I recently finished The Alchemist for the first time. I thought it was good. Straightforward and entertaining (imo). I thought that would be the general opinion of people about the Alchemist and that Coelho is revered by book readers. But I was honestly surprised to find out majority of the readers don’t like his work and think of him as a ‘mediocre’ writer. Is there something I don’t know? Why isn’t he highly esteemed amongst bibliophiles like I thought he was?

P.S. I also think that the writing in Alchemist could’ve been better, but I liked the story.