Moving books from Portuguese to Spanish Reading Room

The Portuguese reading room is soon going to become the Korean reading room. For that reason, all of the books kept therein had to be moved to the Spanish reading room and section which from now on will likely be the Iberian section! Meanwhile, we got some videos from the procedure and we thought they looked fun and representative of the good time we have in the library even when doing "manual work" like this, so I decided to up them.

Green Library 2014 Promo and Bulgarian National Radio Interview

This video was an exercise in spontaneity: we came up with the idea for it, wrote the lyrics and the music, shot it, cut it and uploaded it within 6-7 hours. Extra footage is from our first Green Library event at Lyulin, which took place last Saturday, and, apart from the rain, which spoiled our plans a little bit, it was quite successful.

I mean, we even went to the Bulgarian National Radio for an interview. Valya, Boryana and Zanda were the ones who spoke the most, presenting our activities and inviting the listeners to our event in Lyulin, but it's no small thing getting to speak in Bulgarian on the freakin' national radio, if only just for 15 seconds! The people were kind enough to share the interview with us. Valya starts speaking at 0:25, Boryana at 2:00, Zanda at 4:00, Maria at 4:20, Vicente at 6:55 and myself at 07:10. Here it is:

Many thanks to Maria and Zanda, who had the original idea, and everyone else who helped make this a reality. See you next Saturday!

Open doors day at the Sofia City Library

If you were wondering how to spent this lovely Saturday (10th of may 2014), I will recommend you to stop by the Sofia City Library and take a look inside at our open doors day!!
You might find a new interesting book to enjoy with a coffee in the park or have a little chit - chat with one (or more) of the very sweet and helpful librarians or us interesting, young EVS - volunteers from Latvia, Greece, Spain and Denmark, who will be around (I'll personally be at the Nordic reading room, 4th floor) from 11:00 am to 18:30 pm.
And if you should feel like it, you might even take the chance and participate in Zanda's "Native American Art" workshop in the American corner from 11:00 - 13:00
Or
the "Creative English Magical Writing" from 13:00-14:00 also at the American corner by me (Maria)

Hope to see you there!

What's your Top 5? Must-read lists of the Library's English Conversation Group

Every Wednesday the employees of the library have a closed English discussion group for practice and our little EVS team has been part of it ever since we arrived here. We set a topic for the following week which we rarely follow - usually we talk about random things, and each Wednesday afternoon we have a great cozy time. Last week we decided that this week we should bring lists of our favourite books, or rather our personal list of Top 5 must-read books, to share with the rest of the group and discuss. I have included them to share them with you, but also for our own reference. Some fantastic-looking titles in there...

I have also included Goodreads links (wherever possible) for ease of use.

Vale

1. Khaled Hosseini ~ "The Kite Runner"
2. Isabel Allende ~ "Paula"
3. Seneca ~ "Epistulae morales ad Lucilium"
4. Oscar Wilde ~ "The Happy Prince and Other Tales"
5. Albert Camus ~ "The Myth of Sisyphus"

Addie

1. Fyodor Dostoyevsky ~ "Crime and Punishment"
2. Ernest Hemmingway ~ "A Farewell to Arms"
3. Erich Maria Remarque ~ "Arch of Triumph"
4. Dimiter Dimov ~ "Doomed Days"
5. Yordan Yovkov ~ "Short Stories"

Evelina

1. Khaled Hosseini ~ "The Kite Runner"
2. Anna Gavalda ~ "Hunting and Gathering"
3. Elif Safak ~ "The Forty Rules of Love"
4. Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez ~ "Love in the Time of Cholera"
5. Dimiter Dimov ~ "Doomed Days"

Boryana (she chose to list authors instead of separate books)

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky
2. Mikhail Bulgakov
3. Truman Capote
4. Franz Kafka
5. Viktor Paskov

Maria

1. H.C. Andersen ~ "The Little Mermaid"
2. Ludvig Holberg ~ "Mascarade"
3. Cecelia Ahern ~ "If You Could See Me Now"
4. Stephenie Meyer ~ "Twilight" / "The Host"
5. William Shakespeare ~ "A Midsummernight's Dream"

Dimitris

1. Jonathan Safran Foer ~ "Eating Animals"
2. Bill Bryson ~ "A Short History of Nearly Everything"
3. Ursula Le Guin ~ "The Dispossessed"
4. Aldous Huxley ~ "Brave New World"
5. Jose Saramago ~ "Death With Interruptions"

Zanda

1. Inga Žolude ~ "Sarkanie bērni"
2. Sofi Oksanen ~ "Stalin's cows" / "Purge"
3. Erlend Loe  ~"Doppler" "muleum"
4. Hallgrimur Helgason ~ "101 reykjavik"
5. Svetlana Alexievich ~ "Voices from chernobyl "

Vicente

1. Vasily Grossman ~ "Life and Fate"
2. Marguerite Yourcenar ~ "Memoirs of Hadrian"
3. Michel Houellebecq ~ "The Possibility of An Island"
4. Norman Mailer ~ "The Naked and the Dead"
5. Miguel Delibes ~ "Los Santos Inocentes"