Languages in Brunei

I haven't done a Brunei book review for quite a while. I thought I will do one on the many books that have arrived over the last couple of months.This book 'Language Use and Language Change in Brunei Darussalam' I thought was particularly interesting to people who study languages in Brunei. We take our languages for granted but apparently according to language researches, our beloved country

The Local Brunei Writing Scene

I find it ironic that for Brunei Malays or Brunei Chinese that we are proud of whatever race we belong to, we speak the languages but surprisingly if I was to ask the Malays - do you read Malay books and the Chinese - do you read Chinese books - the answer I get is often the negative. Not many of us read books in our native languages yet we all race to the next best selling English novels. Some

You can't do that!

Last year, I was attracted to a book called "Don't sit on this book" written by Philip Cheong. It was an interesting book as it is a collection of Chinese taboos and superstitions. The things the Chinese can or cannot do. Philip Cheong is a Master at the Fung Shui Academy in Malaysia. He pointed out that one of the interesting things about taboos is that as they are passed down from generations

The Brunei Book Fair

The Book Fair is finally here. Book fairs in Brunei are a mixed affair. I don't know whether this is a reflection of our society as a whole or is it because of our small size or something else. I have been to book fairs in other parts of the world. There all I see are books and many and many more books. In Brunei, I see books but I also see computers, compasses and carpets among the book sellers.

Defining Moments in Brunei in Books

I thought I will share two books with you on the day of our 23rd National Day celebrations. These two are written in Malay and and one is written partly by our own Brunei historians. Both are published by Dewan Bahasa Pustaka Malaysia and both surprisingly published in 1995, though one of them has been republished in 2001. The two books entitled “Sejarah Brunei Menjelang Kemerdekaan” written by