Sinijärv recommends books on health and Juhan Viiding

ERR reports that Karl Martin Sinijärv, a cultural adviser at Estonia’s National Library, has recommended Margus Punab’s Sinu elu kõige ilusam ja vabam vaatus and Mihkel Mutt’s Juhani evangeelium. Looja ajatuultes iseendana.

Margus Punab’s guide to a freer life

Sinijärv describes Punab’s 2026 book as a highly appealing and intricate work, a labyrinth that provides a map without requiring readers to use it, leaving them with the pleasure of discovery for a long time.

He says he was surprised to find several lines on the back cover that he himself had written months earlier after reading an early version of the manuscript. Although he had already forgotten them, he still agrees with his earlier assessment: “An excellent work, written on the basis of life and experience. I understood several important things for the first time. Not everything, of course, but no such book exists that would make everyone understand everything after reading it. Dr Punab will certainly add many good years to the lives of many people with his sensible recommendations. Let us enjoy them.”

“Self-help book” has become synonymous with a certain kind of commercial and useless mumbo jumbo, Sinijärv writes. There are huge numbers of such books, and they continue to be bought and presumably read, because something for which people have paid with money earned through their own effort cannot possibly be wrong. It can, however, he adds.

Sinijärv recommends that anyone who has searched here and there for the best help in the world should read Punab’s book. He calls it the real thing: a work that does not have to be read from beginning to end in one sitting. Readers can start with the chapters that seem most relevant and return to the others later, moving back and forth until the messages have properly sunk in.

Even reading the contents page can be a good starting point, he says. Just as the contents pages of some poetry books unintentionally form poems of their own, this book’s contents immediately give readers a sense of the world they are entering.

Sinijärv urges readers to trust an experienced doctor who can write and dispel the fear of growing old, and to face “the most beautiful and freest act of your life” with shining eyes and open minds.

Mihkel Mutt’s book about Juhan Viiding

Sinijärv says it is exceptionally enjoyable to read a high-quality text created by a good writer. While this may sound obvious, he says some books make the truth of it especially clear, particularly biographies and memoirs. Their material may be extensive and contain a great deal of information, but the author’s writing may fail to keep up, leaving the result somehow thin.

That is not a concern with Mihkel Mutt, Sinijärv says. Even readers who are not interested in Juhan Viiding or his life should pick up Juhani evangeelium for the pure pleasure of reading it, he writes.

Sinijärv says he has encountered books about uninteresting subjects that he nevertheless read eagerly and that made him a little wiser. In the best cases, something that was previously uninteresting has become interesting. He believes Mutt’s book belongs to this group and hopes it will turn many more people toward “Juhan’s faith” or, even better, toward faith in literature, art and humanity.

Mutt writes about all of this and much more, Sinijärv says. Juhan wrote about it too. To find out why, how and from which perspectives, readers should turn to the book itself.

Sinijärv adds that bringing one exceptionally colourful life, with all its highs and lows, between the covers of a single book is an achievement in itself. Mutt has done so in depth and with wit, while remaining personal without becoming personal in a negative sense, and writing with expertise while staying both open and delicate.