Polymath & Crust is located at 86 Club Street – look for the white storefront with “Polymath & Crust” written on the glass door.

It’s the sister bookstore to Books Actually, the renowned indie bookstore at Ann Siang Road. Polymath & Crust specialises in non-fiction – from political science to food books (in the vein of Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour) and everything inbetween.

Polymath & Crust is at Club Street, which is (literally) a stone’s throw from Books Actually. iterally a stone’s throw. Find a stone, take a few steps to the side so you’re standing by the road, and throw. If your aim is good enough, the stone’ll land right in front of Polymath & Crust. Admittedly, it’d have to be a rather hard throw, but they never mention how hard you’d have to throw in the first place.

Anyway! This was my first time at Polymath & Crust, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

It is a glorious place. P&C is spectacular – slightly bigger than Books Actually with more space to walk around in. This is the type of bookstores that appear in romantic movies and novels, which basically made it the perfect setting.

The event started at 7:30pm, later than planned because not everyone had arrived yet.

The first reader was Wena Poon, who was heading back to the US the next day. She read the end of book four of the Biophilia series, called Solar Flare, so lots of spoilers! But it was really exciting. I can’t wait to get my hands on the Biophilia omnibus whenever it comes out.

Wena Poon

Second reader was Madeleine Lee, the distinguished poet whose collected works include Y grec. She read about several poems, including one she wrote when she was traveling to see the Dalai Lama speak.

Madeleine Lee

It was interesting to hear a poet read their own work, though I freely admit that poetry has never been my thing.

Third on the bill was Suchen Christine Lim, who read one of the short stories from her book The Lies That Build A Marriage.

Suchen Christine Lim with Alvin Pang in background

It was such a sad, slow story and a little bit heartbreaking. This is the type of story you read and sit quietly for a while before going to hug your loved ones.

After her was Alvin Pang, who also served as a rather humorous MC for the evening. He read two pieces from his blog, which is going to be a book, and one of them was hilarious. There were bits where a boy in his story explains to his brother the difference between Christmas and Easter: “Christmas is baby Jesus! Easter is dead Jesus!”

Alvin Pang

It was hard to take a picture of him because he was really animated, but his was a great dose of funny to complement the serious.

And then the mystery guest was introduced!

Pooja Nansi is a regular figure on the poetry slam circles. She read two poems, one by Alvin Pang and one she wrote. Both of them were very sexy, and there was utter silence afterwards because they were so sexy. It was only after Sarah said “oh my!” did the applause finally start, because it was so sexy!

Pooja Nansi

She was the last reader, so that was the end of the ‘official’ bit of the evening! Stayed around to mingle and buy books to get them autographed.

The whole evening felt like something out of a movie or a novel (har har). A reading like this, in that kind of intimate little indie bookstore tucked away in parts of the city you didn’t know existed where the books are expensive but so worth it, filled with literary greats reading their work to an audience who really cares about how the literary world works.

Magical isn’t the right word for it, but special definitely is.