Five books that shaped my thinking in 2021

Before the sun sets in 2021, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on a year that has brought so many positive things in my life except Covid ??. I love reading as much as I love writing and somewhere I got disconnected from both. At the beginning of 2021, like always, I made a resolution to finish reading a book every week, but as always, I failed. However, I did manage to read 17 books this year and each one of them taught me something new. So, in no specific order, sharing the list of five books that truly changed my thinking.?

1. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress – Steven Pinker

Amongst all the negativity, reading about how the world is progressing feels like fresh air. Steven Pinker in his lucidly written book Enlightenment Now emphasizes how reason, science, and humanism lead to progress against religious faith, declinism, authoritarian populism, and the anti-science movement. He has used thorough research and rich data to illustrate the different measures of progress like increase in life expectancy, quality of life, health, safety, a decline in war and terrorism, etc. to show the progress the world is making.

One of my favorite quotes from the book –

“The standard explanation of the madness of crowds is ignorance: a mediocre education system has left the populace scientifically illiterate, at the mercy of their cognitive biases, and thus defenseless against airhead celebrities, cable-news gladiators, and other corruptions from popular culture.”

2. Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think – Hans Rosling

I read Factfulness after Enlightenment Now and I think it should be the sequel to the latter. Thanks to Steven Pinker, I scored really well on Rosling’s Factfulness quiz. ?

The insights provided in this book have really changed my outlook towards data and how we see it. Data without context is meaningless and Rosling has illustrated it eloquently in his book. Instead of dividing the world into developed and developing, Rosling recommends dividing the world into four income levels with the majority of people falling under level 2. He argues that progress can’t be measured if you divide the world into developed and developing. This is just one of many breakthroughs ideas/frameworks presented in the book.

Needless to say, this is the best book I read in 2021. I watched all the TED talks delivered by Hans Rosling after reading this book and wondered how he, a professor of global health, would have approached the COVID-19 pandemic. And, yes, I’m a “possibilist” now.

One of my favorite quotes from the book -

“People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That makes me sound naive. I'm a very serious “possibilist”. That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress, and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are. It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.”

3. Atomic Habit: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results – James Clear

In early January, battling the winter blues I read the Atomic Habits and it undeniably changed my 2021. A remarkable book that stresses making small changes in your daily routine to achieve unprecedented results. James Clear does this through spell bounding stories, science, and psychology behind habit formation and sticking through it.

I was struggling to get back to reading and after finishing this book I ended up reading 17 books in 2021. Small changes do add up to give massive results. The core idea of this book has stuck with me and I have started to focus on incremental gains in whatever I do rather than getting easily frustrated with things not working.

One of my favorite quotes from the book –

“If you get one percent better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.”

4. Flow: The Psychology of Happiness - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Sometimes, it’s good to share a house with people who have similar interests. I laid my hands on this book by chance and I’m so grateful for this find. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi introduced the theory of Flow which states that happiness did not result from relaxing or living without stress, but during performing intense activities, in which the attention was fully absorbed. He has brilliantly presented through his research how through flow people can achieve optimal experience or happiness by giving examples of artists, athletes, writers, and surgeons who were involved in the work they preferred. Csikszentmihalyi compelled me to think about the activity that brings me in the flow and that was none other than writing.

One of my favorite quotes from the book –

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”

5. Be as you Are: The teaching of Shri Ramana Maharshi – edited by David Godman

There is no better place than India to fulfill your spiritual quest. Having heard of Ramana Maharshi, I was intrigued to read this book when I saw it in my brother’s library. This book is in the format of Q&A, brilliantly transcribed by one of Maharshi’s students David Godman.

This book is a masterpiece on Advaita Vedanta or non-dualism and I might have to read it innumerable times to understand the teaching of Ramana Maharshi which is primarily based on self-inquiry. I must admit that the teaching of Ramana Maharshi which is self-inquiry is truly hard to grasp and it also depends on an individual’s spiritual journey and intelligence. But, I’m glad to have come across this book, his teachings on self-inquiry and surrender are difficult to understand yet so elegantly simple.

One of my favorite quotes from the book –

“It is enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one’s being. Do not delude yourself by imagining such a source to be some God outside you. One’s source is within oneself. Give yourself up to it. That means that you should seek the source and merge in it.”

I can't recommend these books highly enough. Waiting to get started with a new set of books in 2022. Happy reading!