For example, if you, my gentle readers, wanted to comprehend the conundrum that is Canada Slim, yours truly, you would need to visit the apartment I share with the Mrs. I like to physically surround myself with books in the dim hope that I will somehow absorb into my system the knowledge within these tomes. Though there are certainly books connected with teaching and languages, more space is taken up with travel and history. Half of the volumes of these dominant topics have a personal connection with me, for I have done some travel and the history of the places I have visited has always fascinated me.
For example, I spent a week in Serbia, primarily in Belgrade, and I possess an entire shelf of literature dedicated to that week. I long to understand what I have seen and love to share what I have understood. Some need to actively exert themselves in a sport or recreational activity, while others simply wish to sit or lie about.
My wife has a morbid fascination with all things funereal like cemeteries, ossuaries and hospitals, while I seek to educate myself on the culture and literature of the new found land I am visiting.
Ivo Andric β was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in In Bosnia and Herzegovina, beginning in the s and continuing past the breakup of Yugoslavia, his works have been disparaged by Bosniak literary critics for their supposed anti-Muslim bias. I have written about Andric and continue to do so here and in two further posts to come, because I am fascinated by his life and how he lived that life.
He spoke of his reluctance to wield weapons for the Serbian military, because for him the idea of Serbia being separate from a united Yugoslavia seemed somewhat strange.
