4 stars (pleasant) - im personally drawn to portugese authors. in both the works of jose saramago and paulo i sense a very strong current: both of these men have a gift for capturing the essential human spirit in prose. to me, the alchemist was a dance; seamless blending of wordplay and personality, reaching for a portrait of the beauty of human experience. the story is fair and lighthearted, a saunter; however there is something quite magical about it. one could say it comes with paulo's integration of mysticism and arab cultures. there are many scenes where the reader, with the help of paulo, can deceive the senses into letting go as to transcend the present and play amongst the ethereal literary setting. all this works together to make reading this book a pleasantly positive and enjoyable experience. when low scores are given i do not understand what one could possibly be seeking other than a nice story. in terms of storytelling, this one is exceptional, and it would be something else if all approached this one with intent and respect. it deserves at least that. 2 stars (occasional insights in a shallow text) - Occasionally in The Alchemist there are moments that made me dog-ear the page, words and turns of phrase that I thought captured an important sentiment about life and the pursuit of dreams. But these rare moments are embedded in a foggy text, a text that has the appearance of wisdom but is actually quite shallow and vague. In Santiago's various discussions with the people and things he encounters, from the Englishman to the desert wind, there is a superficial feel of deep ideas being discussed when most of the time there is little substance to the ideas, little development and thought put into them. Profound words like "omen" and "heart" are tossed about without any effortful exploration of their meanings. These thoughts, these words, are dealt with too easily and superficially. Rather than stir me and engage me in deep thought, the book act... HarperSanFrancisco :: Reading Group Guide :: Fiction & Literary :: Visionary & Metaphysical :: Literary :: Fiction - General :: Fiction :: Fables :: Paulo Coelho :: :: The Alchemist- A Fable About Following Your Dream
5 stars (The Game Beyond the Game) - I just re-read Malmud's truly great first novel, The Natural . I had first read it over 20 years ago. It was more moving to me now -- having experienced both success and failure in my life. It is a book about baseball and it captures the best elements of the game (I grew up loving and playing baseball both in NY and Denver) and Mickey Mantle was my boyhood hero, much like Superman -- the comic book hero. Compulsive baseball statiticians with no real appreciation of genuinely fine literature may grow impatient with some seeming discrepencies. However, the larger picture is that through poetic metaphor and very real tough dialogue Malamud captures the glory and the anguish of the elusive American dream. 2 stars (The Movie may be corny, but it's better than this) - I knew before beginning that Malamud's book was substantially different from the great film made from it. Specifically, I was aware that at the end Roy Hobbs would strike out instead of hitting that mammouth home run to win the pennant. I was, however, prepared to read the book, which I fully expected to enjoy. I was wrong. For one thing, and this I think should be obvious to any baseball fan of merit, it seems as though Mr.Malamud has decided to use flowery prose about mountains, women, and railroads to cover up a distinct lack of knowledge regarding the sport of baseball. At one point he refers to Pop Fisher having played for the Sox in the World Series "about forty years ago. It was the first series they'd been in in twenty years. Even if the book took place in 1952, the year it was published, that series sixty years ago would have been in 1892, eleven years before the first World Series. Another World Series is described as having pitted the Sox against the A's, when both of those teams were in the American League! There is much more to find disagreeable in this book, such as the illogicality of the plot. We go right from Hobbs being shot to 15 years la... Farrar- Straus and Giroux :: Fiction & Literary :: Literature- Classics :: Literary :: Fiction - General :: Fiction :: Baseball stories :: Baseball players :: Baseball - General :: Kevin Baker :: B :: The Natural
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