From the Bookshelf of 2025 Reading Challenge…

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Start date: August 1, 2021

Finish date: August 31, 2021

Discussion: October 2025 Group Read

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Showing 2 of -3 topics — 109 comments total

October 2025 Group Read

Weyward: Mid-Reading Discussion
By Winter , Group Reads · 3 posts · 31 views

last updated 22 hours, 59 min ago

Weyward: Pre-Reading Discussion
By Winter , Group Reads · 7 posts · 30 views

last updated Oct 02, 2025 08:30AM

showing 10 of 89 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Feb 28, 2010 Netanella rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016-rrrc-challenge-addicts-reading, 2016-may-reading-challenges

Phenomenal book, but you have to be open to it. Some have criticized it for being too preachy, but it is what it is, as a wise person once said.

I'm in a weird place in my life right now, and doing a lot of soul searching. I'm not ready to sell my sheep and go on a quest for treasure somewhere hidden by the Pyramids in Egypt, but I am in a contemplative mood about my direction in life, and where I want to be, and what true happiness means to me, and what really defines my purpose. This is the ty ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2018 Brittany rated it it was amazing

Shelves: absolute-favorites

While I assume this is often a quick read for many I took my time with it. Several years of time actually. I'm not sure why I had difficulty staying with it, or if I simply came to various points where I needed to sit with what had been said and allow those ideas to digest. This book is a beautiful and inspirational piece and a journey and it took me some time to sit with the messages that came forward to me.

Easy to read with feel good ideas about the dreams we have and what it takes to go after ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Mar 21, 2012 Chrissa rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I feel that this book was mischaracterized by having been shelved in the Fiction & Literature section. As others have mentioned, this book (which I read in translation) uses devices such as persistent capitalization of Important Themes and simplistic--meaning purposefully canted toward basic narrative--plotting to tell a fable centered around a young man out to earn his fortune/realize his dreams. If I had found it in the self-help, inspirational, or children's section, I might not have had my e ...more

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Jul 07, 2009 Genevieve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Inspires me to listen to my heart.
Similar to Celestine Prophecy, even more so than his other work, The Witch of Portebello.
Told as a fable, quick read.

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