Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Men, Follow Your Dreams! Women, errr- just keep on keeping on

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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I feel like The Alchemist was a ship that I missed when it first sailed many years ago- it was such a sensation that tabloids showed all sorts of famous people (Bill Clinton!) reading it and it was optioned for an (as yet unmade) film. So here I am, reading it only 30 years late. The Alchemist is a very slim novel, just over 150 generously spaced pages. It follows Santiago, a shepherd boy from Andalusia who follows his dream of finding treasure under the […]

“…wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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Cbr13bingo Travel This short, internationally acclaimed novel reads like a parable. The Alchemist is the story of a young man, simply known as “the boy”, in his quest to find his treasure. Similar to other literary quests or odysseys, the young man will encounter those who help him as well as obstacles along the way, but it is the internal journey he takes, the things he learns, that matter most. The Alchemist is a very spiritual book that emphasizes the connectedness of all things and […]

Something Worth Living For

Veronika decides to die by Paulo Coelho

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Veronika, a pretty 24-year-old Slovenian decides to take her life. She survives the suicide attempt and is admitted to the post-Yugoslavian state-of-the-art mental hospital Villette in Ljubljana where she meets the different inhabitants, including a psychiatrist with rather unconventional and probably (definitely) unethical methods. It’s a slightly cliched setup, but I enjoyed the sense of humour in it, the different characters, their distinct personalities and their rather realistic backgrounds. Coelho wrote this based on his own experiences in mental wards and in those life stories […]

I was fooled by Jeremy Irons

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I was fooled into listening to this because it was narrated by Jeremy Irons. If you find this on overdrive or the library and you’re thinking Oh! Jeremy Irons….Scar! Hans Gruber’s brother in Die Hard with a Vengeance! I will listen to this and it will be great. Well, it will be, kind of, because Jeremy Irons truly is great. But instead, you should get his reading Lolita instead and you will be treated to a truly beautiful and terrible rendition of that novel. Here’s what […]

I stole this book off my mom’s shelf because it looked small! The smallest book I’ve read for CBR 8 turned out to be my longest review!

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I’m a little bit behind on my book reading, so I found a short book. The book has you instantly immersed in the world of the story. I guess since this book is so short, I basically live-reviewed it. So, SPOILERS ahead matey! We start out with a young shepherd boy in Spain. He’s reminiscing about his wandering lifestyle, and how his father supported it. He met a girl that he can’t stop thinking about, and he’s having a dream analyzed. A little girl plays […]

The world’s bestselling fable.

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I have a couple of friends who think this book is the worst thing they’ve ever read. Of course, these same friends are also notoriously high-minded about a lot of things, over which we frequenly butt heads, but mostly I think they are missing the point with this one. It’s not meant to be high literature. It’s not even meant to be all that well-written (in the classical sense of the phrase). Capital-L Literature is meant to elevate, and to a certain extent, it’s elitist. This, […]



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