Borders around Britain are my favourite bookstores next to Waterstones and Books. But I think it will be a failure. Part of the book success in the UK is freedom of speech which you hardly get in Malaysia.
Jon Choo | Homepage | 04.21.05 - 3:31 am | #

Maybe you should give the URL of this post to them as a comment.
Darren | Homepage | 04.22.05 - 1:21 pm | #

darren: I DID ask them for a comment card, but apparently, they don't have one yet... gee whiz...

Jon: at least we're getting a lot more variety in our books now than say... 10 years ago?
eyeris | Homepage | 04.22.05 - 1:30 pm | #

Hi eyeris,
I'm a staff at Borders KL and I found your blog while googling for comments on our store. I just wanna say that while the bookstore feels less cosy because of the large open space, but on the bright side, you have so much space to navigate the store in, even on crowded days. In terms of book titles, Kinokuniya still holds the highest number (250,000) but thats including its Japanese books. Borders has 200,000 title and so does MPH 1U.

Our staffs may not know everything - but a staff who may not know the diff between sci fi and fantasy may surprise you on his knowledge of nietzsche or sylvia plath. In any case i find my colleagues to be very friendly and eager to help customers. Seeing as that most of the floor staffs are SPM grads and this may be their first job, they have done very well so far in their training.

Anyway, as a staff I just felt I should say the management is not all cold and all about the money.. they actually encourage love for books and knowledge in our daily briefings. I have colleagues who worked for Kino and MPH before and they simply love the Borders management as compared to the other 2.

Your point is taken though about the lack of cosiness in the store and the absence of comment cards. I hope you'll visit us again soon and find improvements.
moongypsy | 04.26.05 - 7:06 pm | #

Jon: Hmm.. well.. talking about freedom of speech... I actually had to help pull out a quarter of the women's studies and gender studies section on KDN's (kementerian dalam negeri) instruction.

A big group of KDN officials came to browse thru a list of titles and off went boxes of sufism books, a few political books which somehow made it into the store at first, even erotic romance novels and take this ... "natural aphrodisiacs" and "the pregnancy bible" (?????) Those boxes were supposed to be reviewed again and some may make it back onto the shelves but I've not seen them again so far.
moongypsy | 04.26.05 - 7:11 pm | #

oooooo. interesting feedback, moongypsy. thanks for taking the time to rebutt my 'accusations'. At least we now know that Borders employees DO care!
Eyeris | Homepage | 04.26.05 - 7:55 pm | #

This is all so childish. If you hate something so much just avoid it and putting others down is a downright selfish thing to do! Grow up! (If you can)
Kugaris | 01.14.07 - 10:25 am | #

heh.
eyeris | Homepage | 01.14.07 - 1:47 pm | #