Orhan Pamuk begins his book Yeni Hayat with the following sentence: "One day I read a book and my whole life changed." Books are a reflection of life, every person finds something from every book. We feel the traces of those books at every moment of our lives, they become part of our being. The books we read shape our perspective on events, our perspective on ourselves, and our perception of people.
Indeed, one day we read a book and our life changes completely. We become a different person, more determined or more clearly aware of what we want. Our lives also evolve in this direction. These 10 books we have compiled may not have a big enough impact to change your entire life, but they can add small touches to your life. Good reading.
1. Richard Bach: The Seagull
"Do not believe what you see with your own eyes. All that is visible is limited."
The seagull is a bird known as the symbol of freedom. Well, if flocks of seagulls are not as free as thought, if they have taboos that they adhere to tightly... Jonathan Livingston, the main character of the book; He is part of such a herd, part of a herd that thinks flying is just about finding food and dictates this to an entire generation. Jonathan is very different from all these seagulls because feeding is not even important for him, his whole purpose is to fly, to fly constantly, to reach the highest.
2. Victor Hugo: The Last Day of a Death Row Man
"All people are sentenced to death penalty suspended for an indefinite period."
The book is a diary about the last day of an unidentified death row prisoner in an unknown prison, at a predictable time. The author does not say why the prisoner was sentenced to death or who he killed. It just tells how a person meets, or rather tries to meet, death, which is approaching step by step.
3. Paulo Coelho: Veronika Wants to Die
"No one has the right to judge anyone. Each person knows for himself the extent of the pain he has suffered or the complete absence of meaning in his life."
The book begins with a suicide attempt, as one might guess from the title, Veronika is trying to kill herself. From the outside, Veronika is a happy, successful woman who can achieve everything she wants in life. They question why such a person would give up his life and put Veronika in a mental hospital. A sane person would not give up on his life, because what is the criterion of sanity, who set this criterion? There Veronika meets Eduard. Eduard tells him about the Gardens of Eden, which he saw but no one except him believed in their existence. Eduard is in that mental hospital because the Gardens of Eden do not exist. If one person's reality is a game of another person's imagination, can that reality really be denied? In the book, as Veronika gives up on dying, Coelho makes the reader play like a puppet in the dilemma between madness and reality.
4. Jose Saramago: Blindness
"It is a very old habit of humanity to pass by the dead without seeing them."
Blindness is the book of the Portuguese writer Saramago, in which he reflects the human being in all its nakedness. All people in the country, except one person, lose their sight for an unknown reason. People's other faculties, sharpened as a result of their blindness, lead society to moral destruction. In Blindness, Nobel Prize-winning author Saramago shows how people can clearly perceive every event happening around them, even though they are blind, and how fragile ethical values society has.
5. Sait Faik Abasiyanik: Less Sugary
"I thought it was nice to have a human clock."
It is a story book written by Sait Faik, one of the pioneers of Turkish storytelling, in the last days of his life. It is a book that can be a savior, especially when one is overwhelmed and needs to get away. The book, consisting of 17 stories, can be read in one breath, but its impact will last for a very long time. Because when Sait Faik's stories are assimilated, they become a part of life.
6. Pınar Kür: The Woman to Be Hanged
"They always keep silent. Those whose guilt is certain. Those who know that no matter what they do, they cannot escape guilt."
Kür, one of the important names of postmodernism in Turkish literature, appears before us with a murder in The Woman Who Will Be Hanged. We hear about this murder from the mouths of three people: Judge Faik, Melek and Yalçın. Angel; The instigator of the murder, Yalçın is the person who committed the murder. So, is Melek actually the instigator or the victim? The monologues of these three people leave the reader with many questions like these.
7. Franz Kafka: Penal Colony
"The traveler thought that it is always harmful to intervene in unfamiliar situations in a way that would affect the decision."
The long story of Kafka, the literary genius of the 20th century, Penal Colony. A traveler finds himself on an unnamed island, where the forces are in the hands of an officer. The officer, on the other hand, is devoted to his duty as if he worships "execution". In this story, Kafka escalates the tension to the top, while making the reader question the relationship between crime and punishment.
8. Mine Söğüt: Mad Women Stories
"... someone who loves the idea of killing himself so much also loves himself very much... himself and his madness."
21 crazy women; 21 women who were divided, who could no longer recognize themselves, or perhaps never knew themselves... Mine Söğüt shows us women who were lost while society forced them to be strong. The stories in the book are accompanied by the drawings of Bahadır Baruter, his wife. You can see the crazy women you read about in the book beyond your imagination in these drawings.
9. Jack London: Before Adam
“Looking back, I can clearly see that our lives and destinies depend on very small coincidences.”
Jack London created his speculative fiction by providing the connection between modern man and primitive man. The book is about modern man dreaming every night that he is one of his ancestors. It has a fiction that is in line with Darwin's views. The main character, who has dreams of the times when people were not even fully human yet, experiences all the adventures of his ancestor from start to finish in these dreams.
10. Zeynep Uzunbay: Downhill Oranges
"I stretched out my arms even though I knew I wouldn't be able to reach out, my eyes searched for a stool even though I knew the house was empty. I said, this is it, you reach for what you can't hold and look for what doesn't exist."
There are knots between six different women and we can see that these knots are solved only at the end of the book. Maybe we just think it's been solved. Arzu, Handan, Kezzi, Gülendam, İpek and Narin... A plot that oscillates between a village and a city in Anatolia. Zeynep Uzunbay's poetic narration enables low-voiced women to raise their voices in this book.
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