Thread: Dasa Book Shop

I made my twice-a-year pilgrimage to Dasa bookshop yesterday near the Emporium being as they had a 20% off all books sale. As usual I came away with four or five books, at a very decent price, and spent a very pleasant hour browsing the travel section.

This is about the fourth time I have been in Dasa bookshop and not once has the farang owner taken his eyes off his computer or diverted his gaze from his CD selection and acknowledged me with something as simple as a cheery hello.

What a lovely life - sitting there amongst thousands of books, in a pleasant air-conditioned environment, fresh coffee on tap, and a steady stream of presumably educated types all willing to exchange a bit of jovial banter about the weather or Ernest Hemingway.

"Good afternoon sir. 20% off all books upstairs and downstairs. Take all the time in the world. Let me know if there's anything you're specifically looking for. Oh we've some lovely homemade cheesecake and fresh coffee if you fancy a bit of light refreshment"

I may be coming at this from the wrong angle but isn't that what bookshop owners are supposed to do? Isn't that how you convert casual browsers into 200 baht customers and 500 baht customers into 1000 baht ones?

To be truthful I don't really care whether he greets me with a cheery good afternoon or not, but I get this uncontrollable urge to want to strangle people when I see them letting business just slip through their fingers at what amounts to no extra cost to them.

This little non-episode at Dasa got me thinking. Does something happen to people who open bookstores? The guy over at Elite bookshop on Sukhumwit is hardly known for his 'come in me old mate and have a cuppa' bonhomie. The guy who runs that infamous bookshop near the Tha Prae gate in Chiang Mai doesn't have a soul with a good word to say about him. I've got into several heated exchanges with the Khao san Rd booksellers down the years over frankly trivial matters. And when I was in my early 20s, I used to frequent a second-hand bookshop in the suburb of Acocks Green in Birmingham. The shop was almost a crumbling, paint-peeling throwback to the Dickensian era itself. There was the ticking grandmother clock in the corner, the unmistakable whiff of musty paperbacks, and the occassional page-turning from a bespectacled furtive browser. And the owner was a c*nt.

^ LoL our local second hand bookshop bloke in Reading was an utter wanker (his daughter was sound as though) saw him throw a bloke out once for bringing in what he assumed (and he might have been right) was nicked books....a truly nasty piece of work.

I always wanted to own a book (comic) or video shop.....I shoot for the sky


Is this the one Stickers mentioned? They've got everything on computer file or something???


My mate just told me the bookshop in the Paragon (is that right???) has loads and loads of books (new though) a massive selection, and if they ain't got it they'll order it for you.

He looks like he is frightened of people.

Yes I wish you'd stop growling at him JB. It may be amusing for you but it just makes him worse.

Posted after 3 minutes 33 seconds:

My mate just told me the bookshop in the Paragon (is that right???) has loads and loads of books (new though) a massive selection, and if they ain't got it they'll order it for you.

Same deal for the Kino in Emporium mate. The Paragon one may be bigger but I'm not sure the selection is any better.

Out comes the old stereotype of the bookshop owners who just likes hoarding books and doesn't like actually selling them...can't say I've ever been offered cheesecake from any bookshop I've visited.

Shame I'm too cheap and yiddish to buy new books

^ Sorry I meant in regards to getting new ones from the Paragon (sp?).

I get mine given to me by my mate who's got like a 1,000 or so (the bloke who wanted me to do that bad thing in the bottle actually).


I just like good books...be they old, new or inbetween.

To be fair to the DASA guy, at least his face isn't plastered all over his website in a sad attempt to publicise himself.

Perhaps that's where he's going wrong?
Perhaps he should be 'the face of Dasa'. 'the man who you turn to when you're after a particular book', etc, etc
There's nothing anonymous about success.

Or he could sit in the corner and read books. It depends what you want from life.

If you're into Classic Literature, the Paragon have loads of them for 99Baht. This amazed me as I'd just been to a second-hand bookshop and paid more than that for an old battered copy of the same book.

I never really noticed, but it's true, isn't it? The folks at Dasa don't say or do anything.

I love the Kinokuniya at Paragon. I'll pay the premium for the experience of browsing

there, finding something that's gonna make me really happy for the next month, and

enjoying that brand new book smell and feel. Not every time- now and then, mind you.