Added 1/14/10. Read in March 2015. Below are the comments I made at my GR group about this book: =============================== 3/29/15: Today I finisheAdded 1/14/10. Read in March 2015. Below are the comments I made at my GR group about this book: =============================== 3/29/15: Today I finished reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I can't see why it got so much praise. I got nothing out of it. It's filled with vague terms like realizing one's "Personal Legend". Perhaps that means something like following one's bliss. There's nothing new about that!
At any rate, the main character, a shepherd named Santiago, goes in search of some sort of treasure and along the way he meets people who give him all sorts of vague advice about life and omens. The book uses annoying general terms (like "Soul of the World") It never gets specific enough to make itself understood. There is no real character development. At one point the boy wants to become the wind. Huh? What does that mean? The sun, the wind, and the desert talk to the boy. It's all too ridiculous.
I was determined to finish the book just in case it ever started to make sense. It never did. Even if one allows for imagery and symbolism, the book was too vague. There were no deep ideas, just banal expressions pretending to be deep thoughts. An example: "Love is the falcon's flight over your sands." (p.144 in my edition)
As for the Goodreads reviews, there are 56,820 ONE STAR reviews (out of a total of 1,432,664 GR reviews). I'm going to add one more ONE STAR review!
PS-It never became clear to me why the idea of an alchemist was important to this story. Another vague symbol? Or perhaps it just sounds good! The story seems to simply meander around vague philosophic ideas, most of them painfully sophomoric.
PPS-Some readers put this book on a "fantasy" shelf. Just because it may be a fantasy, doesn't necessarily give it great meaning. In a fantasy adventure one can suspend disbelief. However, in a book like _The Alchemist_ which seems to want to do serious "inner soul searching", we don't want to suspend disbelief. That's why calling the book a fantasy seems a cop-out to me. It excuses the ridiculousness of the many sophomoric statements and happenings in the book. ================================== Wiki says: ******************************** "The book's main theme is about finding one's destiny. According to The New York Times, The Alchemist is "more self-help than literature". An old king tells Santiago, "when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true". This is the core of the novel's philosophy and a motif that plays all throughout Coelho's writing in The Alchemist." ******************************** Does the universe conspire "so that your wish comes true"? I'm not so sure about that! That's a sophomoric idea, IMO.
Wiki also says: "In the end, he [Santiago] realizes that playing it safe is often more threatening to his freedom than taking a risk." IMO, risk-taking is a debatable subject!
PPPS-An interesting point of view about _The Alchemist_ comes from one of my favorite GR reviewers: "The message of the fable is communicated in 'fortune cookie-like' aphorisms, philosophical 'sound bites' that were both charming and thought-provoking. There is a profundity in the simple messages within the books and I found myself dog-earring and underlining many passages." FROM: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Being a collector of quotations, I had heard most of these "aphorisms" in one form or another over the years. Perhaps that's why the book made little impact on me.
Here are a couple of "aphorisms" from _The Alchemist_. They give you the "flavor" of the book: "Everything in life is an omen." (p. 70)(said by the Englishman) "There's no such thing as coincidence". (p. 72)(said by the Englishman)
Crazy ideas, IMO.
4/1/15 - I would like to add an important quotation from the book. I think it was touching quotes like this one, which made people love this book: ******************************** "...he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke. The language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met... She smiled, and that was certainly an omen. ... It was the pure language of the world ... the universal language." -Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (ellipses are mine) FROM: https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes... ********************************...more
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