Hey guys and welcome to another book review! I have to say, just to start off, that I think you guys really gonna like this one.
Today I'm reviewing the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, but don't start telling me "Wow Hend, you're so outdated! That book was written like a decade or two ago!" and all that nonsense because I think books are flipping timeless, no matter the story or the topic.
Ok so usually I would start with the cover but I bought my copy off the side of a road in my university city campus (Cairo university is literally that huge and that's not even all of the university) and it wasn't the original cover, as well as there being many cover designs.
Moving on to the story. Now this book, as all of Coelho's books, is about a certain topic in life. But this one is about one of the major things that we all probably think about all the time. Finding our true calling or as he put it in this book, "Our personal legends". I think he spoke about the topic very magically. He instead of just raving on and on about how to find your personal legend, decided to teach us about it using a magical story. This story was absolutely mesmerising, and I didn't put the book down because of it. It speaks of a young boy named Santiago who thought his destiny was to remain a shepherd and travel the same route every year and then to marry the baker's daughter and raise and harvest off of his sheep with her. Until he goes to a gypsy to have a reoccurring dream of his explained. Basically he dreams about finding a treasure and his life becomes all the more exciting from that moment on. His story has all aspects of a great one. Love, adventure, moral, suspense, even little facts that you may have not known. The plot is spot on and put into writing very well. The best part about it is that as you read into the story, the plot thickens and things get more and more interesting. You just want to know and keep asking, "What's next for Santiago?" All in all, a magical grasping story.
Next we move on to the characters. Now Santiago the shepherd boy is the main base of this story but there are many very influential characters in there too. I can't speak of all of them so I will speak about only Santiago. Well Santiago's a young boy of age 16-18 and works as a shepherd, leading his herd across the Spanish lands and trading from his sheep's wool. What I find charismatic about Santiago is that he is constantly learning new things along his journey. He learns one thing, and then either through a certain situation or through extensive thinking, he makes an analogy of it and then eventually he realises that it's a life lesson. This boy actually didn't realise that he already started to follow the path that would lead him to his personal legend when he chose sheep herding over become a priest. But the major milestone in his path was when he decided to have that dream of his analyzed by a gypsy. Throughout his path, we learn that Santiago is determined, and curious. We also learned that he is very trusting and is rarely beaten by a mishap in his path towards his legend. Basically he is a character worth reading about. The rest of the characters are ones that you need to read the book to properly understand why they were so influential in Santiago's life.
Language wise, this book was translated from Portuguese I believe but was done very well and made me realise how much vocabulary Coelho has. SO many ways of phrasing. Very well written. Its authored so well that this book doesn't even need to have a movie of its own. This book is, dare I say, too good for a movie. Why? Because the way you, with your own personal imagination and ingenuity, will see the story, the characters, the scenery, even the way anything moves, in your head in a way that will never be satisfying to watch in a movie. Because not only is the movie going to be portrayed how someone else imagined it, but it will also never be exactly how that person thought of it. This book really does that. Your imagination just runs away with you. It's written THAT well.
Lastly, the message/moral of the story. Just beautiful. Now I can't give you the message in a way that will pull on your heartstrings like it did mine, but it wonderfully tells you that you should never stop pursuing your dreams, thoughts, aspirations, goals, and finding your true self. Never stop going after your personal legend. Not only that, but it tells you that your personal legend will reward you with so many things other than your purpose in life. It could be the love of your life, the very magical once in a hundred years kind. It could be the wealth of knowledge. It could be all the faith in God you could possibly have. It could be so many things, depending on your legend and path. But that is what makes it exciting! Just going and having your own adventure, picking up on little skills or facts or friends. How awesome is that? And that's not even the magical part about this story!
Critics described this book as "an internationally best-selling phenomenon". They were absolutely right. Never in all the books I've read has there ever been a book that I could describe as best as I could without spoilers, and at the same time giving you guys teasers and telling you how much you HAVE to read this book. Beautiful story, awesome lesson, and amazing depth. A must read.
Well I hope this review was up to the standards that you've put since I came back. If you guys like it please let me know, either blogger or tubmlr. My tumblr is https://www.tumblr.com/blog/huemann1996 for those of you on blogger and my blog is nounou1996.blogger.com for those of you on tumblr. For the both of you, find me on Bloglovin' and my twitter is @Huemann1996 for those of you who want to know about my off-blog life. If you would like to read about something specific next Thursday you can leave me suggestions on any of these links of mine about books/films/other things reviewed, topics for the advice column, or a short story theme. Questions are accepted as well and if I have more than 3 questions asked, I will put them all in a blog post of its own. Thanks for reading guys! I love you all loads! Hue Mann, over and out!! ;)