Whenever life gets me down, I always think of a specific 1 star review on Google reviews for Paulo Coelho’s the Alchemist.
For context during the pandemic, myself and my friends had a lot of post-dnd session late night chats over zoom. It evolved into a book club, each person suggesting a book that was classed by our own definitions as ‘interesting’; they didn’t have to be ‘good books’ or classical novels, heck they didn’t even have to make us feel good after reading it (Susan Hill’s I’m the King of the Castle being a heck of a depressing read but still an interesting one at that). One friend of mine who had suggested to me her own master pieces of Hermann Hesse suggested for our group to read The Alchemist.
We did. It’s definitely one of those books that I call ‘Marmite’, in that people either love it or hate it. I was more into stories with deeper philosophical exploration, however for those who aren’t familiar with philosophy, I think that book is a good place to start. An honest 7-8/10: not too special but I’m glad a book like it exists.
During our discussion another friend decided to Google reviews… and found THIS goldmine of the most pretentious, most OTT response to a reasonably small book ever:
Maybe it was the mania of being stuck inside for months at that point, but we couldn’t help but laugh our heads off. Some notes on why I hatefully love this review:
It reads more like a wizards’ curse than a review, and thus my friends and I have read it all in multiple austere voices
I’m sure halfway through this person just opened a thesaurus to find more words to use, which is why they sounds like a Victorian scholar with some of the longer words used
“I seldom do this: writing reviews” I’m sure is 87% a lie, the 13% uncertainty being that this person writes like the journal entries of a Lovecraftian protagonist, and thus keeps their writings to themselves.
My friends and I have agreed this was most likely penned by a cis man, and one that may have watched too many episodes of Netflix’s Ancient Apocalypse while in college for business studies.
My friends and I agreed that if any of us get any opportunity to make merch, we’ll get the entirety of this review reconstructed onto a replica of The Emerald Tablet. It seems fitting.
(… not sure what this post is, just felt like sharing it. XD)