The monk who had nothing better to do

I read Ernest Hemingway’s Old man and the sea. Nice book, I mean not bad. It is just a 100 page book, but still is a bit slow. The moral of the story is pretty good too. How difficult a problem is depends upon how you see it. But I failed to understand why the author was honored with a Nobel Prize for literature for this book. Perhaps, he was given the Nobel Prize for his entire works. If that is so, then I cannot comment, as this is the only work of his that I have read. Actually, come to think of it, most award winning novels are not very impressive. I mean impressive to me. I begin thinking what exactly are their criteria for a book qualifying for a booker or a Nobel or something? Who in the world judges these books? The most talked about books generally turn out to be disasters. I had wanted to read The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma for so long. I picked up the book yesterday and it was a big disappointment. According to the back cover of the book, the author is one of North America’s most electrifying speakers… well, I was electrified alright!! I didn’t even have the patience to just browse through the whole book. It was way too boring. The author being an Indian had just tried to sell India in the book, and has topped it with enormous helpings of things like spirituality and the like. It is a mystic land, sages and the blah. I cannot say about the whole book, because I couldn’t survive even a quarter of it. But at least in the initial chapters it has just glorified India. I wouldn’t have had any problem with that had the story been even a little more interesting. I thought it wouldn’t be just another self help book. Every third person I met had loved the book. But I really don’t understand why. This hot shot lawyer is obsessed with his work, running after glory and pride, disastrous personal life, divorced blah blah. Gets a heart attack in the middle of a trial, decides to abandon everything and try to get in touch with nature, decides to go to India, finds mysterious sages and starts living with them. He is the first to be able to find those sages in ages, as if he is the one they were waiting for to pass on their wisdom. The sages give him seven tips/advices/pointers/whatever to Get a Life (!), he promises to return to his world and spread the wisdom. Comes back a better person – lost all extra pounds, glow on his face, cheerful, no stress and stuff, and begins to pass on the wisdom to his colleague and that is where I lost patience and stopped reading it. What crap!

Regards,

Devil's own