Saturday, October 24, 2015

Review of the book Aleph by Paulo Coelho

I decided to start a new column in my blog, as from now on I plan to share the summaries and my views on the books that I finish reading. By doing so I believe it will encourage me to spend more time on reading and finish at least one book a week and give the reader insight on what to expect from the books.

A quick review of the book titled "Aleph" by Paulo Coelho that I just finished reading. The story seems to be about the real life story of author himself in his journey of finding his place at his kingdom. In order to do so he needs to be forgiven for his sins that he has committed in his previous lives. At this stage author’s spiritual beliefs and religious views are revealed as he sees himself as a priest who used to take part in trails of women accused in witchcrafty by Orthodox Church in his previous life. In order to fill the emptiness of his soul and reacquire his inner kingdom Paulo takes a journey to Russia and along the way on Trans Siberian train he is overwhelmed by the company of the Turkish girl Hilal. She is a stubborn and ambitious girl who makes her way through all the obstacles to join the group Paulo is traveling with. She is also the person who needs to forgive Paulo as she was the one who was executed because of her love to Paulo in their previous life. The story is highly focused on the spiritual beliefs of the author and his views about reincarnation as well as the elements of suffering and need for forgiveness in Christianity is widely portrayed.

 To conclude, I would rate this book maximum 3 out of 5 as it seems author did his best to make not so exciting storyline as interesting as possible. In addition the first chapters seem to be more attractive as the story starts with Paulo’s conversation with his mentor J. who is guiding him in his personal development path. However, along the journey this focus slides from the personal development to mind penetrating subjective views of author on various issues such as reincarnation, good and bad, happiness and etc. which makes it a bit skeptical for the reader to agree with him in all occasions. In addition the character of the main hero portrays sometimes egotistic and selfish traits from the conversations with people around him of an arrogant writer who thinks as of himself as the center of the universe.

Day 23: GRE Vocabulary, Success Journal, Kick-Boxing, Balance of life

Learning new words has been something I never enjoyed. The idea of having to write a vocabulary, and memorize words always irritated me. How...