Books : The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

Rating: - I felt like I was reading the Bible.
The story was very simple and I really felt like it was a story from the New Testament and that I was being preached at. I only continued reading because this book gets brilliant reviews and thought there had to be something more to it, unfortunately there wasn't.

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Rating: - Like a magic spell that wears off after you finish
This book is enchanting when you read it, you will get wrapped up in it and possibly finish it in a single session. After you have finished, wait a week. Then try to remember anything about the book. Truth is, you probably can't. Now go and pick up a copy of Siddartha by Herman Hesse. Read that. Wait a week. See if you can remember anything about it. Chances are, you probably can.

This book gives you a quick fix, very similar to the inspirational feel you get when you thumb through a self-help book in the bookstore, and become inspired by. Equally, now, you probably cannot remember the name of the self-help book, but is that a bad thing? Who can tell.

Therefore, not a great book, but a quick read and not likely to do any longterm harm.

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Rating: - False guru
Terrible writing, not spiritually enriching. Read a great review/gripe in the Metro once that summed up my feelings and frustrations about the author which accused him of being morally corrupt, I tend to agree. He reaches out to the vulnerable with a watered down vague spirituality in the structure of a weak parable. Before anyone wonders, i have read this book, and eleven minutes, with regret. You would be better off doing:

A Just reading a really good book.

B If you really want spiritual philosophy, read Hermann Hesse, Budhism, Taoism, Carlos Casteneda, loads of stuff, which will be more enriching and has some foundation and substance.

Needed to get that off my chest. Actually no stars!

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Rating: - Cunningly Crafted but Actually Empty
I must confess I fell into this trap. The Alchemist seemed to me a deep parable for some 15 pages and then... I realized that I had read it all before and usually much better written. It has all the pretences of a parable while actually it boils down to the banal - the very moment you realize the banality of Coelho's observations the parable form reveals only its own emptiness and seems ridiculous.
The messages (if you really think you need to know them) are "you may look far away for something that waits for you right under your nose", "it is the road not the aim that matters" or something to that effect but certainly of equal depth. In other words it represents the same intellectual depth as Coupling or Friends. If you need to read almost 200 pages of lousy prose to confirm something your grandma told you when you were three, go ahead. You have just been warned.
The book has one good quality that I can see - it is so accessible that people who generally find reading book too tiresome a task may after reading it reach the conclusion that reading is not really that difficult and move on from Coelho to literature. And for that only it deserves one single star.

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Rating: - not quite gold
This started well and ended brilliantly but got a bit lost somewhere in the middle. Over all though this was a good story and much better than his other novels. Enjoyable, easy read with likeable characters.