Book Notes: The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paula Coelho was recommended to me by the Goodreads algorithm, which apparently stinks as the only thing that kept me turning the pages in this book was the suspense of trying to figure out why the heck this book was recommended to me.

Not my bag I suppose.

Have been slowly making my way through Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations this winter and I did enjoy the parallels in some of the ideas in this book and Meditations, especially around the sentiment when Coelho articulates that the timing of death is largely irrelevant if you are truly living in the present.

Still, maybe Goodreads was suggesting this for the 14 year-old me? I think I might have appreciated it back then. Not sure. But will definitely be more skeptical of future algorithm suggestions.

Posted

in

Current Spins

Top Albums

Check out my album Set It All Down on your favorite streaming service.


Posts Worth Reading:


Letterboxd


Reading Notes

  • Who profits from our constant state of dissatisfaction? The answer, of course, is painfully obvious. Every industry that sells a solution to a problem you […]
  • the shifts have been in place for awhile. A certain kind of book—say those reviewed in the NYRB—will become like opera, or theater, or ballet, […]
  • • No more struggle: “Whatever arises, train again and again in seeing it for what it is. The innermost essence of mind is without bias. […]
  • The real problem, in my mind, isn’t in the nature of this particular Venture-Capital operation. Because the whole raison-d’etre of Venture Capital is to make […]
  • . The EU invokes a mechanism called the precautionary principle in cases where an innovation, such as GMOs, has not yet been sufficiently researched for […]

Saved Links

RSS Error: A feed could not be found at `https://links.jimwillis.org/feed/atom?`; the status code is `404` and content-type is `text/html; charset=utf-8`