ranks & references
References: Looking for the latest fiction, biographies, financial or other reference books at the Book Villa? The Nairobi bookshop has moved to Norwich Union House 8th Floor (building houses Galitos/Chicken Inn on ground) Moi Avenue. New location is bigger and more spacious than the cramped old location and will soon have refreshments in a reading area with a great view of the city
Ranks: Trying to figure out why Alexa has stalled and why Technorati has refused to refresh for the last three weeks.
Alexa changed their ranking algorithm, perhaps you were one of the culprits
I like the new look Books First. I hope they also replenish their stock of books too now that they have loads of space.
Alexa was blocked from accessing Google/Microsoft/Yahoo infor, apparently they were riding on their search network and were slapped with a cease and desist letter. Whats scary about the way we now handle data is that we have being turned into nodes, processing info like machines and entirely depending on their storage capacity, from cellphones, facebook,i-pods,hard drives its like we are turning into machines and acting more like comps!
Why you not posting? It’s been forever!
Toiyoi: I doubt, I think I messed up their code
Josiah: Books first has good choice and Junction is the best, but book for book (and shilling for shilling), you can’t top book villa in Nairobi
Mashatall: thanks for the info, I was not aware.
talking about The Junction – I was there after 2 months, and came across a few good novels.I prefer Book Villa for novels for obvious (shillings) reasons
Excellent info Bankelele. I am on a deep search for my roots right now, which means I’m looking for books of historical import and written by African writers.
Since you seem to know the lay of the city well and you seen to know your bookshops too, may I sugget that you do an article listing all the bookshops in Nairobi city worth a visit?
This task would normally fall on our city fathers but owing ti the total lack of initiative on their part to make use of the world wide web, the common mwananchi has to help themselves some how.
Just received a newsletter from Books First. Apparently you can now buy books from Books First online on their ecommerce website http://www.booksfirst.co.ke from anywhere in Kenya and they will deliver. Actually the books are cheaper than in the stores which are mostly in nairobi anyway. I found “Dreams From My Father” “unbowed” and lots of management books on the website with payment methods being mpesa, cash, bank deposit and cheques even. Maybe soon they may consider accepting credit cards too.
Definitely worth checking out for booklovers.
Tony
booksfirst.co.ke: very nice. I’ll look online and try buying.
First impressions, maybe they need to be more detailed about the categories of book. e.g. Fiction -> Thriller. (unless I missed that somewhere on the site)
This is all nice and dandy, visited bookvilla, great concept, I also visited the booksfirst website and was impressed. The only problem I have with all these booksellers esp the ones in plush malls is that THEY DO NOT STOCK BOOKS BY AFRICAN WRITERS. I enquired from bookvilla why the only book they had was ‘Kwani 1’ and their excuse was that Local publishers do not give good discounts. Similar sentiments were shared by Booksfirst as well as wells bookshop(Nakumatt lifestyle). Apparently, they would rather import different versions of a book that is also available locally(e.g Wizard of the crow) or other books about Africa written by whites rather than African Literature.
But I guess its because the demand for this kind of reading again is not as much as for western fiction and all the upcoming inspirational and self help books.
However, I noted that eastafricanpublishers.com nowadays sells books online so if you are really into books written by African writers then I suggest you visit them. Oh! and storymoja started a bookclub which u may join at Ksh. 1,000 and get to meet other booklovers.