The Most Impressive Books That I Read in 2021

2021 has been a very productive year for me in terms of reading. I continued to stick with the reading habit that I developed two years ago. At that time, I committed to reading at least 10 pages every single day to gain this habit. After one month of the strike, I already made reading an inseparable part of my daily routine. I tracked my progress and once completed 500 days in a row, I stopped tracking it because I was no longer imagining a time that I don’t read a book. This has been by far the most successful habit that I created. Reading contributed a lot to me and sharpened my mind. I don’t think I will ever stop.

I read 37 books in 2021 which is near my goal of 40. This is despite the fact that I was studying for my masters for most of 2021. I am excluding the readings that I made for my dissertation which amount to thousands of pages. Looking back, I feel proud but also a stronger desire to read more. In this post, I’d like to share 5 books that I enjoyed most and contributed a lot to me.

Edward Snowden — Permanent Record

I’d heard about Snowden before but I barely knew his life. After listening to him in the two very long and breathtaking episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience, I decided to read his book. The book is basically an autobiography but what makes it so important is that its’ close connectivity with the current events shaping our world and politics. I am seeing Snowden as a hero of democracy and a brave heart to defend his values despite endangering himself and his family. His exposure of deep and dirty government secrets has to be celebrated by those who are in favour of the rights and freedoms of people against the government. The book gives really good insights into the mass surveillance regime in the USA and the recent wars that the greatest military power in the world is involved in.

The American government, in total disregard of its founding charter, fell victim to precisely this temptation, and once it had tasted the fruit of this poisonous tree it became gripped by an unrelenting fever. In secret, it assumed the power of mass surveillance, an authority that by definition afflicts the innocent far more than the guilty.

Ahmet Altan — I will never see the world again

Ahmet Altan is a novelist and a former editor in chief of a journal. He has been a strong critique of the current regime in Turkey. Because of his ‘dangerous’ opinions, he got detained and sentenced to life imprisonment following a series of sham trials. His guilt was announced as attempting to overthrow the government although there was not a single piece of evidence but op-eds in his journal. In the book, he is mostly talking about his time in the prison and his observations about other political inmates that are held hostage like the author. He exposes the corruption of the political and judiciary system in Turkey with his sharp and sensitive words as a novelist.

Like everyone else, I am so used to seeing my own reflection first thing in the morning that I looked straight ahead, expecting to see my face. It had disappeared. In that instant, I felt as if I had crashed into the wall.

Dr David Burns — Feeling Good

Dr David Burns is one of the founding fathers of the method of cognitive therapy in psychology. When I started reading his book, I was going through a very hard time. I was under the pressure of a break-up and feeling lonely in a foreign country. The future was also uncertain and my mind was torturing me. The book helped me a lot in that process and changed my view about depression and how to tackle it. The idea of thoughts preceding feelings has been a game-changer for me. The book includes many tests that may help one to get to know himself.

The first principle of cognitive therapy is that all your moods are created by your “cognitions,” or thoughts. A cognition refers to the way you look at things — your perceptions, mental attitudes, and beliefs. It includes the way you interpret things — what you say about something or someone to yourself. You feel the way you do right now because of the thoughts you are thinking at this moment.

Alex Berenson — Pandemia

Alex Berenson is a former NYT reporter and author. I got to know him by his appearances in the Joe Rogan Experience. He has been one of, if not the, loudest critiques of the measures taken against the Covid-19 pandemic. He has a satiric and sometimes nasty way of expressing himself. However, he has been very committed to finding mistakes in the policymakers discourse. This triggered a strong pushback from mainstream journalists and politicians and resulted in the removal of his Twitter account. His works have been censored and he has been labelled as a conspiracy theorist or someone who deliberately misleads the public. Today, apart from his Substack account, it is very difficult to reach his views on search engines, let alone social media.

In his book, he is making a strong case against the commonly used measures such as masks, lockdowns and school closures. He is using many credible data from scientific papers and governmental and international institutions. I strongly think that he deserves huge praise for his work. This is pure journalism and Berenson has to be congratulated for his work not to be censored. But maybe the reason he is censored is that he is such a good journalist staying outside of the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, the media, especially the American media, committed early on to portraying the coronavirus as far riskier than it was and the vaccines as safer. Elite outlets like the New York Times went out of their way to foment panic and ignore positive news.

Because our response to the coronavirus is the worst public policy mistake worldwide in at least a century, since World War I when Europe’s leaders sent millions of young men to their graves for reasons they couldn’t even explain.

Meline Toumani — There Was and There Was Not

The writer, an Armenian-American, goes to Turkey to understand the reasons for the denial of the Armenian Genocide. In this journey, she ran into many interesting people and events that result in her questioning her own identity. I am deeply impressed by her intellectual and emotional adventure. Her fascinating observations and questions about Turkey made me think more about my home country and my own identity too. Also, the journey is 10–15 years old. Seeing how much Turkey changed negatively is very disheartening for me. However, in any case, this was a highly touching and well-written book.

They know all about Hitler, and there’s no way they can accept the possibility that the word for what Hitler did can be applied to the events of 1915. Nothing could share a label with a tragedy as monstrous as the Holocaust, the soykırım of the Jews, they reason.

And if we move on from genocide recognition, with or without Turkey’s olive branch, what holds us together then? If there is no better answer to this question, maybe the answer is simply, nothing. Nothing holds us together; we are no longer together at all. Now all possibilities are available to us, and that is terrifying. We become individuals.