I spent too much time on Facebook and Youtube. I really like these two website. They are both entertaining and educational. I learned more from Facebook and Youtube than reading books.

THIS is a weak point for Cambodians - nobody reads. Reading a book demands a certain concentration and brain action that you will not get from any internet sites.
Reading is exercise for your brain - really.
I know that there is not much available in Khmer, but Samouth, you can read in English. That would improve your written English, would give you more insight into western culture, and also teach your brain to concentrate, as well as being fun if you can find the right book.

Maybe we should start a thread with suggestions about what books you should read
You can download books for free off the internet, so why not ?

^+1. Really quite shocking. i'm pretty sure the culture will develop as Cambodians hit the 10 year mark of having something as opposed to not much at all. The danger is, that the dumbing down of education and the ubiquitous phone use for social media may just win the battle. Brave new world indeed. And that's a book i can recommend to the Khmer posters.
http://www.idph.com.br/conteudos/ebooks ... wWorld.pdf
Also, for a quicker read try Animal Farm, it's supposed to be a children's book, but it is far from that.
http://msxnet.org/orwell/print/animal_farm.pdf

What do Cambodians think about all the foreigners theysee reading books all the time?

Animal Farm. It's not a children's book at all, but easy to read and also entertaining. (Entertaining, as in interesting narrative - it captures your attention and you want to keep reading.)
It's also very easily transposed to past and present situations in Cambodia.

Anchor Moy wrote:

I spent too much time on Facebook and Youtube. I really like these two website. They are both entertaining and educational. I learned more from Facebook and Youtube than reading books.

THIS is a weak point for Cambodians - nobody reads. Reading a book demands a certain concentration and brain action that you will not get from any internet sites.
Reading is exercise for your brain - really.
I know that there is not much available in Khmer, but Samouth, you can read in English. That would improve your written English, would give you more insight into western culture, and also teach your brain to concentrate, as well as being fun if you can find the right book.

Maybe we should start a thread with suggestions about what books you should read
You can download books for free off the internet, so why not ?

Nice spot Anchor Moy. I think less than 10 percent of Cambodian student reading book, not because there are not many books or fictions written in Khmer. At school, we were not taught to love reading and our teacher and parents also never pushed that too. You are that i can read in English, the thing is that every time i grabbed the book to read i already felt sleepy. i have got a few English books, but i have never finished even one of them. To be honest, even though when i was at the univ, i also didn't read much. I only crammed a few days before the exam. However, this kinda lazy habit has been gradually changed after i travelled with my barang friends during Khmer New Year. They read book almost every spare time they had which impressed me a lot. That's why i bought the book (Culture Shock in Cambodia) to read.

juansweetpotato wrote:^+1. Really quite shocking. i'm pretty sure the culture will develop as Cambodians hit the 10 year mark of having something as opposed to not much at all. The danger is, that the dumbing down of education and the ubiquitous phone use for social media may just win the battle. Brave new world indeed. And that's a book i can recommend to the Khmer posters.
http://www.idph.com.br/conteudos/ebooks ... wWorld.pdf
Also, for a quicker read try Animal Farm, it's supposed to be a children's book, but it is far from that.
http://msxnet.org/orwell/print/animal_farm.pdf

What do Cambodians think about all the foreigners they see reading books all the time?

Thanks for the link Potato, however i will not be able to read them until August.

As a Cambodian, i always felt impressed every time i saw them reading book. I always thought how come they read book without feeling sleepy. This happened to me all the time. However, i read a lot of online articles and something on wikipedia.

Anchor Moy wrote:

I spent too much time on Facebook and Youtube. I really like these two website. They are both entertaining and educational. I learned more from Facebook and Youtube than reading books.

THIS is a weak point for Cambodians - nobody reads. Reading a book demands a certain concentration and brain action that you will not get from any internet sites.
Reading is exercise for your brain - really.
I know that there is not much available in Khmer, but Samouth, you can read in English. That would improve your written English, would give you more insight into western culture, and also teach your brain to concentrate, as well as being fun if you can find the right book.

Maybe we should start a thread with suggestions about what books you should read
You can download books for free off the internet, so why not ?

Your idea is great! I don't like reading the books, but i really like buying and keeping them. I spent much time on internet too,but I read everythings I want to know because many articles on internet. But there are many pages in the books so I can't concentrate to finish the books. That's the reason I got the worst score in my reading test

hahah little moon/ little salary, you should read more books. i will read more books in August. It is both entertaining, challenging and educational. One thing to remember, since we are not native speaker, so there might be some words that we don't know or understand, please just leave them alone. Please don't really care about them. You don't need to check all words you don't know. Keep reading as you might understand them in the next page or chapter. If you have to check the meaning of the word you don't know, you will never finish it and you will become so lazy to read it.

John Bingham wrote:Do you think that the way Khmer script is so complicated puts people off reading too much?

i don't think so. if i read anything in Khmer, i am confidence that i can at least 95 % understand it. There might be only a few words that i don't understand. I think in the past, we had some a few great authors whose their stories are still being in at secondary school and high school. The problem is that no one want to be a writer or author, because our copy right low is not being enforced. They didn't many to sell their books in great amount as people can make a hundred copies and sell them in lower price.

Another poor school