy, travel writing, and award-winning children's books, aiming for depth within genres rather than breadth across every category a chain bookstore would carry. It has been repeatedly included in local roundups of Singapore's independent bookshops, alongside houses such as BooksActually, as one of the city's smaller literary-fiction specialists rather than a general bestseller retailer.
Kampong Glam
Wardah Books is an English-language Islamic bookshop founded in 2002 by Ibrahim Tahir in Singapore's Kampong Gelam. Its subjects also include regional history and literature, with children's reading among the wider selection. Book clubs and author sessions form part of its community work, continuing the area's bookselling tradition without making the modern business as old as its premises.
Best for English-language Islamic books and regional literature
Wardah Books is a Kampong Gelam bookshop specialising in English-language books on Islam, founded by Ibrahim Tahir in 2002. Its selection also reaches into literature and regional history, giving readers several ways into the subjects it covers. The shop occupies part of Bussorah Street's longer history of printing and bookselling in Singapore.
The National Heritage Board's account connects its premises with Chief Kadi Haji Ali, who previously lived and worked at the address. That earlier history belongs to the building and neighbourhood, rather than making Wardah itself a nineteenth-century business. The current bookshop's founding responded to a gap between the English Islamic texts readers wanted and what local shops offered.
Wardah supports reading through book clubs and author sessions, alongside the ordinary work of selecting and selling books. Begin with the subject or level of reading you want rather than assuming that every Islamic title serves the same purpose. Literature for children and a work of philosophy require different choices, even when both appear within the same shop's selection.
Joo Chiat
Illustrated-book and children's bookstore founded 2009 in Tiong Bahru; that flagship closed in 2024 after 11 years, with a Katong branch at 206 East Coast Road (opened 2023) now the main storefront.
Best for Illustrated books and children's titles since 2009
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