Book shop in jakarta

#8 It may help if you tell us the kind of book you are looking for. Kinokuniya and QB and Aksara (sp?) have the biggest general choices.

The weird thing about Kinokuniya spreading in JKT is that unlike in Singapore, in Jakarta the number of potential buyers of English-language books must be relatively limited.
Or are they selling Indonesian books there for the most part?

Even in Surabaya which surely has a seriously limited supply of readers of English there is a slowly growing number of English language bookshops, almost exclusively Periplus - the one I usually go to seems to do a pretty brisk trade with upper-middle class Chinese Indonesians - I'm never sure whether they can really speak English though, or whether it's just a status thing...

#11 Mostly English and Japanese, only a small section of Indonesian books as far as I remember. The best Indonesian shops (Gunung Agung, Gramedia, etc.) don't have much in English (apart from English language courses etc.) and the foreign bookshops don't have much in B.I., in my experience anyway.
A lot of middle class Indonesians buy books in English because, I assume, not so many books are translated into Indonesian, especially non-fiction and the more serious novels. When I go to QB or Kinokuniya there usualy are more Indonesian than western customers (though some of those apparent "Indonesians" may be Philippino, Thai, etc.). I know some Indonesians (especially ethnic Chinese, educated overseas) who seem as or more comfortable speaking English than B.I.

There are also probably several 10's of thousands of westerners in Jakarta, the majority English speaking, but that only amounts to a small town's worth of people, a population which would probably not have a book bookshop in the UK whereas there are perhaps 10 in Jakarta.

qb is goin down the swanny. the one opposite sarinah died a while back i think

i go to kino myself although periplus at the airport and kemang villa has a good choice sometimes

I like history books also biography, what I saw on Kinokuniya at plaza senayan mostly novel or children book, but i was there only once and didn't really wander well. But that first impression made me think that its just so so.
Periplus at airport is better but often when i go to airport always in a rush to catch my flight... ha ha...
I also went to the one at Pasaraya Grande, I dont remember what the name, its on upper floor, but still I couldnt find my book.

are u kidding. Kino would have 100 x more books than Periplus at the airport

At Periplus I found one book about buddhism that i've been looking, while I couldn't find any book match my interest at Kino, so yes, Periplus is better then Kino (For me)

Actually, despite being very small, the Periplus stores do seem to carry a very decent range of History and culture books with an emphasis on Indonesia and SE Asia, including some rather obscure academic titles. But Kinokuniya in Plaza Senayan has a pretty decent selection of general history, much as you would find in a similar large bookstore anywhere in the world.

#15 Like Radson I am amazed that you found Kino had less than Periplus at the airport. I would guess that the religion section alone at Kino is about as big as Periplus (unless there is a new Periplus since mid 2006 which I have not seen?).
Are you sure you were in Kino and not the small bookshop nearby in Plaza Senayan?
"mostly novel or children book" Fiction and children's stuff is mostly near the main door but there large non-fiction sections off to the right, and mostly Japanese books (and the kids stuff?) to the left. I am in the UK and that Kino branch is as big as most bookshops I know here outside London and the big cities.