The Zahir and Book Worm Tag

The past few days have been chaotic, both at home and at work. I had to tie up loose strings at work so that the beginning of next year will be all sound and smooth while doing all my Christmas shopping and wrapping and planning for Christmas Eve dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I love it! Actually when honey and I bought some gifts from the toy shop, they offered to wrap all the toys for us but I told the kind sales lady to just give me the wrapping paper of my choice and I’ll wrap it myself. I don’t know what it is about wrapping gifts that soothes me, it makes giving a gift to someone more fun aside from the fact that I want to make the gifts under our tree look uniform. I have been wanting to post several entries the past couple of days but unfortunately I just couldn’t find the time. That is the reason why I love this tag from Niko . It gives me that added push to squeeze in an entry and an opportunity to share my views about this recent book that I’ve read.

Here are the mechanics of the tag: (modified the rules a bit coz I found it confusing)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence starting from the first complete sentence of the page.
4. Post the fifth sentence.
5. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the closest.
6. Tag five people to do the same.

Good thing I haven’t brought this book back home, I left this book here in my office drawer after I’ve finished reading it on my way here. And the 5th sentence of page 56 reads:

“But the Zahir, about which I initially used to think with either irritation of affection, continued to grow in my soul”

This line is from Paulo Coelho’s The Zahir. This is the first book written by Paulo Coelho that I’ve read and I must say he is a great writer. I find his thoughts so profound and unconventional. I also feel that there is very less to be desired in his style of writing. One of my favorite dialogues in the book reads:

“Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: which of the two will wash his face.”
“That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face of course.”
“No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him and vice-versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I’d better have a wash.”

How brilliant is that! This book talks about true love but not in the mushy kind of way. To be honest, I’ve never seen love described in the same way it was written in the book. The only thing that I feel was off is how the novel ended. I just thought that after an entire novel of struggle and journey in search of the Zahir, to end up with nothing is not the way to go, but then that’s just me.

I am so looking forward to reading more of Paulo Coelho’s works, if this book is any indication of how brilliant his works are, I’m sure that it’s gonna be a blast.

Oh and by the way, as a tradition for tags in this blog, I would like to invite anyone reading who wants to join since this was quite a fun tag. BTW, don’t forget to tag back! Have Fun!