About The Guide

Hello! We are Sonja and Ivan. And this is our Bookstore Guide - an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe. We hope this Guide will help you find the book(stores) you are looking for. Unfortunately, the bookstores are no longer uploaded and may be out of date

Greenhouse Kitap, Istanbul

greenhouse kitap logo

Where?
Istanbul, Turkey



Recommended by: Lynne Humphreys

Lynne Said: "I wanted to tell you about a bookstore which has two floors of English language books with a wide range of adults and children's books. It is Greenhouse and is situated on the Asian side of the Bosphorous (unlike the other bookstores you have listed which are all on the European side) in Istanbul. It is warm and friendly, staff speak English and Turkish and there is also an excellent website. For ex-pats and travelers alike, it is a great place to find out what is happening on our side of the city, where anyone, anywhere, can order books that are stocked by the Greenhouse Book company - with door to door delivery. Departments include Turkish history, novels set in Turkey, Turkish authors translated into English, travel in Turkey, arts, Islam, politics and culture. Books for learning Turkish. There is also the latest novels and the LARGEST choice of children's books in English in the whole of Istanbul."

As Lynne has already pointed out in her wonderful recommendation, the next bookstore to be added to our Guide in 2009 is geographically located outside of Europe. To avoid any confusion, we haven't decided to expand our Guide yet. But as we already list several bookstores from Istanbul, and considering the specific location of the city and the fact, that we absolutely prefer accepting recommendations we receive from our readers to rejecting them, we agreed on including Greenhouse Kitap. So for now, this is the only bookstore in the Guide which can be found on non-European soil.

The Greenhouse bookshop has been providing English books to the Asian part of Istanbul since 1996, when it was founded by Charlotte McPherson, an American expat living in Turkey. The bookstore originally included a café, directly integrated into its premises. In December 2007, the bookstore moved to its present location at 17 Dumlupinar Sokak and it no longer includes a café. What it certainly does include is a great amount of carefully selected books. Two floors packed with English titles hold more than 70 thousand books. Two sections of the bookstore's stock stand out among the rest and are considered to be the best in the whole city - the section devoted to books on the city of Istanbul and on Turkey and the children's section. The offer is very up-to-date, as around 1500 new books arrive to the bookstore each month. And since Greenhouse Kitap imports directly from the UK, the prices are the same or below the original cover price.

A few years into its existence, Greenhouse also entered the domain of publishing, and it now manages to put out several titles a year, mostly focused on the history and culture of Turkey. Greenhouse Kitap also tries to serve as some sort of community place for the expat population in Istanbul - interesting seminars, discussions and even Turkish language courses for all levels take place in the seminar room of the bookstore.

greenhouse kitap shopfrontGreenhouse Kitap
Address:
Dumlupinar Sok 17 (Kadiköy)
Istanbul
greenhouse bookshop istanbul









Website:
http://greenhousekitap.info

Phone and Email:

0216 449 3034
info@greenhousekitap.info

Working Hours:
daily 10-18:30 except for Tuesday and Sunday

Back to the list of bookstores in Istanbul

A (Blitz) Report from Ljubljana

As we travel, we often find ourselves in one city or another, waiting for our next train to depart. This happened to me in Ljubljana, while on my way to Venice. I had two hours to kill and, as any other bookophille and, even worse, bookstoreophille (a term we could easily coin and apply to ourselves), I headed out to the city center, searching for those several bookstores I knew existed (bearing in mind, just as any other meticulous traveler, that I should look out for a few sights as well).

Vale Novak LjubljanaSo, with a map in my hands (you can get one for free at the tourist info point at the railway station) and a list of Ljubljana's bookstores, I got to Vale Novak in Wolfova (easy to find, in the very center). What I noticed immediately was its cozy interior, the warmth and the lovely tunes playing in the background. I picked up a random book just to check its price and wasn't surprised. Vale Novak stocks books at regular prices, sometimes just a tad higher than the publisher's but the selection of books in English was rather admirable, considering that the bookstore mainly focuses on titles in the Slovenian language. The only drawback perhaps, even though for some people this is a positive thing, English and Slovenian books seemed to be somewhat mixed in the arts, cooking, traveling and other non-fiction sections.

Behemot signNot so far away, a bit further up (or was it down?) the river in one really narrow street, Behemot Bookshop finds its place. The colorful sign on the main pedestrian zone (next to the river) helps you Behemot Bookshop Ljubljanafind this bookstore. And what a pleasant bookstore it is to find yourself in (and in front of): the lovely bench outside, the oriental styled rug, old shelves, the carefully selected titles, and not to mention the polite staff. Both new and used (purely) English language books reside here and if you cannot find a title you are looking for (almost any title imaginable), they will find it and order it for you. Behemot is indeed quite impressive and a true gem in Ljubljana.

On my way back to the train station, I passed near Kongresni Trg, the location of Geonavtik, which, unfortunately I didn't visit (due to the lack of time, the empty stomach which was craving for pizza and the sympathy for my fellow traveler who, my guess is, was not as used to visiting bookstores as I am. Ivan was, as one could have predicted, greatly missed - not only in my bookstore searching adventures), but I figured, the only fair thing to do is to mention this bookstore in this (blitz) report as well.
_ _
Check out our Reports from other European cities.


If you are interested in visiting Ljubljana or simply in ex-patriate stories, we highly recommend the witty and warm memoir, Forbidden Bread by Erica Johnson Debeljak. Erica, an American from New York who followed her love across the ocean to Central Europe, writes about her experiences adapting to life in post-communist post-Yugoslav Slovenia. Despite the innumerable differences and struggles, she finds herself enchanted by her new home.

Click on the image to find out more.

Globe Bookstore, Kiev

globe bookstore logo

Where?
Kiev, Ukraine


Recommended by: Gary Johnson

Gary said: "I have visited the Globe Bookstore in Kiev a couple of times. It is small - room for maybe four customers. Still their collection includes contemporary fiction, art, philosophy, religion, humor, language learning, children's books, and classics. Most notable to me were a few dozen books of Ukrainian and Russian authors translated to English. I bought a small anthology of poems by their national poet, Taras Shevchenko, and a larger anthology of both classic and modern Ukrainian poems. Such things may be very difficult to find elsewhere.

The store is a kiosk underground at the Metrograd Shopping Mall in Besarabska Square. The mall is a huge. You may need to stroll around a bit to find it in the maze of other kiosks. Then again, once in the maze, you'll need to stroll around a bit to find your way back out. Breadcrumbs may be useful. Globe is in the vicinity of the mall entrance near Lenin's statue. It is adjacent to a larger kiosk with a Ukrainian / Russian language bookstore."

Up till now, Kiev has been one of the last capital cities missing in our Guide, and we're glad to have filled this gap thanks to Gary's recommendation. Exclusively English language bookstores are still a very rare find in Ukraine, so we hope this will make things easier for those of you who will find themselves in Kiev. The bookstore itself is located in a huge underground shopping mall - a city of its own - called "Metrograd", which covers around 20 thousand square meters from Lva Tolstoho Square to Hreschatik street. There are 23 entrances to this subterranean complex so it's quite easy to get lost. The most suitable entrance in order to reach the Globe bookstore is the one near the crossing of Khreshatyk and Shevchenko Boulevard.

The Globe bookstore is actually a small outlet of the Dinternal Bookstore located at Muzeyniy provulok 2-V. Dinternal Books is a British-Ukrainian company founded in 1998, which has established itself as the largest importer and distributor of English titles in Ukraine. The main store in Kiev is focused almost exclusively on ELT materials, while the smaller Globe is packed with a great selection of both fiction and non-fiction titles. Globe is not only the best place in Kiev to look for English literature, but it's also one of the rare places where the fact that your Ukrainian is far from fluent won't pose any problems, as the staff members speak English. The bookstore is also known for holding regular sales on selected titles during the whole year (usually from 30 to 60 percent off the regular price) so don't miss the discount stand.

globe bookstore metrograd kievGlobe Bookstore
Address:
Besarabskaya Square
Metrograd Shopping Mall
Kiev






Website:
http://www.dinternal.com.ua/en/

Phone and Email:
+380 44 247 5518
office@dinternal.kiev.ua
globe@ln.ua

Working Hours:
Mon-Sun 10 - 21