Novel finds from The Penang Bookshelf

A Penang-based bibliophile is helping book lovers ferret out rare, used or out-of-print books on Malaysia and Asia.

I FIRST stumbled on The Penang Bookshelf, an online book retailer, when I was researching Yixing teapots and their effect on tea for an article. There are so few authoritative books or articles on the subject that are written in English. Naturally, I was thrilled to find tea lovers raving about The Beauty Of Chinese Yixing Teapots (2001) at online tea forums, penned by a Penang-based author, Lim Kean Siew, no less. But the going rate for the secondhand book at major online stores ranged from US$138 (RM435) to US$395 (RM1,246)! After some futile calls to local bookstores and the Singapore publisher, I tracked down the wife of the writer (Lim passed away in 2007) who directed me to The Penang Bookshelf, which stocks a few copies of the book.