Book a Day – Bizarij

Book a Day I read because of my reading club – August 2018

Bizarij by Jasna Horvat was the book I read for my very first book club meeting. I do not read Croatian authors often and this was an excellent opportunity to pick up the slack. The title of the book translates into “bizarre” and it deals with some little known historical details and quirks of real people from the past. I wanted to fit in so I made an effort with this book.

I was pleasantly surprised with the topic. It is a string of chapters where each is based on an actual person or time in the history of my hometown Osijek. I feel like I need to point out that the first time Osijek was mentioned in historical documents was over 800 years ago. We also have a lot of old local historical sites from the times of ancient Rome and the city of Mursa that used to be here.

And just little to the east there are excavations that date around 3000 years BC. A lot of interesting history to learn about indeed. We were all kinda shamed for all the things we did not really know about. The author Jasna Horvat tends to dip all of her books with themes inspired with history and real past events.

The Excavations of Roman city of Mursa in the park in front of the city hospital in Osijek

I remember it was a meeting at the start of October in 2015. It was also a first meeting for one other book club member I later got really close to. I have fond memories of this book and my introduction to the book club.