Day 31-32 – 52 Books in 52 Weeks

I took a little break from Mein Kampf yesterday and started two new books. The first is Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 by Simon Winchester. I love volcanoes. Give me a big explosion and I’m all over it! This is about the eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia. It was eruption so large and so loud that the noise from the eruption reached farther than any other sound in recorded history… heard all the way in central Australia (about 2000km/1242 miles away!)

What absolutely grabs my attention is that not only was Krakatoa the “greatest detonation, the loudest sound, the most devastating volcanic event in modern recorded human history” (page 4), there is a “child” of Krakatoa on the rise. Since the eruption in 1883, the volcano Anak Krakatoa has been growing at a rate of 20 feet a year in height and 40 feet in width. Volcanologists know that some day, this child of Krakatoa will erupt just like its parent.

Stuff like that fascinates me and I’m looking forward to find out more!

The second book I started to read is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho who (according to the book jacket) is one of the bestselling and most influential authors in the world. So I thought, cool, this should be a good book.

I wanted to know a little bit more about the author (because I’d never heard of this “bestselling” and “influential” author)… so I flipped to the back of the book where there is an interview with him that was done for beliefnet.com. He says he is a Catholic, yet says, “But in the end all religions tend to point to the same light… sometimes there are too many rules. The light is here (Soul of the World) and there are no rules to follow this light” (page 181).

Okay, first of all, if he is a true Christian, he obviously doesn’t take the Bible seriously since it is very specific that there is only one way to God. So immediately, I’m already doubting that I’ll like the book. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind if a story involves characters of a different religion or faith, what I do mind is someone trying to pose as the authority on the subject and preach his own version of his own gospel as being the truth.

Then he says he believes that even inanimate objects have souls… and that all souls are the same (so basically we all share our souls with a rock, a tree, our neighbors, that raindrop, that mass murderer)… then he talks about watching for omens – that they are “the individual language in which God talks to you” (page 184) and on the next page says, “sex is a physical manifestation of God.” Now I’m doubting his sanity and morality.

Again, if he were truly a Christian, these words wouldn’t come out of his mouth.

So, already knowing that I’m probably going to hate the book, I start reading the story. It’s a simple story of a boy named Santiago who is a shepherd who has had the same dream twice. He’s on his way to a certain town in Spain and there he talks to a woman who “interprets dreams” and tells him that he’s to go to Egypt to find some great treasure.

Next he’s in the village where a man appears to him and again nudges him to go to the great pyramids. This guy is written to be like a god… able to appear anywhere as anything (even a rock) to help people find their destiny.

Oh boy!

Well, only twenty five pages into it and I’m already disgusted at all of this New Age garbage that’s supposedly written by a Christian. Not only that, I don’t think it’s the brilliant writing as all of the patronizations make it out to be. From the way they described his writing, and this book in particular, I expected something of the caliber of C.S. Lewis oro JRR Tolkien. It’s more like a well-versed fifth-grader writing a paper for class.

I’m glad it’s a short book.

I think I’ll go back to Krakatoa now and read about explosions. Way more entertaining.

Happy reading!