Caught between pages after the sun goes down

Some booksellers have found a foil to their never-say-sleep internet rivals: the round-the-clock bookshop

What's it to be as you go into that good night? Hours of ungentle carousing in a manner Dylan Thomas would have approved of? Or of something with a little more sobriety: imbibing fine writing that flows from the shelves of a nearby bookshop, something the Welsh poet might not have been averse to either?

In the 20 years since the opening of what are said to have been the first 24-hour bookshops, Eslite Dun Nan in Taipei, around-the-clock bookshops have sprung up in Japan, Malaysia and South Korea, and some big cities in the United States have dipped their toes in the water with 24-hour news/magazine stands.