4th Mini Saga Contest: Voting now open

The finalists of the 4th mini saga contest have already been chosen. Thanks to all the participants for their great stories! Please, read the stories below and vote for your favourite one here. There will be three prizes and winners will be announced on January, 24.

A nightmare lullaby

Hatred is what I feel when I hear that repetitive noise. A piercing song that destroys my dreams with its ruthless tune. My head is about to explode. An endless tick, worse than the worst of raps, an unbeatable drill. I curse you, dripping tap! You woke me up again!

Beware of knives

The kitten was injured. A wound on its paw after playing with a sharp knife. When Alba arrived in the kitchen the floor was covered in blood. She rushed to the vet and once there they tried to stop the hemorrhage. It was a tragedy. She was allergic to cats.

Cold Fall
I had been up there for too long. The desire to run away became unbearable. Like a wild instinct. It was frightfully high, but I decided to jump. And I fell. And I realized that I wasn't alone. We were hundred of thousands, innumerable snowflakes gently swinging into the void.

Don’t be water, my friend!

It is well known that water is life and you make it more alive if possible.

You, rather hot or cold, will be my dark mate forever. The one who wakes me up in the mornings and the same one who keeps me asleep some nights. I need you coffee.

Environmental awareness

Since a toddler, I was taught to put the right waste in the right bin.

The green bin for the glassy-eyed werewolves; hard nuts to crack! The blue bin: the right place to dump cardboard-faced witches.

The brown one? Still waiting for the zombies who have devoured my beloved Ariadne.

Hands up!

Overwhelming silence; we are wearing our gala uniforms, forming line, facing each other. No way to hide nor to escape. The instructions are spinning in my head. Hands up! Stay in line! My partner is my mirror; panic in his eyes... A bagpipe starts playing, the muiñeira dance show begins!

Hunter hunted

The lights were off, no noise in the surroundings. The house was empty, no guard dogs nor visible alarms. The man introduced the skeleton key into the lock and opened the door stealthily. The walls vibrated with a loud “Happy Birthday!”. “Bad day for a surprise party” thought the thief.

I will survive

For seven years you've been the one that never failed me. Whenever I felt insecure I only needed you to feel powerful. You know every single inch of my skin better than I do and now you are leaving me... You know what? Goodbye. Other jeans will fit me.

Love at first sight

I remember that warm summer evening facing the sea with the lulling sound of the waves and daylight progressively fading before the sun set. I almost went totally crazy when I saw you and felt the sensuous and ripe taste of your orange skin... You were such a delicious peach!

Making Things Clear

My boss is calling me. I go there immediately. The company´s going badly and he blames me for not being a diligent, open-minded employee. Knock! Knock! Come in! I take my six-shooter off my pocket and I just blow his brains out. Hey boss, now you see what open-minded means!

Out of sight, out of mind

Her eyes tracked down the darkness through her binoculars. Shifting from here to there, the volunteer glimpsed nothing but deep gloom. Ominous silence. Out of the blue, desperate eyes crossed her soul through the lens...128 aghast eyes gleaming in the murk, standing on a boat, drifting in the sea.

Paperback Writer

Jack has a terrible hangover. He crawls to his desk where he finds another chapter of his novel. He doesn´t remember writing anything. Puzzled, he orders a pizza, leaves the door open and falls asleep. The pizza boy comes, puts the box over a pile and sits at the desk.

The Awakening

I woke up this morning and I climbed the tree. I jumped high enough and I ventured into the clouds until the shore. I dived into the ocean and I slipped away. I crossed the wood and I reached those railings. I opened their door and eventually entered the kitchen...

The Murderer

No sooner had the witness entered the courtroom than he immediately recognised the murderer. He recognised his icy eyes and the same white hand that had shot the poor black boy. Just then, the murderer, hitting the wooden gavel, spoke and said: Order! Order!. Does the defense have any questions?

The Stealer of Stars

Always a dreamer. He had always said he’d be an astronaut. He’d go to the moon and pick one of the stars to prove he’d been there. Since yesterday, his room is darker than usual. The sky finally asked him to give it back. Now, nights are brighter than ever.

The Brooklyn Follies

Hi Bookworms!

Thank you for a very stimulating meeting last Friday! I loved discussing why shared reading matters and especially enjoyed listening to your predictions about Nathan Glass, the narrator of The Brooklyn Follies.

Paul Auster

I know some of you couldn’t attend the meeting so here you have our next year’s calendar:

BOOK 1	The Brooklyn Follies Paul Auster	January, 10
BOOK 2	A Thousand Splendid Suns Khaled Hosseini	February, 28
BOOK 3	To Kill a Mocking Bird Harper Lee	April, 17

See you on the 10^th. Happy reading!

Book club 1st meeting

Winter is round the corner and when it’s chilly outside, there’s nothing I love to do more than curling up with a warm drink and a good book. 

And with winter comes the time to resume our book club! We have three titles to get you through the winter but you'll have to come to our first meeting to find out! Here are details about date, time and place:

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, let me recommend a poem by Cuban poet Dulce María Loynaz. "If you love me" is a moving text addressed to everyone who wants to fight violence against women.

Watch this video in which Clara, a high school student from Ourense, beautifully recites it!

The Best Books of 2019 So Far: The Top 10

Amazon's has announced their Top 10 Books of 2019. Have you read any of the top 10? Would you recommend it/them? Looking forward to your comments!!

Amazon's 2019 Top Books

Participate in our 4th Mini Saga Contest

Can you imagine a story in 50 words?
Participate in the 4th Mini Saga Contest of the EOI de Santiago de Compostela!!

"Writing" by kartikeyp is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Participation terms:

• To enter, you must be a student at EOI Santiago de Compostela.
• Write your mini saga in exactly 50 words in English (plus a title up to 15 words).
• Send your text to the following email address: biblioteca.sar@eoisantiago.org no later than December 20th. Make sure you include your full name and the name of your group.
• A maximum of 15 stories will be shorlisted and published here so that you can vote for your favourite.
• Voting will be enabled until January 22nd and the winners will be announced on January 24th.
• In the case of a tie, a panel of teachers will take the final decision.
• EOI SANTIAGO retains the rights to publish your text online or in a printed compilation.
•  Participation in this contest implies the acceptance of these terms.

Looking forward to reading your contributions!!

30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Hi Sar Bookworms!

The EOI in Vite is now showcasing a multilingual exhibit about the fall of the Berlin Wall, with information in English, Galician and German. 

Don't miss this opportunity to learn about history and get some inter-linguistic mediation practice!

Mini saga workshop

Ever wanted to write but the muses don't visit you?

Come to our creative writing workshop and enjoy reading and writing stories in 50 words. B2, C1 and C2 students are welcome! 

Friday, 15th November at 18:30h in the library.
Don't miss it!!

5 horror stories you can read online (for free) this Halloween

Ghosts, witches, monsters, oh my! It’s that time of the year when spooky stories fill the air. Cozy up with these horror tales!

"The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James

"The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving

"The Minister's Black Veil" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl

The Book as Signifier in John Latham's Work

Hi there!

I would like to share with you an entry I wrote a few years ago about a conceptual artist that fascinated me as soon as I discovered his work: John Latham. (1921-2006)

John Latham

"The Book as Signifier in John Latham's Work"

Books are much more than words on printed paper in John Latham's work. Submitted to various demolishing processes, books come to signify the compounding of scientific, philosophical, political and religious ideas that articulate the world we live in, and by extension, our selves.

Five Sisters Bing (1976)

God is Great (1989)

Latham Cluster 11 (1992)

Film Star (1960)

The Burial of Count Orgaz (1958)

Though dismissed by some critics as anarchic, Latham's use of books helps us reflect on the way culture has shaped and framed existence and how this frame can be changed by submitting meaning to what he calls an "event", an elusive present: life at its purest, which can neither be framed or shaped by culture, but which nevertheless guarantees questioning and change.

Art and Culture (1966-1969)

Art and Culture was Latham's most radical subversion of the idea of books and artworks as dead objects. This piece is a materialisation of art as action: In 1966, Latham borrowed a copy of Clement Greenberg's Art and Culture — a work that held something of a cult status at that time — from the library of Saint Martin's School of Art, where Latham was employed as a part-time lecturer. At a party Latham invited students to chew pages from the book, and then distilled the resulting pulp into a clear liquid. This process took several months, and Latham began to receive letters from the library demanding its return. Latham presented a vial of the fermented book-pulp to the library, but this was rejected and his teaching contract was not renewed. The vial and correspondence became an artwork of its own, displayed in a leather case; the piece is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

To find out more, watch this interview:

Library Day

In Spain we celebrate Library Day on 24th October every year since 1997 to commemorate the destruction on the Sarajevo National Library, set on fire in 1992 during the Balcans War. It’s an initiative from the Asociación Española de Amigos del Libro Infantil y Juvenil, (Spanish Association of Friends of the Children and Young Adults Book) in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and Sport.

Here in Sar we have opened the school library to EOI students, who have taken part in an inspiring discussion on the importance of libraries and have also read a short story in English, Roald Dahl's "Mrs Bixby and the Colonel's Coat" (1959).

Dahl's story was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock for a memorable episode of his TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which we had the chance to watch at the library as well. You can watch it on this link.

Happy Library Day to all!

Are you a bibliophile?

The term “bibliophile” means a lover (phile) of books (biblio). The word is often used to refer to people who simply like to read fiction, but “bibliophile” means something more specific: someone who loves books especially for quality or format, how books look, how they smell, what they feel like. Bibliophiles also value books as fascinating objects in themselves, objects with their own stories to tell. 

To find out if you belong to this type read this interview with renowned writer Julian Barnes (1946), author of A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters  (1997) and The Sense of an Ending (2011) among many other amazing novels.

Julian Barnes

A declared bibliophile, Barnes reflects on the importance of books in his life and explains why he prefers secondhand books to new ones:

By now, I probably preferred secondhand books to new ones. In America such items were disparagingly referred to as "previously owned"; but this very continuity of ownership was part of their charm. A book dispensed its explanation of the world to one person, then another, and so on down the generations; different hands held the same book and drew sometimes the same, sometimes a different wisdom from it. Old books showed their age: they had fox marks the way old people had liver spots. They also smelt good – even when they reeked of cigarettes and (occasionally) cigars. And many might disgorge pungent ephemera: ancient publishers' announcements and old bookmarks - often for insurance companies or Sunlight soap.

Barnes further explains why, despite the popularisation of e-books and e-readers, printed books and bookshops will not disappear:

I am more optimistic, both about reading and about books. There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers – there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader. Nor do I think the e-reader will ever completely supplant the physical book – even if it does so numerically. Every book feels and looks different in your hands; every Kindle download feels and looks exactly the same (though perhaps the e-reader will one day contain a "smell" function, which you will click to make your electronic Dickens novel suddenly reek of damp paper, fox marks and nicotine).

Books will have to earn their keep – and so will bookshops. Books will have to become more desirable: not luxury goods, but well-designed, attractive, making us want to pick them up, buy them, give them as presents, keep them, think about rereading them, and remember in later years that this was the edition in which we first encountered what lay inside. I have no luddite prejudice against new technology; it's just that books look as if they contain knowledge, while e-readers look as if they contain information. My father's school prizes are nowadays on my shelves, 90 years after he first won them. I'd rather read Goldsmith's poems in this form than online.

Are you a bibliophile?

Peter Handke's "Song of Childhood"

As you may know, Austrian author Peter Handke and Poland's Olga Tokarczuk have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Two winners were named, one for 2019 and one for 2018, because the prize was not awarded last year.

I must admit I know nothing about Olga Tokarczuk's life and work (gotta do some research!) but I did know a poem by Peter Handke that it's well worth reading: "Song of Childhood", recited at the beginning of Wim Wenders Wings of Desire (1987). Read the poem and feel inspired by an exquisitely beautiful expression of the time we were children.

Song of Childhood

By Peter Handke

When the child was a child

It walked with its arms swinging,

wanted the brook to be a river,

the river to be a torrent,

and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child,

it didn’t know that it was a child,

everything was soulful,

and all souls were one.

When the child was a child,

it had no opinion about anything,

had no habits,

it often sat cross-legged,

took off running,

had a cowlick in its hair,

and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child,

It was the time for these questions:

Why am I me, and why not you?

Why am I here, and why not there?

When did time begin, and where does space end?

Is life under the sun not just a dream?

Is what I see and hear and smell

not just an illusion of a world before the world?

Given the facts of evil and people.

does evil really exist?

How can it be that I, who I am,

didn’t exist before I came to be,

and that, someday, I, who I am,

will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child,

It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding,

and on steamed cauliflower,

and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child,

it awoke once in a strange bed,

and now does so again and again.

Many people, then, seemed beautiful,

and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise,

and now can at most guess,

could not conceive of nothingness,

and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child,

It played with enthusiasm,

and, now, has just as much excitement as then,

but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child,

It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread,

And so it is even now.

When the child was a child,

Berries filled its hand as only berries do,

and do even now,

Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw,

and do even now,

it had, on every mountaintop,

the longing for a higher mountain yet,

and in every city,

the longing for an even greater city,

and that is still so,

It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees

with an elation it still has today,

has a shyness in front of strangers,

and has that even now.

It awaited the first snow,

And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child,

It threw a stick like a lance against a tree,

And it quivers there still today.