Books Kinokuniya Webstore

“My affinity with Books Kinokuniya Webstore, unsurprisingly, is rooted in Books Kinokuniya Physical Stores. In those days, it was either Kinokuniya or Borders. No offense to Borders, but sometimes I felt like I just walked into a vortex of entropy when I stepped into Borders, which was at Wheelock Place. Kinokuniya was and is quite the opposite. The books and various reading materials are highly organized, or at least they were, optically. And in the layout of Books Kinokuniya, some computers function for consumers to search for the availability of books. And that was my first exposure to the Books Kinokuniya Webstore.

Perhaps my first experiences began with the computer stations within the physical Books Kinokuniya store. That was probably in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I just got through my secondary education and was living in the 'A' Level nightmare. The use of the Books Kinokuniya was probably tentative. It is more likely that I started using the webstore more regularly beginning in the mid-2000s, and incidentally, that was the period I started my undergraduate education at NUS. So, it has been a good two decades.

The use of the webstore was on a needs basis. Thus, the frequency of use is subject to the need for it at different periods.

The moment you are on the landing page of the webstore, you know Books Kinokuniya is serious about its reading materials. And every hyperlink is a gateway to vast bodies of knowledge, information, culture, and history. The vast collection of materials within the webstore makes it a very rich one-stop resource.

But the vast collection of materials within the webstore always works against Books Kinokuniya, as it can be difficult to navigate for those who might be a tad less familiar with the webstore.

Perhaps, a more reader-friendly and less cluttered layout could be the main landing page of the webstore.

Date of this experience: 2025-07-26”