10 Years of BooksActually

BooksActually turns 10!

Started in 2005, BooksActually has been home to readers, local writers, artists, designers, and independent publishers. They have moved four times while amassing even more shelves for books and vintage bric-a-brac. For years, the bookstore has been a literary utopia for book lovers, hosting the most prolific Singaporean authors of our generation. Its achievements include being a full-fledged bookstore, a groundbreaking publishing-house, a refuge for readers, watering hole for writers, and home to three beautiful cats.

BooksActually was built in a competitive city obsessed with winning, a society that views ambition as a ladder one must climb to reach monetary success. A child who has read and loved Philip Pullman, an adolescent who was inspired by the life and work of Nikola Tesla, or someone who has abandoned a career to write full-time, should not be considered eccentrics. For ten years, the bookstore has been striving to convince the nation that inventing your life’s own meaning is allowed, being different does not make you a subversive, and success can come in the form of courage and creativity.

This November, BooksActually invites you to join them for an exhibition that aims to recreate the previous “homes” of Singapore’s leading independent bookstore. So mark your calendars and join them for their anniversary celebrations!

10 years of BooksActually is happening at The Substation from Wednesday, 18 November 2015, 10am to Sunday, 22 November 2015, 8 pm. For more information, see [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/events/486228534883755/).


Deputy Editor

Gary is one of those proverbial jack of all trades… you know the rest. When not writing about lifestyle and culture, he dabbles in photography, graphic design, plays four instruments and is a professional wearer of bowties. His greatest weakness: spending more money on clothes than he probably should. Find him across the social world as @grimlay