The Zahir

I finished reading The Zahir a few days ago. As usual for a Coelho book, the story has me thinking about me, what it means to be me and how being me affects the people I love. Like many other people, I go through my own troubles. That's maybe why i named this blog as it is titled. Thoughts sometimes go through my head, each opposing side talking whiel the core self listens to both arguments. Often, it's a stalemate. No one side wins over the over. At times one side presents a convincing argument, but the heart of the core self belongs to the other side.

The Zahir is a story about a writer. His wife suddenly disappeared. He couldn't figure out why she chose to do so. After getting over being angery, bitter and sullen, he began taking an honest look at himself and his marriage. In his pusuit to purge himself of all doubt and his desire to see his wife again, he mets a man, another woman and himself.

The man, he suspected of being his wife's lover. That turns out to be untrue. But the man touches him with his gift, a unique connection to the universe that conspires to make dreams come true. This man helps him find what he truly seeks. The other woman, girlfriend who loved him so, stayed with him as long as he would have her. She knew he still yearned to see his wife, but she stuck on anyway. Because that was how love was like, it cared not what it received in exchange of what it gave. All along the story he recounts how he hesitated before he started writing. He recounted how he poured his soul into each succeeding book without even knowing it. He pictured how he would write, possessed with a torturous need to finish each book, only finding solace once the book has written itself. He believed a writer was just that, a typist for the book. The book finishes itself. The book always had a life of it's own, revealing itself so the writer could share it's essence in a language men would understand.

In the end, he finds peace. He makes peace with who he is. Only then does he find himself worthy to seek out his Zahir, the one thing he count not live without.


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Disclaimer: This is far from a review. I write about how I feel and how the book 'talked' to me. I am no critic by any chance, just another dude with a blog.

I Finished The Alchemist

I've finally finished reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It's a short book, but if you've been following along on my blog you'll know that I have had some personal difficulties. There was also the matter of time. My wife tells me she wonders how I find time to read at ll. I wonder about that myself. It's probably why I was drawn to the convenience of ebooks. Still, it is a very different experience altogether to read on a real book. At times, I go to stores like National Bookstore or specialty stores like Fully Booked just to feel like a prodigal son returned. I wander aimlessly across the shelfs, pick a book here or there and leaf through. I love the smell of ink on paper still.

Personal circumstances aside, I liked it. It's a lot of metaphors in one story, though that's my logical self speaking. It did feel right all along. It's one of those stories that make you feel good, even though if you think too hard about it you can't make sense of it or your cynicism gets the best of you.

For as long as I have been reading, I have always read with my heart. That's probably why I still find reading enjoyable. And there are books or stories out there that have managed to break my heart, fill me with joy or just plain have me agreeing with it. The Little Prince is one such book that just broke my heart. Most people don't get it. I don't know if I completely do either. But reading it to the end left me with a broken heart. It was odd to realize I felt that way about a story. Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie talked about death in a very different way and had a meaningful albeit sad realization for every reader. Hook by Geary Gravel, a story everyone must know by now, was real fun to read by comparison. Hook, the movie was just as good fun (the one with Robin Williams, that is). Then of course there are books like Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or The One Minute Manager that have you realize some truth that lay hidden in the open until it made it's point. I mean with this kind of books you realize things were always in the clear and yet you never even though of looking there. A book like 7 Habits makes you realize that you had it in you all along, you just had to listen to your heart and conscience.


The Alchemist was to a point a little of everything. It's a story of a young man who chooses to follow his Personal Legend, the yearning deep down in his soul that he had never before understood yet wanted to follow. All along his travels, misfortune befalls him, yet he struggles on. With every moment he chooses to move on and and follow his dreams, the world seems to conspire to lead him ever more many steps closer to his dream. In the end, he finds his treasure back where he once was. Coming back a better person, one who understood and spoke with the 'Soul of the World', I reckon he knew that it wasn't about the treasure but the life-changing experiences he had on his way to get to it that mattered.

If you are any kind of lover of books or just looking for a book to inspire you to read more, this is the one to read. Do not miss it.

Derailed

So I started reading The Alchemist before last week ended. I was half-way through it in a matter of hours. However the convenience of the ebooks lined up and saved on my phone was just too hard to resist. I ended up reading a couple of pages on each of my breaks, then my pace gradually sped up again. I'm at least 80 pages into The Bourne Legacy. I've put The Alchemist on indefinite hold. Worst still is the fact that I've yet to start Cryptonomicon, just the kind of story a geek would naturally be drawn to.

Cryptonomicon had been on my line up of To Read's for a few weeks now along with Daemon. I just can't seem to pull away from the Bourne series. I'm just so into it right now that I've forgotten I was supposed to read the first three so I could compare notes when I watched the Bourne movies. But I'm stuck. I haven't read the other books I had lined up. I haven't watched the Bourne movies. I'm more or less increasing my pace into The Bourne Legacy and I'm blogging less (yes, I had posts I was planning to write up). Oh, well. It's best to go with the flow for a while. I'm still more or less a happy camper.

Books, Books, Books

Lately, I've been doing all of my reading on ebooks. In the last three months or so I've been able to finish some seven or eight books. Most of my reading I did on coffee breaks or at night before going to sleep. Breaks are convenient for guerilla reading - LOL. And since I have the eBooks on my phone, I need not keep the lights on at night and it doesn't bother my sleeping wife.

So far, I've read mostly spy novels. Actually it's more of a nostalgia trip rather than straightforward interest. See when I was in high-school, I started reading novels. Mostly it was old books from my sister's Hardy Boys collection and Stephen King Novels borrowed from a dear old friend. For a time, I was even fixated on George Stark, a character in The Dark Half. But then as I read on, my imagination got the better of me. I had to get away from the scary stuff so I had to stop reading them. Pet Sematary actually gave me a couple of weeks worth of nightmares.

During my college years, things took on complications. I had 2 sets of friends, one group around my age and another 10-15 years older than I was. It was from the younger set that I got the cutting edge and 'literary' stuff. I was not uncommon to have copies of Tolkien, the Philippine Collegian, Rolling Stone Magazine, literary reviews and post-grad journals strewn about in the desks of our office. I kept a desk at the school paper, a convenient tambayan. That office really was more of a collective fast-moving informal library than anything else.

From the older guys I got influenced into trying spy and suspense novels. The same kind of books my father read. Me and my father were going through a difficult time back then and having a neutral common interest helped my bridge differences. He favored Robert Ludlum most of all. My older friends on the other hand exposed me to other writers like John Le Carre, Sidney Sheldon, Mario Puzo, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy and James Clavell.

Fast-forward to the future some ten odd years after I left college and here I am pre-occupied mostly with work, the kids and chores. I barely find time to blog any more and it makes me feel like I'm loosing something. My mind needs to churn, not with random worries, but with good reads to stir the imagination. So it's either I create content or consume it. With the limitations I have on time, I chose to read instead of write. eBooks were perfect because I could load them into my phone and read anywhere. So for the last few months I've managed to read the The Bourne Trilogy (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum). I've also managed to read the first three books of the Covert One Series: The Hades Factor, The Cassandra Compact and The Paris Option. I'm all set to read the last three books of both series but I think I need a break from the spy stuff, as I tweeted yesterday. So I picked up a book I bought a couple of weeks ago. I completely forgot about it, but found it on our bookshelf this morning. I'm going to start reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho today. This is going to be one sweet read :-)