Quite an achievement to be both pretentious and twee in one short story.

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I got bored real quick

Read Herman Hesse’s Sidhartha. Much better version of what Alchemist was trying to be.

I would say often times novels aren’t reflections of the authors. Just because someone wrote something doesn’t mean that’s what they truly believe. But for sure sometimes that is the case! Separate art from the artist

I find it impossible now, except as a case study on why death of an author is bad. The sex content that deals with familial relations and underage no longer comes across as feminist commentary on the women’s place in classic fantasy, and more of her just writing about the sex stuff she endorses.

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It's as deep as a fortune-cookie and about as well written. I have a deep loathing for it, not because it is simple, but because it pretends to be profound. Millions love it, but millions also have "Carpe Diem" signs on their walls at home and thinks that makes them special.

Never. Its never been of interest to me. As long as the story they write is good I don't care who wrote it.

Someone recommended "A Little Life" to me and the author kept showing off about how much they knew about art or food and being really detailed and it felt like name-dropping to me. It started getting annoying. I had to look up who was talking to me through this book.

Also, because I mostly read on Kindle, I hadn't realized that this was a 700+ page undertaking and when I was at about 10 % I already felt a sunk-cost fallacy about it and wanted to push myself to finish it anyway. There were enough well-written prose passages to highlight that I considered it worth it. I made it to 20 % and eventually just accepted the DNF.

Read some of his newer stuff lol, that is definitely not true.

I came here to say exactly this. Love her books but could’ve lived my whole life without knowing about her personal life. Honestly, it made it harder to read her writing afterwards.

Strong meh for me. Don’t get the adulation it gets.

Nothing beats Stephen King writing succinctly about something that has bothered him before. His style is perfect for it.

I read it, but I didn't get it.

I've actually reached out to them myself! I love asking or finding out WHY they decided to write that, i feel it makes the book more personal when you understand why they wrote it

Not a fan. I didn’t see what others saw in this book.

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There work is a reflection of them. It’s in there. You should probably care somewhat.

The artist puts themselves in their works, they cannot actually be separated.

That’s why I look them up beforehand. Ain’t no way I’m giving money to the bigoted writers out there.

I get why people don't like it but here are my take aways.

1.) It subverts the heros journey.

2.) The character has to stay in places for long amounts of time to work to move to the next point and that things were not given or explained to him

3.) Even though overall the message is "the real journey are the freinds you meet along the way" he still gets what he was promised and at least he actually went back to the tribe instead of staying back in Spain.

Overall I do think this was meant to be a YA novella and a literary fiction starter book just because there is not a ton of tropes overall.

As far as the writing structure it reads a lot like an epic though it clearly isn't.

I read it as an adult so I thought it was highly overrated and basic. To be honest I thought it was actually meant for middle graders. Like I think it would work really well as an introduction to literary fiction for 12 year olds.

No. For the most part I separate the author from their work. The exceptions would be non-fiction books. I will look up those authors to get an idea of how serious to take the topic they are writing about. There has only been one author I looked up to get personal incites about, Ayn Rand. The only reason I looked her up was first to find some redeeming quality or reason for your writing style and philosophy. Then it just turned into animosity ammo to argue against her proponents.

To me it was like a simply fairytale. It was nice, but nothing amazing.