Disclaimer: I am Brazilian and read this book in Portuguese. That might explain why I don't like Paulo Coelho. I see him as a pop version of Herman Hesse, an easy to read cheap mystic. Gave up on these kind of readings a long ago.
i know i know you should never open a "hate" group on facebook, i did so anyway a few years ago after one of his books took two hours of my life that i will never get back.
i know that this is not very HN, but neither is a "xx books ever entrepreneur should read" linkbaitblogpost on the front page.
here my favorite quotes:
"porn movies has better plot than his books"
"He mixes a couple of diff books in one (but the other two arent his :-)"
"Reminds me something that could be called langue de bois, a suspicious rhetoric that is targeted towards desire of happiness. Too good to be true, to abstract to be examined, too vague to be accomplished. I guess the speeches of early USSR politics could be depicted as a same type langue de bois, that were talking about a perfect society in a loud tone of sentiments and deep emotionality, but created nothing more than utopian abortion."
"in my opinion people who actually like Paulo Coelho have never ever read a real book and are unable to enjoy literature. Paulo Coelho = scary new age pseudo babble for lost middle class brats. It is good news for Paulo Coelho's bank account the world is full of those."
It's fair enough to not like a book. I didn't really care for it either.
When you express this level of hate for something however, I'd venture to say it's more about yourself than you might think. You talk about 2 hours of your life wasted, yet your still burning energy in hating it, and forming a group of all things.
nonetheless i made an exception for that guy. if everyone (according to bestseller lists and the linked blogpost above) is an awe of that guy, somebody has to point out "that the king has no clothes" (reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperors_New_Clothes )
I can say from my personal experience that this book inspired me to come to the US first and move to Silicon Valley later. Everyone's perception is different. I read it 10 years ago when Coelho was not that popular and while reading it I was not thinking about what other people thought about Coelho, I was thinking about what was written and it related to me deeply.
So I think you might be right that he became too populat, but I disagree that "nothing to see here", I'm sure a lot of people will find inspiration just like I did.
"pop version of Herman Hesse" sums him up well. It's intro to spirituality. Paulo Coelho bangs you over the head with his ideas instead of letting them flow naturally from the text.
i think you were looking to get more out of the book than the author put into it. personally, i loved the book - i'm a fan of folk-tale and fairy-tale retellings in modern novel form, and "the alchemist" was, i felt, a very well-done example of one.
Ok, nothing to see here, move along.
Disclaimer: I am Brazilian and read this book in Portuguese. That might explain why I don't like Paulo Coelho. I see him as a pop version of Herman Hesse, an easy to read cheap mystic. Gave up on these kind of readings a long ago.