Singapore is not a great place for book bargains. However, I have had some luck with book sales that travel around and set up in shopping mall atriums. (Atria. Happy now, Firefox spellcheck?)
If I were the roadrunner, this would be the perfect trap for the coyote to set up. I would fall right in it.
…and I did! Then I found this…
Now, no doubt I have some books that are pretty useless to me. In fact, you could say that at any given time, all my books except for about three of them are useless to me. Some, like the ones written in Thai, Greek, Korean, Arabic or Burmese, are likely to remain useless to me forever.
Still. Still, I ask you. Of what possible use is a book on ROCKHOUNDING IN IDAHO to anyone in Singapore? I mean, I love rocks—and books, obviously—and I fully understand the notion of armchair travel. And yet. This book. It cannot help me find rocks in Idaho as long as I am physically in Singapore.
Am I right? Seriously, this book is never going to sell…
I mean, for the same money, you’d clearly be better off with Daytrips from Washington, DC.
The two English as it is Broken books shown above contain photos of signs and responses to people who’ve written in to a weekly column in The Straits Times with questions about English usage.
The quality of the answers in the two books has been disparaged, but I think most of the explicit explanations are informative even if they are not expressed perfectly.
Below are an example answer I like and one I don’t.
I did a double take when I first opened the package because I would have thought ‘unlock’ would be the opposite of ‘lock’ and ‘close’ would be the opposite of ‘open’ (assuming these are all verbs).