Wednesday, July 28, 2010

A couple of announcements

First, I'm going on vacation so I won't be blogging or even reading any news or updates about Bosnia for the next couple of weeks. Given that I haven't been posting all that frequently, this might not even be worth mentioning, but just in case you leave a comment and I don't publish it for awhile--now you know.

Secondly, I've been struggling to find a way to keep up this blog while working on some other projects--the beginning of a novel I'm trying to write, and a return to graduate school--and I have yet to make more than token progress on that long-promised annotated bibliography. Having considered what I am able to do with this blog, what I most enjoy doing, and what I would like to accomplish, I have concluded the best course of action, once I return to blogging in two or three weeks.

I plan to simply begin writing reviews of books on at least a weekly basis, maybe devote multiple post to longer books and just one or two for shorter books. This way I can work out the rough draft of the reviews in public, gather feedback and criticism as I go, and begin to organically develop a body of information for this bibliographic database I still want to create.

So, look for review after review after review, beginning sometime in August. I will begin with books on my own bookshelf, particularly better-known and bestselling works, and go from there. For books I've already reviewed, I might revisit some of them.

Once started, I hope to get feedback from anybody who has read the books in question. I'd like to get this project moving forward.

8 comments:

Srebrenica Genocide said...

You need to add Naser Oric's book in your anotation bibliography. So far, it is the best book written on the subject of pre-genocide Srebrenica. Unfortunately, it is not available in English. Hope that will change. I have a scanned image version of the book, which means it's searchable over the internet (because it's a scanned image, not text), so I am trying to find a way to convert scanned image to text, so I can publish this online. Please keep up the blog and study the Balkan history. It's one of the most interesting topics to read, but you need to study it carefully. Tripple check everything Serbs said or wrote. They have been lying throughout their history and I may seem harsh to generalize, but unfortunately it's true. It's a mentality of deceit and distortions that is widespread among the Serbian 'academic' and 'intellectual' circles.

Anonymous said...

Kork, keeping up a blog is hard work, whatever you can manage is appreciated, particlarly your book reviews-analyses.

Owen
(Blogger is forcing me into Anonymity again)

Shaina said...

1st of all, enjoy your vacation.

2nd, congratuations on your decision to go to grad school. I'm really impressed. And working on a novel too?! Great stuff. Please keep us updated about how all of that is going.

3rd: I absolutely love the idea of focusing on book reviews. Do you have a first book in mind to review?

Anonymous said...

Kirk, there's a new article on Bosfam at Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosfam

Owen
(Blogger/ClaimID acting up again)

koeppelicious said...

Hello,

I'm reaching out to Americans for Bosnia because I am specifically trying to reach residents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and would love to introduce your readership to a global media project that I think they would support.

On October 10th, 2010, thousands of people from every nation around the world will film their perspective and contribute their voice to one of the largest participatory media events in history. The event will result in a feature documentary and online video archive that will showcase the diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that can occur in one day on earth. Our immediate goal is to expand interest in the project; the more people we have involved, the more accurate and comprehensive a record of the planet we can create.

We hope you will support our efforts by highlighting our event on Americans for Bosnia. Please consider promoting our call to action on Americans for Bosnia: Help Document the World’s Story on 10.10.10.

You can learn more about One Day On Earth on our website: www.onedayonearth.org

Thank you.

Shaina said...

Dan,a portion of Oric's book is already available online, translated in english. The Prosecution in the Oric case at the Hague used portions of the book as one of their exhibits. Those portions are available on the ICTY.ICR website.

shaina said...

Another question, will the books be related to the former Yugoslavia, or will they cover a wider range of subject matters?

Whatever you do, I'm looking forward to it. for myself, I find writing book reviews much more challenging than I would have originally thought.

Kirk Johnson said...

Thanks for the well-wishes, all.

Shaina--I plan to start with well-known standard works on the war; books familiar to most everyone who reads this blog, so at first it might not be that interesting to you all. On the other hand, this will make it more likely that you all will be able to provide some helpful criticism and commentary.

For now, just on Yugoslavia, although I think it's natural that eventually I will expand into issues of genocide, nationalism, state-building, and so forth.