so did anyone read the alchemist by paolo coelho
what do you think about it ?
>>7464651
Garbage. Pretty much a pandering to "yogi"-culture/mentality. For children who want to settle for superficial happiness and meaning and sound like they have it all figured out.
>>7464663
never read it/10
>>7464671
I did though, are you upset because I don't agree with you :^) fuck off twat. Don't ask for opinions if you can't handle what you don't wanna hear
>>7464671
? he's completely right
>>7464663
>projecting this hard
at least give it valid criticism as a literary work.
>>7464672
no, i'm "upset" that you gave platitudinous criticisms that have nothing to do with the book itself but just vague insults at the 'people' who've read it.
if the book is as bad as you've described, your 'review' of it is worse.
>>7464675
? no
i don't even like the book but you guys are retards who've obviously have never read it and are just parroting the opinions you've seen memed here.
Haven't read it but hear that it's a lot of pseud stuff like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance or Khalil Gibran
>>7464651
had to read it in high school
you can tell his editor was the one who put all of the bigger words in
>>7464690
Khalil is pseud stuff? Why?
>>7464689
Dude, what? You could read it in an afternoon, and it's as shallow as a puddle. Good light reading for kids and nothing more
>>7464697
He's pretty boring and there's not a whole lot to say about him at the end of the day. His mystic stuff reads like a dimestore Rilke without the pain. It's hideously saccharine.
>>7464709
OK. I haven't read him yet. So nothing like Rumi or Sa'adi?
I am coelholio
I need TP for my bunghole
>>7464711
I guess he's kind of like Rumi and Sa'adi, but they at least had a religion as the mainspring of their mysticism, a real mysticism with a tradition. Khalil Gibran reads like total New Age stuff.
Very deep book. The only people who dislike it probably didn't "get" it.
>>7464724
and rilke doesn't. ok
>>7464737
No. He doesn't. He's like the quintessential modernist.
>>7464732
ikr
>>7464723
nice
>>7464690
Zen is painful for me to read but I do enjoy Gibran. He is definitely not pseud.
>>7464742
>In the later 20th century, his work has found new audiences through its use by New Age theologians and self-help authors,[4][5][6]
apparently you're not as good as you thought you were at deciding what sounds like hokey new age and what doesn't.
>le not science
>le anything mystical is not beneficial at all
>>7464809
It's because, as often happens with New Age idiots, those people are wrong about Rilke being some flighty monk. He's a stone cold technician.
Gibran on the other hand is more fitting.
Also,
>when OP roosts in his own thread and shits on the people bumping his awful taste for all the world to see
>>7464651
Slightly (ever so slightly) less trash version of The Secret, given that it gets to hide behind the guise of being fiction.
>>7464828
It's a novel.
Do you think Harry Potter is trying to parallel itself with real life? Stop being a jackass.
>>7464815
>if you want something bad enough, the whole universe conspires to help you get it
>profound narcissistic solipsism isn't bad
>>7464838
>novels should be taken literally
>they should also be compared to muh fedora science, reddit tier views
>>7464829
Yes, and the best novels are able to tell us something important about reality.
The Alchemist is not. It's lame gratification of desire parroting as spiritualism. Perfect encapsulation of poshlost.
>>7464840
Interpret the quote for me in a manner that isn't literal, and that isn't an expression of narcissism.
I haven't mentioned anything about science. Stop grasping at straws.
>>7464809
Oh wow, Rilke "sounds like" new age stuff? Guess we better throw him under the crystals and chakra maps. Since you're already on Wikipedia would you mind editing his page and removing all instances of him being a romantic and modernist?
>>7464690
Jesus... Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance is surely the worst book I've ever read.
>>7464651
Why read that when you can read the versions by Borges or Rumi? Or just go straight to the Arabian Nights, of course.
>>7464915
I have read the arabian nights in my childhood desu
>>7464651
I am Brazilian, nationality that, to my shame, is the same as Coelho’s. You want to know what is the problem with Paulo Coelho? Here's the problem:
>a) As a writer.
He is a writer whose books deal only with esoteric themes, new age topics, pseudo-spiritualism and especially religion (a lot of religion). Paulo Coelho writes what people in general (and we all know that the general population does not have anything remarkable in the mental department) want to hear: he talks about the power of the human soul; about God and God's love for everyone; about things like “if you really want something and wish something, than this something will happen for the whole universe is going to conspire to make it happen [go tell that to terminal cancer patients who wish with all their souls, with all the juices in their bodies, the heat in their blood and marrows to just keep on living]”; he speaks that everyone can achieve great things and be significant (usually by just wanting to be so); he pseudo-philosophizes about life after death; talks about his own “experiences” with angels and demons, and so on. In other words: he is just a mix between a self-help writer and a dishonest-priest.
1/2
>>7465065
2/2
>b) As a human being.
Paulo Coelho is a despicable person. In reality he is a coward that poses as some kind of saint and guru (and anyone with half a neuron knows what gurus are made with). Some examples of the glorious life achievements of this fellow: when he was young he hit a child with a car and fled the spot with fear; in his youth he was also just a scrawny and shy, a fearful and frightened boy (his surname, Coelho, means rabbit, which is appropriate, since this animal is shy and fragile), but today he loves to tell interviewers about how he was "wild" and "crazy" in this days of youth, and that he was able to fight the demon, sober up and, after long years of toil, changed himself into a much more spiritual and enlightened being. He says he can control the weather and see angels and stuff like that (now, anyone who makes such claims is either psychotic or a charlatan, and Coelho’s eyes look too much like the eyes of a dead-fish to indicate that he actually suffers from some sort of mental illness – what remains is charlatanism). In fact you cannot see an interview with Paulo Coelho without wanting to vomit with his air of superiority and the faker-look. He once had an affair with a woman and got her pregnant. After undergoing an abortion, she had a heavy depression. Coelho encouraged her to attempt suicide (hiss reasons were that he through that such mystical and psychoanalytic approach, a kind of shock therapy, could help her). Paulo Coelho (in a biography written about him) appears forging the signature of his own father, plagiarizing a text from Carlos Heitor Cony (another Brazilian writer) and giving interviews about a meet with John Lennon that never happened. He is, in short, a bad character.
He is that typical character of Portuguese-catholic morals: that kind of people who talks about god and religion and saints and reading the bible but that are constantly acting like cowards and weak-willed sinners. You know, the 2 things that the suburbs and neighborhoods have in greater quantity in catholic countries are churches and bars: this is the typical contradiction of this kind of culture. People rant about Jesus and Mary and the holy ways that will conduct you to heaven and think that it is a big sin to miss Church, but this same people, after church and work, will go to the bars and drink all their salaries in cachaça, and gossip about others, and don’t pay the bills, and don’t go to school, and lie, and cheat, etc.
It is no wonder that Protestant countries in Europe are richer, wiser and much more organ ized and cultured than Catholic ones.
I'm BR and I hate that guy.
He considers himself a higher being than everyone else.
So, fuck him and fuck his books.
>>7464651
complete shit, makeds Rand look like a Rockstar and SHE'S COMPLETE SHIT
FUCK OFF
>>>/TV/
:~| garbage shitty book
>>7464651
It's a simplified, less poetic Khalil Gibran. It is a good read for teens, it's not bad per see.
>>7465065
>>7465099
You got that on camera, sport?
It was all right. Good story and central theme, but the characters were bland and unmemorable. Actually, the whole book was pretty unmemorable. You're not missing much.
I liked that part where the old king laments the trickery of the Gypsy woman, which is funny because it shows that even messengers of God hate Gypsies.
>>7465303
It was awesome either way.
Some parts of it personally resonated with me. Despite it being simple, it had some profound messages and I'm not even religious.
>>7464651
Didn't read it. It's awful.
>>7465605
That's exactly why it resonates with you- his religion is not that of repentance and obedience to God, it's that of feeling good while having a basis for the feeling of moral superiority. Kinda like a vegan.
>>7464651
my favorite book
>>7465303
doesn't make it false lol
>>7464651
It was okay.
The message is easy to pick up. Lots of God in this.
The story was fine. It's like a trash novel you can read in a day or so.
Beyond that not worth it.
trashy trash trash for trash people
>>7465303
Im also brazilian and I partially confirm the post. I cant say anything about that stuff about his personal life though
>mfw my writer friend admits this is his favorite book
Read Siddhartha instead.
Those are my feelings.
Skip this silly shit and read the Corpus Hermeticum
