Book - The Alchemist

“The Alchemist” the most popular work of Paulo Coelho, is an international bestseller novel. Even though I am not so much into novels, but novels like the Alchemist are exceptions, novels doesn’t have any fixed genre, so people like me should be expecting the unexpected from them. Ismael Reed once said: “No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.”

The Alchemist is a story of a young Andalusian shepherd who sets a journey to Egypt, after having a recurring dream of finding treasure there, as you can tell it’s a story about self-discovery or finding one’s destiny. I read several Novels, and I actually liked some of them, but honestly the Alchemist is so simple yet so beautiful and great. You can actually learn so many things and reflect what you learn in your life. In fact it’s more of a self-help book than a novel. A must-read novel, a small book you can complete reading it in one session of reading. My rating: 10/10

Some positive feedback regarding the book: “A very inspiring and positive book, it actually gives me hope that the things that I aspire for will in the end I would achieve if only I strive hard and don't lose hope until I get it. Sometimes the detours and the problems that we face now were later on in our life will make sense and when you remember that moment especially if you had overcome it you will know that you are thankful for that to happen because in the end you would learn something from it”. One of the Arabian readers said about the book: “Beside the well done storyline, there are many lines where you strongly want to underline and read again and again. Morover, The author greatly usese his knwledge on religions and cultures in his story, especially with his characters. He also knows when and how to give you a lesson. And yes .. there are many good lessons of life”. A third said: “This book has life lessons wrapped in a beautiful tale. I would have appreciated this book more had I read it when I was younger. Interesting way to get the point across - writing one's personal legend. Felt like somewhat indirect self-help book. However, this was a great read, will remember some quotes from the book.”

There are several great quotes in this book, I honestly kept highlighting most pages of the book (Which I usually do when I read a beautiful quote I can learn from or use in my posts). Some beautiful quotes from the book, “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” One of the inspiring quotes I noted in my notebook was: “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” In this book, I found a saying I kept repeating when I am talking to people around me and sometimes repeated them in similar ways in my blog, Paulo said: “The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.” Here is one final quotation from the book: “When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”