Book Review: The Alchemist

As someone at Harper Collins puts it "Reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept."

The Alchemist, a 160 pages book, has affected millions ever since it was written. Paulo Coelho's ultimate classic has challenged us, the cowards, who fall back, at sometime or other in the our life on the strange, mysterious word spelled FATE.Taking the story of Santiago, the shepherd boy from the fields of Audalasia, he takes us through the journey till the very end making it highly difficult to put the book down. The book begins with the strange, repetitive dream of the shepherd sees, and goes on to dispel the notion of fate, & instill the courage to find your destiny. The author speaks about the omens, the Language of Universe, about the fact that all things are one and about the arm that made everything. And the author weaves it all so beautifully that you understand them without being actually spoken, experiencing the Language of Universe, while getting to understand the ultimate goal of life: Realization of Dreams.Language of Universe is represented by Santiago as the shepherd understands the sheep, the deathly stillness of desert,flight of birds and many much more things as such...

Merely reading this book will make you recognize omens, understand the Language of Universe for sometime surrendering to the Beginner's Luck mentioned therein.

The book is short, with even the complex issues like that of personal calling explained i simplest of terms.

My advice to you is exactly the same Paolo Coelho heard, from a small's girl telling her mother, in the streets of Miami, "You should read The Alchemist".

My Rating: 9/10

Book Review: One night@ call centre & The 3 mistakes of my life.

Let me get this clear: I chose to write both the book reviews in a single article coz they really didn't deserve 2 separate ones.
One night @ the call center :
Chetan Bhagat's second book and quite a let down too. This book talks about the lives of a group of call center employees with their myriad problems and attitudes. Their life takes a full flip when one night ..they receive a call from God . Yeah..god..as in..'God'!! That's the story simply put.

What was clearly lacking in this book was sanity in the final circumstance. Chetan probably had in mind an inspiring book, but it somehow just failed to make me think deep. While few people really liked the book, most were not happy with it...so i guess it just boils down to this -'Read a borrowed book and if ya like it, well and good and if didn't ..if wasn't at least a waste of money!'


3 mistakes of my life:
Chetan's most recent book and frankly I can't say which is more boring...this one or one night...! This book speaks of 3 boys Omi,Ish and Govind(the guy who commits the mistakes!).
The book's biggest negative was the freaking-huge number of clichés used. Cricket,India,Nerd,Gujarat,Goverment- all of these issues were repeatedly used and abused.
Sometimes the story went too over the top and all "masala movie-ish"! Though he more or less stuck to the mainline of the story, it was quite painstaking to sit through the book.
I can only give you guys this piece of advice- "If ya want to kill time brutally or if you have real interest in chetan's books, go along and read it. If you are short-tempered, for sanity's sake, forget it!!"
In the very wise words of a Cnn-ibn article
"Picking up the book the 3 mistakes of my life is a big mistake" ! That explains a lot!