Back in high school I was given an assignment to review a book of my own choosing for a Finnish class. I went straight to the source to the village library to pick up a book. I had no idea what kind of book I was going to borrow, so I went in pretty blind. In front of the entrance, there was a rotating metal shelf displaying books that had recently been acquired and added to the library’s collection. I remember one of the books stood out from the rest; it had a purple, intriguing cover that immediately caught my eye. The name was also short and striking; The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. I refused to walk further into the labyrinth of shelves and books and borrowed The Alchemist instead.

I did end up giving it a praising review, if memory serves. I had not yet been tainted by exposure to Zero Punctuation at that time of my life, more’s the pity. I seem to remember that even at the time of the assignment I genuinely thought the book was trash, but lacked the conviction to give it the written treatment it deserved. I don’t usually look back at my high school years, but the reason I’m doing that now is because a book I recently finished reading reminded me of The Alchemist.

I have the habit of ordering a batch of new books every few months. Once I finish reading the last one, I order a new pile. One of those batches contained Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. When I look for new books to read, I usually go to Reddit or some other forum to skim through book recommendation threads. That one time I was interested in fiction books that at least tangentially touched upon the subject of Buddhist ideas. One of the most recommended books on the subject was the aforementioned Siddhartha.

First, I sort of liked the core premise and story of Siddhartha. A son of a brahmin goes on  a journey wanting to find enlightenment, meets a cast of characters including Buddha himself and takes upon himself a variety of professions. However, after reaching the last page I found myself disliking the book. The main problem I had with the book, alongside the weirdly short inner margins on the pages that my copy had, and the main problem I had with The Alchemist, is that it is written in a really infuriating way; I feel like the author wanted to have a grand meaning behind every single sentence in the book.

Paulo Coelho, as I understand it, is regarded as an author associated with self-discovery literature. It makes sense that a book of this variety, a category that Siddhartha falls into, would have a grand meaning. It is expected that the reader has somehow changed or come across a discovery by the end. The problem is, I feel like every sentence in the book is designed to bring forward ideas first and to develop characters or advancing plot distant second. The characters and situations feel very hollow when all they do is talk in mysterious riddles paragraphs on end, rather than bringing across what the character is like, and by the end I end up disliking the whole cast because I know nothing about them and don’t care about their predicaments. For example, in one chapter the titular character Siddhartha comes across a person whose job is to transport people across a river on a raft. The rest of the chapter is spent with the character rambling on about what it means to live by the river, how the river talks to you if you listen closely and the meaning of flowing water and stuff like that. Not one line is dedicated to what the character likes as a person or why I should care about him.

Siddhartha is a short book, meaning it doesn’t contain a lot of if any filler, but the incessant philosophical onslaught brings it down. I wouldn’t recommend it. Incidentally, after I finished it and ordered new books online, I got my hands on an actual nonfiction book about Soto Buddhism, which is a collection of written works by an influential Japanese monk titled A Moon in a Dewdrop. I have only read a few chapters into it, and it is very difficult to grasp at times, but I’m enjoying it a whole lot more than I did Siddhartha. At least in a nonfiction book the thematic ideas and the narrative are not in a constant war with each other, which is sort of ironic about a fiction book on finding nirvana.