Here's the list of some of the media I consumed in January 2024. Mostly, it's films, books, articles, and videos.

• The Holiday (2006). Fun little movie with enjoyable escapism. Very predictable, but still fun. It’s became a sort of tradition for us to watch a comedy on January 1.
• Building a Second Brain. The best part in the book is the author’s organizational system that I actually apply while organizing my digital files on my main computer and in Obsidian.
• The Ottomans. It’s a great book about an empire that is not taught much about in the Western schools, which is a shame. The Ottomans were definitely a part of European history, and they shaped the European course of history a great deal. I've made a lot of notes--hopefully, I will publish them here on the website.
• So far, I watched seven episodes of Timothy Snyder's lectures on The Making of Modern Ukraine. Highly recommended.

We've had a lot of snow lately. I captured this moment while leaving work and making my way home. Enjoy the winter wonderland!

The Sculpture Park, Billund.

I have watched 84 films in 2023 which is a fairly large number, considering that I don’t always have a lot of leisure time to spend. I read 21 books.

The best movies I watched in 2023 are:

• Into The Wild. This one is truly a great film. I use it in my teaching at the school, so I watch it at least once a year.
• Husbands and Wives. Woody Allen’s take on marriage, and how it is hard to maintain a successful marriage, whatever that means.
• Another Woman. Another Allen movie, that belongs to his serious works, dealing with psychology of human mind.
• The Banshees of Inisherin. What an unusual film, that contains many unseen and hidden elements. I will have to watch it again.
• The Father. I like how viewers can experience the father’s health deterioration and understanding of “reality”.

Into the Wild

I read only 21 books in 2023, but it is okay. Anyway, I hope I can read more next year. You can see my reading list here.

Here's my 2023 book list:

• The Awesome Department - Adam Montandon (work)* - Jan
• Historien om alting - Ken Wilber (phil.) - Jan
• Me'med, crvena bandana i pahuljica - Semezdin Mehmedinović (novel)* - Feb
• Educated: A Memoir - Tara Westover (memoir)* - Mar
• Second-hand time - Svetlana Alexievich (reportage)* - Jul
• Lov na divlju ovcu - Haruki Murakami (novel)* - Jul
• Četrdeset pravila ljubavi - Elif Šafak (novel) - Jul
• Dagpengeland - Lau Aaen (satire)^k - Aug
• Det kreative samfund - Lars Tvede (society)* - Aug
• Dubravske priče - Almir Kaplan (sh. stories) - Aug
• The Lessons of History - Will & Ariel Durant (history)* - Sep
• Nordbanen - Amra Avdibegović (poetry)* - Sep
• Genocide - A World History- Norman M. Naimark (history)* - Sep
• Dani zaborava - Elena Ferrante (novel)^k - Sep
• The Loser - Thomas Bernhard (novel)* - Oct
• The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham (finance) - Nov
• Think Before You Speak - Bent Hougaard (psychology)* - Nov
• Breve fra en au-pair - Kathrine Møgelbjerg Jørgensen
• Psykologi og eksistens - Viktor E. Frankl (psychology)* - Nov
• Putovanje po Hercegovini, Bosni i staroj Srbiji - Aleksandar Giljferding (travelogue) - Dec.
• The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry - Wendell Berry (environment)^k - Dec.

This year was a nice travelling year. I visited and stayed in these places:

• Rhodes, Greece
• Prague, Czechia
• Skopje, North Macedonia
• Paris, France

My 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 lists.

In October of this year, my daughters persuaded me to embark on a trip to the illustrious city of Paris. You see, I've never truly connected with Paris. Amra and I had previously visited the city during the Christmas and New Year of 2002. At that time, Paris felt somewhat detached and cold to me. While I always enjoyed the Latin Quarter and Montmartre, the grand boulevards and squares like Place de la Concorde and Avenue des Champs-Élysées never resonated with me. They lacked a certain human touch, seemingly designed for the state rather than its people. Hence, my relationship with the City of Light has always been somewhat ambivalent.

Fast-forward twenty-one years, and here I am in Paris with my three delightful girls. We boarded an Air France flight from Billund on a chilly Christmas noon—a delightful experience with almost deserted airports and a flight just a tad over an hour. Upon landing and retrieving our luggage, I hailed a taxi, and in a couple of few minutes we were on our way to the central part of Paris and our hotel Opéra Faubourg. However, due to Lafayette Street's one-way direction, the driver had trouble finding our hotel. I told him to drop us off nearby, and we walked a mere 100 meters to reach our destination.

Our room at Opéra Faubourg Hotel.

I made this photo exactly eleven years ago, on December 2, 2012. I took it when we lived in a building in Moldeparken in Vejle, where many citizens from non-Western countries lived. Hence, the title that followed the photo on Facebook: "Snow in da ghetto".

I really like those warm colors.