I recently finished The Alchemist for the first time. I thought it was good. Straightforward and entertaining (imo). I thought that would be the general opinion of people about the Alchemist and that Coelho is revered by book readers. But I was honestly surprised to find out majority of the readers don’t like his work and think of him as a ‘mediocre’ writer. Is there something I don’t know? Why isn’t he highly esteemed amongst bibliophiles like I thought he was?
P.S. I also think that the writing in Alchemist could’ve been better, but I liked the story.
I tried to read his book Aleph which is auto-biographical book, where his character travels the trans-Siberian railway. The train stops on one station and he goes begging with a friend to tame his ego. All I could think that he’s such a dick for begging because that is money that somebody could have given to a real poor beggar instead of some millionaire author.
I know that this has nothing to do with his writing abilities but I just hate books where the characters are arseholes. And the fact that he himself might have done something like that, made me annoyed. I really hate those kind of “spiritual teachers” who do whatever they want to grow in their “spirituality” even if they hurt someone else in the process. If he wanted to tame his ego, why not just give 99% of your money away? He still would have plenty of money to live and it probably would have hurted his ego more.
End of rant