SARAJEVO, April 23 (Xinhua) -- This year's World Book and Copyright Day comes in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, with social distancing rules and lockdowns across the globe. For all the inconveniences these may entail, this is arguably the right time to use reading as an escape.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Xinhua asked a random sample of locals about their literary adventures in a time of quarantine.
"Since I am finishing my doctoral thesis, most of my readings are connected to my work," says Ljiljana Stevic, director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Banja Luka, some 200 km north of the capital Sarajevo. She spends her self-isolation days reading books about China.
Although she is working from home, her daily four-hour reading routine remains unaffected by the pandemic. People around her cope with the situation in different ways, she says. Depending on their work or parenting routine, some prefer to go for a run or a long walk with pets, do yoga, read or watch movies and TV series.
"People can save their psyche best by not having too much time to dig through it," says jokingly Eldina Pleho, a journalist from Sarajevo, who has been working as a state auditor for six years now. A mother of a toddler, she says she reads randomly, just as she did before the pandemic.
Lejla Turcilo, a college professor at the Faculty for Political Sciences in Sarajevo, is more of a power reader. Her usual daily one-hour reading time has now tripled, so she has already plowed through nine books since self-isolation started 37 days ago.
"As if we were in a war, I now read what's available in my home. Usually I am much pickier," she says. She believes that people around her read even more, or she at least wishes that they do.
Ejla Salihamidzic is an architect who has been living in Kuwait with her family for the past few years. She also spends two to three hours each day reading, compared to one hour before the coronavirus hit. It helps her "disconnect from the global madness," she says.
Nedeljko Kudjelic, a security guard and a father of a toddler, finds that the "global psychosis" has somehow damaged his ability to maintain focus on a storyline. "I was able to read even during the war in BiH, but now I just can't read," he said. He used to read at least a few books per month, but the pandemic has made him give up reading as he feels unable to focus and stay detached from reality.
Sanda Seta, a mother of two teenagers and a staff member of a bank, talks about a similar experience. She used to read on buses, in bed, even while cooking. But these days she finds herself unable to read books in isolation. "This is the first time I have encountered such anxiety in my soul, something that not even a book can cure," she says.
April 23 is World Book and Copyright Day, an annual event organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to promote reading, publishing and copyright. The first World Book Day, as it is also known, was held in 1995. Enditem
