The Nightingale

From 1 March 2026, eligible SingLit books may be bought with Culture Pass.

Our bookshop is a portal not just to contemporary publications, but can be thought of as a spring that founts from an otherwise invisible aquifer of Kampong Gelam’s religious scholarship, of storytelling, of speaking truth to power, and of thinking together. A bookshop is so much more than the sum of its books: it is an anchor for a community of readers.

For our current purpose, it is important to understand that both the medium of the novel and of music is realised in time, not space. A novel unfolds its words in time, even when asynchronous. A song unfolds its notes within measures of time. Indeed there is a resonance, even synergy, between books and music.

I have found that the practice of writing a reading journal leverages on the catharsis one experiences upon completing a reading. Revisiting and writing out annotations in the reading journal help to synthesise concepts and therefore aid learning. You get more out of reading by writing.

To stretch Postman’s ecological analogy, the new media of today is like an invasive species carelessly introduced into a habitat. What results is often ecological collapse that leaves a wasteland in its wake: nothing survives, not even the new species.

Books and print may not be central to the structuring of public discourse, as it once was, but I am thankful that in bookclubs such as ours and in many others, small groups of people gather to partake, for themselves, in the intellectual effort to understand.

Novels make us recognise, reflect, and subsequently enact change in ourselves and in society: books are personal as well as social.

No matter what you encounter, if your heart is centred, you will draw connections that augment what the heart knows and recognises of truth and beauty.

Until mid-May 2024 Wardah Books is hosting two installation artworks. One by Singapore artist Isabella Ong and another by Thai artist Wantanee Siripattananuntakul. While both artists fulfil their artistic vision by making paper, their starting points cannot be more different.