Coffee, anyone?

BBooks’ meeting and coffee area has shrunk as part of it is now an office into which BBooks can retreat when anybody comes in to buy anything. However, customers are still welcome to sit down and have a good look at a book they want to buy, or to browse things like the London Review of Books, Sarawak Museum Journal or National Geographic. Tea, coffee and Milo are available free from the pantry. Please help yourself and wash up as the staff are here to sell books.

Only Bookshop in Wisma Merdeka now

BBooks is now the only bookshop business in the Wisma Merdeka shopping mall in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, our big rivals (Iwase Bookshop) having closed down. Mr Iwase has a successful Japanese restaurant and it looks like he wants to concentrate on that. Also closed down is the 2^nd hand book exchange operation on the ground floor.

BBooks currently has 1 store on the ground floor selling books, handicrafts and other presents to take home (like delicious local made chocolates and Sabah Tea). Upstairs on the 2nd floor we have the main bookshop and the 2nd hand shop. We also have a craft shop on the ground floor - Borneo Craft.

Our own 2^nd hand shop is trading steadily, and we welcome good quality paperbacks if you want to sell them to us, for RM2 or 3 each. We had to shut down the backpackers book exchange scheme cos the staff were too soft hearted and took in more books than they sold! Anyone want a novel in Romanian??

Because we are now the only bookshop in the Wisma Merdeka we are planning on opening another branch in the same mall concentrating on popular fiction.

Lonely Planet publishes new title ‘BORNEO’

This new guide brings Lonely Planet up to speed with Footprint publishers who have had a Borneo title for some time. So now you have a choice. This edition has 50 more pages on Sabah and Sarawak than were to be had in the ‘Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei’ volume and having the East Malaysian states within the same covers as details of Kalimantan is very convenient. It would be even more convenient if you could actually get from Sabah or Sarawak directly by air, but such is the limited traffic of tourists and trade between East Malaysia and Kalimantan, you have to fly via Jakarta – an enormous dog leg. To travel directly, for the present, one has to join the huddled masses of migrant workers and take a bus (eg Kuching to Pontianak) or a ferry (Tawau to Tarakan). Only this week is a timetabled bus service being introduced between Sarawak and Kalimantan – before it was exploitative private hire.

BBoooks was able to offer LP advice about good things to do in Sabah, but was unable to prevent a typo which puts our main shop on the ground floor of the Wisma Merdeka shopping mall rather than where it should be – on the 2^nd floor. ‘Tida apa’ (‘Never mind’) as they say here we are sure those of you who really want to find us will do so.

BBooks would say that this guide is detailed, accurate and up to date, so you can be happy using it (apart from finding us, of course!)