The end of Borders

Tomorrow (September 26, 2011) at 9pm, the curtain will finally go down for good on Borders in Singapore. Its second and smaller outlet at Parkway Parade is all set to close after a final discount sale over the weekend. With that will end a key chapter in the book retail landscape of Singapore. Borders’ demise had been on the cards for years but it is still a sad moment for book-lovers like myself.

I remember well my initial look at the iconic American bookstore in 2001 when I first visited Singapore – my uncle here took me to the flagship outlet at Wheelock Place on Orchard Road here and I was totally taken aback by the size of the store – it seemed to me like a treasure trove with hundreds and thousands of books and CDs and DVDs arranged in row after row. I could not believe my eyes. Never would I have imagine that exactly a decade later all this would be just a fond memory.

Borders was, for many years, an American institution. It was founded in 1971 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, by two brothers (Tom and Louis Borders). It finally spread its wings in the late 1990s and interestingly their first international store was located in Singapore. The Wheelock Place outlet was a massive undertaking – spread over 32,000 square feet. Its opening shook up the book-retail industry in the city-state with smaller local operators like Popular and Times being forced to relook their sales strategies virtually overnight.

Borders subsequently opened dozens of stories overseas – in Japan, UK, Australia, New Zealand etc. At one point (in 2003) there were over 1,200 Borders stores worldwide. It seemed like a huge success story and it was – for a while. The Wheelock Place store had the classic Borders feel – one could sit and browse there freely for hours, the opening hours were long, there was the in-house café, it was a meeting-point for serious book-lovers and courting lovers alike and it was right in the most happening part of town. It was crowded with locals and tourists alike. Indeed, by 2006, this outlet was the most profitable of their branches worldwide. Borders soon opened its second store in Singapore, in 2007. All seemed fine.

But major changes were in store, and not all of it for the good. I started noticing that the CD section was being downsized with every passing month. I did not mind that too much because, after all, the primary attraction of Borders was the books they had, and the music on sale was always a bonus. But even the back-catalogue for most authors seemed skimpier than before. And there seemed no point asking the salespeople about many authors from the past – they seemed to have little clue about any of them. (My favourite test of a bookstore’s credentials is usually to ask them if they stocked PG Wodehouse’s classic books – if they failed to recognise even the name, I would immediately prophecy doom and gloom for them!).

Soon, another strange phenomenon was observable – Borders started sending out discount coupons by email every fortnight or so. In the beginning this seemed like an interesting sales ploy – but soon this seemed like a desperate measure to arrest the falling sales of books. Also, their focus on books seemed to be weakening fast – more and more gift items (soft toys, calendars) started cropping up in the stores and the arrangements of the books seemed to be getting messier every passing day.

It was understood by 2006 that Borders was losing big money. The e-book revolution was also taking its toll. The American side of things was fast losing steam with store after store closing down. But there was some hope for the Singapore outlets as it was understood that they were now being operated by an Australian firm, as a franchise. In February 2011 Borders announced it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; the last store in the US shuttered its doors on September 18 this year.

The Wheelock Place store in Singapore suddenly closed down last August – leasing problems were said to be the immediate cause. Sadly it was evident that it would not open again and from then it became a guessing game to see how long the smaller outlet at Parkway Parade would stay open. A couple of clearance sales were held including the one last weekend. It was awfully sad to see the once-mighty store being reduced to a few shelves and people milling around to pick up books for bargains.

Yet, all is not lost on the books front – Borders’ main rival here in its heyday, Kinokuniya, is still going strong and looks as solid as ever. Interesting home-grown indie bookshops like Books Actually, Page One and Littered With Books have their own devoted fanbase and are holding their own for now. But the sudden decline and fall of Borders is a cautionary tale. Many of the giant megastores in Singapore – Tower Records and HMV spring to mind – have either totally disappeared or have downsized dramatically in the space of just a couple of years after looking formidable at one stage. Wonder what the book-retail scene will be like in 2020 … will there be a major book store even functioning by then?

Sherlock Holmes revisited

My favourite fictional character remains Sherlock Holmes, although a few others – Bertie Wooster, Tom Ripley, James Bond and Count Dracula – have staked their claims to my affections at various points in time. But Holmes, to me, is the most realistically fleshed-out fictional person of them all. For many Holmes fans, he is more real than imagined and it is very easy to visualise the great "consulting detective" being active at his familiar haunts at 221B Baker Street lodgings even as we speak.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories have always been a particular favourite of mine right from my childhood. They are the most treasured volumes in my book collection. I recently decided to re-read the whole canon – all 56 short stories and four novels – partly to see whether I would still find them as captivating as I once did. There are certain reading pleasures from one’s childhood that one finds quite boring later on in life – for me these include most of the Agatha Christie whodunits, Sportstar and Reader’s Digest, to mention a few. But the Holmes stories still retain the magic they have always held for me and seem almost as fresh now as they were on my initial reading. Of course not all the stories are of an equal standard (there are a few dull ones, especially from the last two collections) but the best of them are magnificent stuff and, overall, they set a pretty high standard for detective fiction.

A reader who is new to Holmes will end up at some stage with The Hound of the Baskervilles, the story most often regarded as the Holmes masterpiece. It was originally serialised inThe Strand Magazine in 1901-02 and published in book form in 1902. It is a short novel but it contains almost every reading pleasure within its pages – danger, action, an exhibition of Holmes’s celebrated deductive powers, atmosphere, suggestions of a supernatural beast, mysterious goings-on in the night, an escaped convict, a spine-tingling build-up, and a dramatic finale in the fog which no one who reads the story will ever forget.

Holmes and his faithful friend and colleague, Dr Watson, are at the peak of their powers here. Yet, unusually, Holmes is off-stage for most of the second act of the novel and we hear his mention only through Watson’s letters to him from the gloomy depths of Dartmoor. But Holmes’ presence is felt all through the book and like the shark in Jaws, his absence only strengthens the dramatic impact that he produces when he suddenly re-appears right in the middle of the action.

Conan Doyle was a great story-teller and a superb writer. The Hound is precisely calibrated, with not one scene out of place. The action is fast and furious and we move breathlessly from one chapter to another – the book is a great example of a novel that is difficult to put down, even if you know the outlines of the tale from its numerous pop-culture references. It is an adventure story, it is a gothic novel, it is a story of friendship and betrayal and loyalty and passions but for me the real key to its success is the atmosphere Conan’s Doyle writing creates. There is a feeling of dread throughout and one can almost feel the places being described with such detail. Will anyone forget Baskerville Hall or the great Grimpen Mire after reading about them? Unlikely.

Not surprisingly, there have been at least 24 screen adaptations of this classic Holmes story over the years, with varying degrees of success. But nothing ever matches the experience of reading the tale for the first time. I must have read it at least five times so far – the time was when I was in my early teens and it was my mother who first suggested it – and it is still as gripping to me as it has always been.

The Hound is the book I would most recommend to a young reader who asks me for suggestions of what to read because it contains everything a great story should have – a remarkable hero, a villain of the highest order, unforgettable side-characters, a spooky setting, a famous mansion, and, of course, the hound of the story’s title.

What are you waiting for, then? Get hold of the book and start reading it – or begin re-reading it, if you have already gone through it years ago (The Hound, like most classics, rewards multiple readings). Marvel in the magic of a classic story, superbly told and wonderfully written.

P.S. Some random thoughts on the other Holmes books:

A Study in Scarlet (1887): Holmes and Dr Watson make their debut. The second half comprises a lengthy background story, a device Conan Doyle uses in all his Holmes novels and also in some of his short stories.

The Sign of Four (1890): An exotic tale. It has a closed-room mystery, a missing treasure, an extraordinary villain with an even more colourful sidekick, and an unforgettable chase down the River Thames at the end. And the flashback set in India adds plenty of colour and intrigue.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891): The single best collection of Holmes short stories. The gems are all here: "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Red-Headed League", "The Copper Beeches", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", and of course, the immortal "The Specked Band" (which is almost as famous as The Hound of the Baskervilles). A must-read for anyone remotely interested in adventure fiction!

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1892): More famous tales from the canon like "Silver Blaze", "The Musgrave Ritual", and "The Final Problem" where Holmes fatally clashes with the “Napolean of Crime”, the arch-criminal Professor Moriarty. This, then, was supposed to be Holmes’ swansong but public demand ensured a comeback for the famed detective a few years later, as we all know.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1903): The dramatic way in which Holmes is reinstated at Baker Street is also the basis of one of the most exciting stories in the entire series ("The Empty House"). This collection also contains more famous stories like "The Solitary Cyclist", "The Six Napoleans" and "The Second Stain".

The Valley of Fear (1914): The most unusual Holmes novel and probably the least-known of the stories. Holmes is absent for the entire second half of the book and while it is still a fine work, Valley does not really have the feel of a typical Holmes story. But it does have its fans.

His Last Bow (1917): Not the strongest collection (the title story is quite dated, for instance) but there are some quirky and wonderful off-beat tales here, of which the best are "The Bruce-Partington Plans" and "The Dying Detective". "The Devil’s Foot" is also “singular and has certain points of interest”, as Holmes would have put it in his cold, unemotional way.

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (1927): The final collection. Probably the best-known story here is "Thor Bridge" which is right up there with the best. The stories here are much darker in tone and have come a long way from the early ones, not surprising when you think that these were written some 40 years after A Study in Scarlet. Conan Doyle tries out some experiments in style also - for instance, Holmes himself narrates two of the stories while another one is described in the third person.