SUCKS.

4.5 stars

This is like a motivational speech tucked into the confines of a fiction story. Santiago’s inner turmoil is so painfully reflected in my own life and my conflict with doing what I want versus what i’m comfortable doing. This book really pushed my boundaries and, although set in a place and lifestyle I’ve never experienced, I heavily related to. It's inspiring and haunting all in one breath. It's lighthearted, but also thought-provoking.

The setting begins in the fields of Spain but eventually switches to Santiago’s journey through Africa, so I found the scenery and conflict arising from their locations very fascinating. I rarely read classics set outside the US or England, which I should pursue more of, and this was very enjoyable with Islamic supporting characters.

I grew frustrating in the middle of this book, because it seemed almost assaulting in its message. The dialogue is very transparent and this book says exactly what it means with little to no metaphor or embellishment, which I originally thought was tacky. The more I read, however, the more I realized how interesting of a tactic it is. This reads almost like The Little Prince or a children’s book where the moral is delivered to you in a wrapped package with a bow. It delivers its message up-front, but it gives the reader enough space to determine how he or she wants to absorb that message. It's brilliant.

Santiago is a fascinating main character that I think anyone could relate to. This book is truly ageless because it’s about following your heart and your life’s destiny, and although this book does dabble in discussions about religion and how God plays into that role, it’s very subjective in its interpretation. Islam and Catholicism are both depicted in this story, but even as an atheist, I was able to recognize the intention that Coelho was putting forth: overcoming the obstacles that are barriers to your personal calling. (honestly, this entire book is so quotable.)

Now that i’ve effectively turned into a philosophy professor, I’ll stop. But I did really enjoy this story. If you’re not a fan of literalness (is that a word?) in classics, then I would pass on this one, but its imagery and setting is so neat that I would nudge anybody else to grab it from a used bookstore. If anything, it’s under 200 pages, so just go for it.

I feel like everyone LOVES this book, but I was kind of underwhelmed. I know that translation affects the quality of writing, but I could not get into this writing style. At all. I felt like it was totally affected and contrived. He was going for this "fable/parable" style, but it seemed to fail miserably. The parable-like quality was totally contrived, and I thought the "moral" was pretty stupid.

Moral: everything you want and need is close to home. Take chances. Follow your "personal legacy."

Then....there was a supernatural element which was just plain dumb. Granted, I am not religious. I think god-fearing people get more out of this bc they can take that leap of faith, excuse the phrase. If this was supposed to be a story of magic, I may have been into it. But it was supposed to be a simple story of knowing yourself. And I think, philosophically speaking, when you truly know yourself that is when you truly realize your destiny. Why do you need supernatural forces to convey that message? This was about realizing your destiny, or "personal legacy." It could have been done without the hocus pocus, and, yes, the cheese.

In short, the book attempted to be deep and failed. "Speaking with the wind and the sun" and "being a shepherd" and getting over "personal hardship" all as part of a transparent "higher plan" (read: personal legacy) doesn't make a plot deep. A character simply called "boy" and short sentences doesn't make a story a fable. Learning from your flocks and from nature doesn't make a character inexplicably wise. I really got nothing out of this book.

It is short though. The book came very highly recommended. Read it to judge the hype for yourself. After all, a whole nation, including Bill Clinton (who I'm into), thought it was a touching account that personally changed them. Then again, this is the same country who thought The Celestine Prophesy was worthwhile. Gag.

کیمیاگر!
بهتر بود اول یه صحرا رو میدید کمی زندگی در اون رو تمرین میکرد..اونوقت میفهمید 2تا سنگ اون چیزی نیستن توی گرمای مرگبار صحرا به ذهن بیان..مکالمه ها پوشالی..و افکار بی تناسب به شخصیت..فاتتزی و سطحی..تلاش بیحاصل برای عمیق سازی با چند نقل قول از انجیل..تریکی که نویسنده(؟)های اثار پرفروش(!)ایرانی جدید هم بهره میبرند..شباهتی که بینشون هست هم اینه که این سبک اثار ارزش ثانیه ها رو هم ندارن .چه برسه به ساعت ها..
حالا اگه این کتاب معمولی بود چندان مشکلی نداره..ولی این همه پابلیسیتی...
و بهتره راجب روح جهان! اصلا صحبت نکنم..
اصلا ��اهرا نویسنده در جهان واقعی زندگی نکرده..افسانه شخصی ات را بزی ای!!!..کلا برای جماعت های الکی خوشی که با کتاب ها به اصطلاح روانشناسی!؟بازاری به لذذ معنوی! میرسن مناسبه..
این سبک زندگی هایی که شامل 5صبح با لبخند بیدار شدن و rainbows nd puppiesمیشه..
حالا همه اینا به کنار..شما توی یه صحرا با قبایل عرب دنبال کیمیاگرید..بعد این وسط زبان جهان!!!یه دختر تیین عرب با چشمای سیاه و لبان مردد میان لبخند و سکوت هه..که کراش ناگهانی شما میشه.."هنگامی که اینان به یکدیگر برخورد میکنند و نگاهایشان با هم تلاقی میکنند,سراسر گذشته و سراسر اینده اهمیت خود را از دست میدهد و تنها همان..:||
God give me a * break..
"فهمید که روزی باد شرق عطر این زن را به سوی او اورده بود":|احتمالا محصولات دیور استفاده میکرده.
و دقیقا اون لحظه ای که مطمن شدم چرت تر از این نمیتونه بشه,دیت های کنار چاه و فلرتینگ تلپاتیک شروع شد..
"در مسیر افسانه ات حرکت کن,صحرا همیشه همان میماند,عشق ما نیز چنین است" !!!!!its been 2days:

|
همه چیز فیک و بیهوده..در تقلا برای رساندن یه مفهوم تکراری..
شخصیت کیمیاگر هم که اصن..احتمالا اون چیزیه که نویسنده دوس داشته باشه در نوجوانی..
از جملات گهربار کتاب:"دختر صحرا هستم..,چهره اش را پنهان کرد:اما فراتراز هر چیز یک زن هستم"
در پایان 15صفحه اخر..بنظر تحت تاثیر LSDنوشته شده.."باد خشمگین از محدودیت هایش گفت:...":|
و در نهایت.."باید افسانه شخصی ات را بزی ای":)

2020 Classics Challenge: Book 1 of 12.

I can see why so many people love this book. I was really looking forward to it being my first classic of the year. I listened to the audiobook and the narration was great, but my mind wandered the whole time while listening. This didn't hold my attention at all, and honestly, I was bored stiff while listening.

Δεν θα σας πω ψέματα. Όταν το είχα διαβάσει (στα 13-14) με συνεπήρε. Μετά ήρθε η ζωή.

In her review, Ioana wrote:

...."The language is quite simple, which can be beautiful (read: Herman Hesse); however it comes off as quite redundant and sermonic. Every other sentence contains at least one reference to either "The Soul of the World", or "The Personal Legend", or "Follow Your Heart" with a big fat capital H. By the end of the novel I am skimming most passages.

The characters are flat (I didn't really "feel" them, what they were going through, and there was no character development), and the storyline resembled that of a children's folktale (I like folktales).

Overall, it was a worthwhile read given that it only took a couple hours, presented some interesting ideas (albeit, without illustrating any of them satisfactorily), and removed me to the Spanish countryside/Arabian desert for a bit (I am a sucker for folktales, and if this book is nothing else, it would make a lovely illustrated children's book)."

I think this sums up in a few words what the book is about. Simple. Feel Good. Motivational. Folktale.

It also brings many of the baggage of those themes with that. Certainly it at times does appear to be able to reach deep within people like Corie whom said in her review:

"If you are looking for a nice meaty book filled with twists, turns and life-like characters - this is NOT your book. Wait until you are more in a more introspective mood. Coelho's prose is simplistic and at times childish. And the read is easy - I finished in around an hour and a half I suppose. But the meanings left scattered throughout the chapters are intense and authentic. Omens and signs - all around us, the universe directing us and helping us, wanting us to succeed. All we have to do is be aware - to listen. "

and Micha does add a good point against it:

"Let me only point to the fact that there is now an “Illustrated Alchemist” version of the book. If ones personally philosophy can be illustrated as a comic book then perhaps it is a tad bit on the simple side. "

Despite all this I would have to disagree with April's comments in Eleanor's review:

"This book is intended for people with passion and drive. Its not just a novel - for entertainment reading. The story is simple - exactly! thats the beauty of the book - its simplicity. But with that simplicity is a complex philosophy that you obviously don't get because you took the story literally."

The book I would say caters to people with depression and lack of drive more than it inspires. Deep down, I felt I was reading for entertainment and that's why it came off as complex to me because deep down the protagonist is a Mary Sue and that's why it caters to me because like a Mary Sue done well, it tries to connect the reader who is apathetic or hopeless or depressed and tries to show them that maybe there is something out there just worth grasping for and yet I get a feeling that people who do grasp for the message in the Alchemist will find that the book isn't deep at all and certainly many of the other reviews properly represent that.

That's why I rated it as amazing. It's just one of those books that no one can really tell someone how bad it is until the reader actually finds out for himself and I doubt those who have read many books will find it astounding it all but not everyone reads a tons of books and for what it's worth, I think a book that can attach itself and inspire someone to read further deserves no less a rating than amazing.

The Alchemist is simply that kind of book that manages to do so by being short enough, shallow enough, deep enough and hyped enough to cater to a generation of casual readers.

Santiago is a shepherd who has a dream to go to the Great Pyramids of Egypt and there find buried treasure! The mysterious alchemist will help him on his quest.

I’ve heard enough about Paulo Coelho’s bestselling novel The Alchemist for so long that I finally decided to see what it was about for myself, and, perhaps predictably for a novel that unironically sells itself as being about “following your dreams”, it was full of craptacular pseudo-spiritual New Age bullshit.

As a novel, it’s super-boring. Santiago bumbles along an uninspired journey, selling sheep, selling glassware, meeting some unremarkable people and, of course, finding his “treasure”. Nothing about it grabbed me. Worse still was Coelho’s horrible writing style which mimics religious parables that were always boring as fuck to read those few times I attempted to read the Bible as a kid.

What makes it worse is the lofty prose believes its imparting valuable wisdom to the reader:

“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.” (p.68)

And

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” (p.143)

Both of which are true but so banal and obvious to note as to be worthless.

Other statements are just plain dumb:

“People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.” (p.77)

So if they’re incapable of achieving what they need and want, they should legitimately be afraid? How reassuring! Also:

“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.” (p.132)

Which follows a scene where Santiago and the alchemist are caught in a conflict between warring desert tribes! If they saw thousands of armed men fighting, would it still not have been a threatening place if they had thought it wasn’t??

Alongside these patronising and idiotic platitudes, the novel pushes patronising and idiotic ideas like magical thinking - believe that good things will happen and they will - while using labels like Personal Legend (your identity/goals) and Soul of the World (???).

I understand that a lot of this story is symbolic but Coelho really has nothing new to say. It’s the journey not the destination, love not money, etc. Really, that’s all you’ve got - this is what impresses so many readers?

Besides being stunned at the trite and vapid messaging, I was barely engaged by The Alchemist which was simply an unimaginative, tedious read through and through - about as profound as a fortune cookie and equally as forgettable.

There are too many things one can learn from “The Alchemist”. Its all about following your dream and about taking the risk of following your dreams, which is actually so difficult to do and there are very few people in this world who actually do, I mean risk it all, just to follow your heart and your dream. Beauty is, the author is so right in saying that when u decide to follow your dreams the entire universe conspires in your favour which he called as the “beginners luck” and we all have been witness to this beginners luck at one or other point in our lives. Also, he talks about a stage in our journey towards realizing our dreams, where everything just goes haywire and there is everything working against us and it almost takes us to the brink of abandoning everything and just getting back to what was so familiar and comfortable (i.e. our usual daily life which we get used to) this is actually the time when we are being tested for one last time and it means also that we are really close to our objective. The example given was really great and yes nothing new but we forget simple things in our life like "the darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn". It is actually true that so many of us just leave the struggle when it gets really tough and the chips are really low, whereas actually we were so close to the objective, if only we would have had a little more patience we would have been there. In one of the episodes he talks about death, yes the fact we always forget, the only reality about our life, it is a constant which is not going to change rest everything is uncertain. There are a lot of us who either think that it happens to others and then there are others, who are so busy running after the materials that they don’t have time to think about anything, leave alone death. Yes, and those who do think about death, mostly fear it, some fear death because of the physical pain attached to it (such people actually fear the pain rather than the death, I am one of them) and there are some who think they do not want to die because its not time yet for them to go. Ironically but true, this decision about timings has thankfully not been left to us. So, how do we get over the fear of death or make it our friend, a companion? And not waste our beautiful life worrying about dying all the time. One of the possible solutions lies in this book, it reads "if i have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other". Yes very much right, one would never know when he or she wakes up in the morning that if it was the last day of his or her life and in fact, that day would not be any different from all the other days already spent. So, why not take everyday as the last day of our lives and live it up. Frankly speaking i really know what i am talking about, because I am in a profession which involves a lot of risk and death doesn’t have to look for reasons, it can just spring up from any bush in form of a small little piece of metal called a bullet coming out of the darkness of the night or just a deafening sound from under a culvert that I cross everyday. Here, everyday can be the last day of my life, every meal can be my last, every call to my wife can be the last time I would hear her sweet and loving voice and the kids… Anyways, so what I personally follow is, everyday when I wake up or every time when I move out on an operation, I say to myself "what a beautiful day to die" and there on, I just do what I have to and what I have been taught in all these years in the army and go through all the motions and concentrate on the job at hand rather than worrying about my death and I am really at peace with the fear of death. Another beautiful thought which I came across about death was in the novel by the author called "Confessions of a pilgrim". I derived from it that death can be visualized as a beautiful person who is always sitting besides us, so close to us that it travels with us wherever we go and it also accompanies us to our bed. Its a beautiful companion, a faithful companion, the only one who will never be unfaithful to us, rest all the companions are just lesser mortals and have been unfaithful at one point or other. Death always stays with us and actually speaking that’s the only companion who would accompany us all through our lives right from the moment we acquired some shape in our mother’s womb to the moment when we would get the vision of that white light and that feeling of lightness when we would finally leave this body also sometimes expressed as "VASTRA" (clothes) in the Indian mythology. As per the Indian mythology, the soul never dies, it is indestructible, it only changes a body just like we change clothes. Our soul is a part of God and it goes back to him. We can find the mention of the mighty soul of ours around the last portion of 'The Alchemist' where the shepherd realizes that ultimately it his own soul which is the “hand that wrote all” and his own soul was the part of soul of God. I firmly believe that there is no fiction involved in this story of the shepherd, but this is a true expression of mysteries and realities of our life, which we never pause to discover. There is message that this book wants to convey to us!!! I have never been into writing anything ever in my life, yes not even a personal dairy, but since the time I actually started writing which was just a month back, I realized that if we just write our thoughts as they occur, the resultant has a touch of mystery, because what we wrote with all our heart and soul, sometimes tends to surprise us. We tend to learn from what we ourselves wrote. We never realized that we had so much inside us and we don’t know from where, it all came. “The hand that wrote all”, yes I think its our soul that speaks out, the soul we never recognized, the one we never knew, the one which is part of soul of God…. …All religions have over all the years have preached a man “Know thyself, you will find God”, “look within yourself u will find all the answers”, these words are so common but how many of us actually are ready to pause and give it a try. It may sound crazy, may be the book has a effect that may appear really crazy but I am sure there are some people who would identify with me. May be when Paulo Coelho wrote this book his soul was revealing itself and that’s why some of us can identify with it because our souls are the part of same soul of God, just like his is. May be these lines of his novel were written by the “Hand that wrote all……………”

I actually hated this book - when I finished it I threw it on the floor and if it wasn't borrowed id throw it straight in the bin. Normally there is at least one redeeming quality to a book - however the alchemist has none. Honestly, i struggle to see what anyone sees in it. An 8 year old could read it and even they would probably be bored. I mean every supposedly dramatic realisation was blindingly simplistic. And even the way it was written was simple, I mean can you remember when you were a kid and in a book it would explain something then get the character to repeat it like 'The sky is cloudly, it might rain today. Tom says to his mum "It looks like it will rain"' (I know crap example!) well thats what the whole book it like!! And the story isn't even worth it - basically it takes over 150 pages to tell you what destiny is. Utter rubbish.

Awful. Just terrible. Overly dramatic, preachy, boring, pointless, painful. Some of the themes sound like something from a cult, and not only is the writing crap but the "plot" is absolutely unoriginal too. I also can't get behind the whole meaning of the book- maybe this is because I'm not religious but it really just seemed to me like a devout, bible-thumping Christian went on an acid trip, and this was the result- a not-so-subtle sermon about the glory of religion disguised as a self-help book. For a book that said a lot of things, it wound up saying nothing at all.

Also, just as an aside, the phrase "Personal Legend" is mentioned 56 times in this relatively short book. Yes, I counted. The book was so damn boring I had nothing else to do. 56 fucking times, and it still smacks of complete bullshit to me.


EDIT 12/10/15: I was leafing through my copy of this for some reason, and I noticed how many angry notes I made in the margins when I read it. (I normally don't write in my books, but I purchased this one and hated it, so I figured it couldn't do any harm.) I found my scribblings immensely enjoyable to read and furious, so I've included some of them below, should you want to know what the experience of reading this book was like (besides being slowly and painfully disembowelled). My gripes seemed to know no bounds...

I was angry with the outright preaching.



I was frustrated at the cheesiness of the terms.



I got so bored with it all that I just snarkily mocked it.




I was curious.


But most of all, I was just pissed off at how many times Santiago mentioned his motherfucking sheep, and you can see my slow buildup of fury.





In the end, I suppose the ludicrous amount of times sheep were mentioned in this book is fitting; after all, people seem to flock to it like a herd of them. For the time being, though, I'll just try to purge this stinking turd of a book from my mind forever.