Books and stuff

The first book I stumbled upon was the collection of Serbian epic poems. I was only five or six years old, and my father had to read it for me. I remember how fascinated I was, and although I could not understand it completely, due to wast number of archaic and, at the time unknown words, I was eager to hear more and more.  For a couple of weeks my father was "forced" to read to me poem after poem. I believe now that that particular book opened a whole new world for me,a world of endless imagination where everything is possible. I was so overwhelmed by it, that I started creating my own noble quests, when I was playing with my toys, or my friends. Every day was filled with another task to slay a dragon, or mighty foe, thus bringing the peace to the world. Nevertheless, part of the blame for my behavior was on my father, because he used to jump around the room while reading, imitating parts of the poems, changing tone of his voice while reading dialogues, giving me a complete performance for every song he had read.
It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but I must say, that after this first contact with the world of literacy I stayed away from books for the next couple of years. I was to busy being a child, and playing outside or simply watching cartoons was my idea of a good time. I ignorantly believed books were for grown ups, not for me. I even refused to read the ones I had to, for school. That was until the end of the third grade, if I remember correctly. I do not know what happened to me on that sunny summer day, but against all odds, instead of going outside to play, I went to the library. After a few minutes of wandering around, a librarian asked me if I wanted to rent a book. And so I did. The librarian had to recommend it to me, and she chose Karl May's "Winetou" for some unknown reason. All that I'm going to say is that it took me three days to read it. Then I got back to library and rented another one and another one, until I read all the books Karl May's had wrote. Or at least all his books our library had. I spent endless hours lost in the pages, between prairies of North America,to chilling winters of Siberia, following Old Shatterhand and his friends in their for the peace and justice. After that, I knew for no boundaries. Space explorations, Medieval wars, adventures of numerous heroes, whatever the topic was I was interested and eager to read it. It could be that I found refuge in these parallel universes, but nonetheless, I had so much fun. More important, I could not stop. Once the door was open and I reentered this amazing world, there was no going back, and I knew that books were going to be my companion for as long as I'm alive.
During my high school years, I was introduced to a new form of literature, more serious, even though I believe  every work of art is serious enough, and has a value of some sort. Again, I stumbled upon a little red book, without pompous cover, called "Black Obelisk". It was a book about young German artist, and his day to day struggle to live a normal life in a country that had lost the war, where the inflation was so high newly printed money became worthless within hours. I found this book interesting because it described the situation similar to the one in our country during the 90's. Even more, I realized that a book doesn't have to be about heroes and their epic fights to be interesting. Even a description of a twenty year old war veteran's life can be breathtaking.
Few year ago, a newspaper began to sell books once a week, all-time classics, and their phrase was "Books are in again". I was shocked when I saw that commercial. For me, books were never out. Sadly, majority of people won't agree with me. Otherwise we, as a nation, would not be where we are today.