Ok, maybe you’ve seen my previous post about book ban. Yeah I’m doing a book ban now. Yesterday was an ascension day and today is isra miraj day. Since this is a golden week, we can’t spend it just by staying at home.
Speaking of golden week, the first day of it, I’m spending the time in Reading Lights Bandung! I know this bookstore from a public lecture when it was world books day. It’s a library-bookstore-cafe. There is such a little thing about library cafe in Indonesia, especially in Bandung. As a business appreciator, I’m gonna take a hit.
Reading Lights is located in Jalan Siliwangi Bandung no. 16, It’s not far from bbs Cikapundung, about 100 m away. If you want to go there, you can take a damri from buah batu and stop in Jalan Dipatiukur, thus take a cicaheum and ciroyom angkot. Angkot is a small car public transportation that has specific colors and different tracks in each colors.
Since Reading Lights is a library based, the books are second condition, all in foreign language (majority english, few are dutch or german) and only sells it at the very low low low price, it’s about Rp 5000 – 300.000, depends on the author, ratings and how old the book is. Me and my sister bought 4 books (1 HC) for only 100.000, isn’t that amazing?
Welcome to your new home!
It’s my first time going to RL, the visitors are not many, I arrived at 12.05 in the mid day, and we are the FIRST customer. It was cloudy outside, when we entered the store I admit it was a little bit spooky.
The collections are not as many as you see from their twitter or facebook, maybe most of the books were being bought by the previous customers. You are able to book a book for 10 days and pay it later. Which is I think impossible because the books are very cheap tho. Or if you are looking for a book and it’s unavailable, you can wait in the waiting list. OR if you don’t have any money, you can only read books WITHOUT order anything!
RL doesn’t provide heavy meal like rice, or burger. But they provides some ‘heavy’ snack such as sandwich, french fries, cream soup, pancake, spaghetti; and regular beverages such as coffee, tea, and soft drinks. The price of beverages are about Rp 5.000 – 20.000 and the price of food is about Rp 18.000 – 35.000.
It also provide a praying room, an unisex toilet, smoking area, and WIFI. Praying room and toilet are on the second floor, you must take the left stairs, the right stairs led you to the office which is forbidden. If you buy books at least Rp 100.000, you can get a member card! The benefits of being a member are:
- You can get 10% discount on beverage
- Collect the stamps and you’ll get a discount!
- You can exchange books!
- You can sell books here (I thinks it’s valid to all visitors)
I took some photos of RL, just take a look!
NB: the manager you see as the cashier is Teh Puti, she’s alumnus from Unpad who took destintry major
Boox Adventure 
Lools like such a cozy space to read in! I love the concept of library cafes – brings two things I love together – books and access to cofee! 😊
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Thank you for this post! I’ve been meaning to go but as a newcomer to Bandung I wasn’t sure how to get there. Nice to see places like this still exist, ya?
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You’re welcome! Yup, it’s really hard to find a book-based place. I have been live in Bandung for 7 years, but I only found 2 fun libraries (beside pitimoss): Reading Lights and Pustakalana (Pustakalana is a children library, they sometimes sell used books with a very good deal too). It’s not that hard to go to Reading Lights, if you’re from Dago, you have to take a bus, and then stop in jalan dipatiukur/ in front of universitas padjadjaran. From there, you have to take cicaheum-ciroyom angkot. This angkot will take you exactly in front of this place. I’m also surprised this kind of place still exists tho.
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