Books have been an inseparable part of my life for as long as I can remember.

When I was little, everyone in my family read to me every day, because it was my main pastime during the time I spent at home.

I clearly remember my late grandpa, who always had the patience for me and my demands that he read to me for hours, and he never once complained. I always knew where he had left his reading glasses. I would fetch them, take the chosen book from the pile and, with all that equipment, sit down next to him with a clear demand: “Grandpa, read.” And he did.

My mom also often told me what a real little “nightmare” I was at bedtime, because when they read me a bedtime story, I wouldn’t get any closer to sleep; my attention would only get sharper. After every story, I would ask Mom for “just one more.”

And so they read to me until the day I could do it myself, and I haven’t stopped to this day.

My Reading Habits

I use every free moment that isn’t shaped by unavoidable obligations for exactly that: reading. Since I’m also very interested in developing my professional knowledge, I have two categories of reading: reading for the soul and reading for professional growth.

The first group includes everything I want to read that has no direct connection to media theory, from classics and literary fiction, through modern bestsellers, all the way to epic fantasy (you wouldn’t believe how much I love witches and vampires).

Always, and I mean always, when I finish a book, I have a huge problem: I don’t know what to read next. That may sound funny to you, but for me it really is a problem, especially when I have a “shortlist” of several books I would like to read. I solve this problem simply: I follow my gut.

I believe the book chooses me, not the other way around.

So however much I plan my “to read” list, it doesn’t plan me the same way. And that is actually how I choose what to read for the soul. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why, despite a home library that is anything but small, I always have my library card ready (and thank God for Amazon and its next-day delivery), because I might want to read something right at that moment that I don’t have with me.

My second important rule is to always, and I mean always, have a book in my bag or backpack. My motto is: you never know when you’ll get an unplanned chance to read, so it’s better to always be prepared.

I believe that in moments of idleness (planned or not: waiting in line, traveling by bus or train and so on) it’s better to bury your head between the covers of a book than in a phone screen.

A Family of Bookworms

I can’t honestly say that my family doesn’t like to read, quite the opposite (who else could I have learned it from?). But when it comes to my young family, things have reached a whole new level.

So, by that good old rule that birds of a feather flock together, Marko and I were drawn to each other from the day we met, above all because we are both incredible lovers of BOOKS.

How could you not want to spend your whole life with a man who, after knowing you for just a few days, gives you Umberto Eco’s “The Prague Cemetery”? (I’ll write about my fascination with Eco another time, but you’ve already figured out that Marko’s choice was a bull’s-eye.)

Mima reading on a lounger next to Sofia, who is leafing through her own book in the stroller

Like mother, like daughter. 🙂

Naturally, all our love of books had to pass on to Sofia, partly through genes and partly because she has been surrounded by books since birth.

I read to her while she was still in my belly. Marko read to her out loud literally from her very first day, still in the maternity ward. I used every “free” moment to read aloud whatever interested me, and even as a tiny baby she listened, even when she didn’t yet understand anything clearly.

I don’t know exactly when she first held a book in her hands, because books were always there. We never put them out of her reach. Maybe the fact that both our books and hers were always within reach is the very reason she has never torn a single one.

Since we are a family of bibliophiles, and of book addicts, it goes without saying that we buy Sofia books, in German as well as in Serbian. The sparkle in her little eyes and the delight she shows with every new book are simply indescribable. And don’t even get me started on how many arrive from relatives and friends in Serbia.

Marko and I often joke that, at not even two years old, Sofia already has more books than the two of us had together before we got married. (We’re exaggerating, of course, but you get the point.)

Now that she’s already “big,” the most beautiful moments of the day are exactly those when Sofka disappears into her little room and, a few moments later, comes back with her “chosen one” for that moment, sits in my lap and says, “Mommy, read.” And Mommy reads. Bedtime reading, of course, has been a given for a looong time, so I won’t go on about it here.

Books are simply an inseparable part of our lives.

Books Are a Way of Life

The point of this whole story isn’t that my family or I are somehow smarter or superior to anyone. Quite the opposite.

This text was born out of pure love for books and reading, in the hope that our enthusiasm will spread to others and that they, too, will want to spend a little more of their time on this wonderful hobby.

S-Mama