Mình phải nói trước là Paulo Coelho là một trong những tác giả mình thích nhất. Mình đã đọc hết toàn bộ sách bản tiếng Việt của ông rồi. Nhưng rất tiếc mình phải nói đây là quyển sách mình ít thích nhất, và cũng ít cảm nhất.

Quyển này nhắc nhiều đến tôn giáo, và vì mình không hiểu biết cũng như không theo tôn giáo (ở đây là Công giáo) nên có thể mình không thấy được cái hay của nó. Còn chuyện tình cảm trong quyển này mình cũng không thấy được sự sâu sắc. Mình không thích nhân vật nữ chính trong truyện, mặc dù đôi lúc mình cũng có chút đồng cảm với cô ấy.

Mặc dù quyển này khá ngắn nhưng có thể vì mình không cảm được nên đọc nó quá chậm. Mình đã kỳ vọng rất nhiều khi quyết định mua quyển này vào ngày trước khi mình đi nước ngoài và chỉ mang theo một quyển sách là nó. Vốn đã tính gởi tặng bạn quyển này. Nhưng gi�� lại thôi.

Chậc. Không biết nói sao. Thở dài một cái vậy. Và hi vọng trong tương lai mình có thể đọc được quyển khác hay hơn của Coelho.

Pilar is like all the other woman from the barrio who is smart and has her life all planned. But as she visits a childhood friend that she secretly loves. She embarks in a journey that will give her a chance to rebuild her life and have the gift to love ones again.
As she meets her childhood friend, she eventually not only learns that this guy had planned to enter the seminary but also that he is a visionary of the Virgin Mary and he is able perform miracles by curing. She then leaves the normal life she has been living and has been hating and sets her life to be with this man and be with him while he cures and preach all through out the world when she realize that there are other means of serving God other than being a priest. But after she excites her mind for this dream life, she then learns that the man she loves just recently denunciated his power to cure to the Virgin Mary to live a normal life that he expected Pilar to prefer. Pilar, after knowing about this- knowing she wouldn’t live the extra ordinary life she had dreamed- went by the River Piedra and sat down and wept blaming herself to be the reason why this guy will fail to cure the lives of many men.

Review:
“Very inspiring. I could see myself through Pilar: the best character I see myself into so far. This story is very close to my heart. A simple story, with an important lesson.”

PS. I have a crush on someone who’s planning to be a priest. i_i. It doesn’t feel good. X)


Lesson: p.95

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.
tWaiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”

True love is an act of total surrender.

By The River Piedra I Sat Down And Wept, by Paul Coelho, is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. It brought me to tears. It’s a short and sweet love story, yet significant and full of lessons in life and love. The love story so deeply moves me. And no, it’s not typically just another love story about two childhood love interests going back together and pursuing their long-lost love. It’s about what real love is and the different kinds of love.

Pilar was an independent and strong young woman who lost her faith and also lost her love. And how much she endures hurt, pain, and happiness for her to regain her faith in the man she loves.

n  “Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.”n

How true. The hardest hindrance Pilar had to face when she was slowly gaining back her faith was deciding whether to let go of the only man she loved to continue on his mission or be with him. I felt my heart jumping because of Pilar’s emotions and dilemma as if I was with her from beginning to end. 

This book showed us what it’s like to fall in love and made us realize that sometimes there are decisions we have to make or choose that will hurt the person we love.

And most importantly, this book taught us that love requires taking chances. It’s not a matter of winning or losing; it’s about taking risks. About being brave and using every opportunity that comes our way because life is too short to dwell on "what ifs." 

This book was written beautifully. And although Paulo Coelho never names Pilar's male friend, it’s made the book more intriguing and unique.

Highly Recommended. You should read this and get drenched in the magic of love. :)

this book was a joke.

horrible, pretentious, verbose, and yet basically content-free language - which in itself might be seen as quite an achievement if you're trying to do really bad writing.

and the content....?! uummmmm, empty, trite banalities and cliches. - i really dont understand how anyone who has even spent a *minute* reflecting on any philosophical question would get any sort of insight out of such a book!

as i remember it, the outline of the plot even sounded pretty promising.... sth about a woman and a man reuniting and falling in love again, i mean, you could work with that, right? but since the entire plot was nothing but a stage for his, as i mentioned, really very insightless "insights"..... it was not much help, either. especially, when he started the crazy religious talk, that i seem to remember, some crazy "miracle" stuff..... yeah, that was when i seriously lost patience with that book.

i honestly have to say, in terms of style, language, *and* content, this was probably the worst book i have ever finished reading.

Thank you, Mr Coelho.
At a time when my parents and my son are dying, and can't accept love, help and support, this one paragraph in your Author's Note gave me joy and hope:
"But ultimately there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we come to a spiritual experience. Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all the inhibitions... They have been joyful — because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender.
"...One doesn't love in order to do what is good, or to help, or to protect someone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as an object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous... To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God."
You have chartered for me a path of sanity, serenity, and true generosity. I can only hope to be able to walk it!

يا الله ! من أجمل ما قرأت على الإطلاق

I think the better a book is, the harder it is to review. I read this book with curious rapt attention, reading and re-reading and writing it so I wouldn't miss any sage or beautiful lines. It was a very beautiful, moving book, an exercise in spirituality as ever. 

Not exactly, but it can be called quite an unconventional love tale. Filled with sage quotes about love and life and the importance of taking risks following your dreams, it was quite an emotional experience.

“For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.”

And as with every Paulo Coelho book, it's about facing your fears, taking risks and plunging into the unknown.

“Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks. Perhaps this person will never be disappointed or disillusioned; perhaps she won't suffer the way people do when the have a dream to follow.”

This book is about two people, Pilar our protagonist and her childhood friend who were in love as children, to quote from the book “...if a child can know what love means.” Her friend leaves their hometown pursuing his dreams to travel the world and to seek knowledge and adventures,

“Seek to live, remembrance is for the old.” 

and she moves to a nearby city for college. For many years letters are the only communication they have, until one day, when he invites her to come see him lecture a few hours away. We explore their journey and struggle in accepting themselves, their destiny, and love in its entirety. Pilar rediscovers her spirituality and youth through her friend while he reconciles himself to the image of an unconventional way of pursuing his.

It explores a very new and unconventional dimension of Christianity and spirituality "the feminine face of God" with which I neither agree nor disagree.

I am a loyal Paulo Coelho fan. He has remained one of my regular favorites through the years. I can't resist a Paulo Coelho. Every book of his brings out a new side of him that we haven't seen before though there is the slightest hint of familiarity in his work. This book swept me away. I wasn't expecting this much perfection. I cannot praise it enough, this book is so simple, yet so good, I just am not able to do it justice. If you love themes like love, spirituality, personal legend this is the book for you and Paulo Coelho is the writer for you.

یکی از بزرگترین اشتباهات یک کتابخون اینه که وقتی می خواد از یک نویسنده بخونه، اول بره سراغ کتاب های خوب و شاهکار اون نویسنده...
اشتباهی که من در مورد پائولو کردم، اول کیمیاگر و یازده دقیقه رو خوندم، حالا هر کتابی ازش می خونم دیگه خوشم نمیاد! :|

Well, originally I wanted to give this book one star, but after skimming through a few other peoples' reviews I felt bad to be so harsh. This is my second Coelho book, and I was utterly disappointed. I read Eleven Minutes and was absolutely wowed, but this book lacked too many elements beyond Coelho's philosophical musing to really capture my attention, and make me think in a way I hadn't thought prior to reading this book. The whole book felt a little trite. I left this book feeling as if I hardly knew the characters, and if I don't know the characters and feel connected to them, how can I feel their love and their story of that love, and how can I feel empathetic to the suffering the main guys feels over his struggle between faith/committing to a life in the seminary, and loving Pilar? It was a struggle to finish this book, but I forced myself to, because I was curious to know how it would end. Given the beginning, and knowing she wept by the River Piedra at the end of their trip together, I had to know if they wound up together or not.. Ehhhh, after writing this review, I'm going back to what I originally wanted to do, and I'm giving it only 1 star.

چقدر بد بود
پشیمون شدم کتابشو گرفتم
(-_-)==%

on an LNER train i sat down and wept

i so badly wanted to like this book, but i couldn't bring myself to do so. this book is deeply depressing on its view of love and entirely different from how i perceive love. to summarize this book, it is as if to say "falling in love" with many women the guy met is so easy. and to make love to whomever he met or "fell in love" with, in my world, i call that something that starts with F. nobody falls in love so often too many times. nobody does. if they do, it's just lust throbbing in their genitals. so they went traveling, Pilar and the man. they went to a church, prayed. And they made love at the hotel.. the very next day, he left her. Wow. and sorry, i couldn't see this book like how anyone else sees it. maybe, making love is so easy this days. maybe it is something so loose someone could do just to anyone... in the Bible, making love is supposed to be something beautiful created between a husband and a wife. and if you make love to anyone randomly, please don't call it making love. it's devaluing the meaning entirely. same as a prostitute can't make love to different men every night. forgive me, but to say spirituality and love in this book changes people's life, it didn't do to me because what i have experienced in life is more than what this book could hold.