Baltasar Gracian: The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Baltasar Gracian was a Jesuit monk and advisor to the King of Spain. This collection of maxims is a great read and can be recommended to any reader.

Some of them you might have heard before, like:

"It takes more to deal with one man today than in the ancient times with an entire country."

Zeitraffer Verdict: 7 out of 7, Top Ten Book

Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist

RUMPELSTILTSKIN IS TURNING PAPER INTO GOLD.

Now, this is an extremely popular book that I've known about for like 30 years and read about 3 years ago.

According to Wikipedia it has sold some 65 Million copies helped make Paulo extremely popular and the best known South American writer.

It's the story of a young shepherd who goes through a lot of travel and pain to find out that the "treasure" he is looking for had been buried exactly at the place where he originally started of his looong journey.

Now, maybe I don't get it but for me that's a total anti-climax and the worst ending I EVER read in my entire life. I remember exactly the feeling of total, unbelieving disappointment when reading the last pages of this book.

It makes you feel totally empty inside and so I reckon the only alchemic action experienced is the rumpelstiltskin-like activity of turning ordinary paper and printing ink into gold.

If I missed or misunderstood something, let me know.

ZEITRAFFER VERDICT: 1 out of 7. A dumb book by a brilliant author.

The Bad Place by Dean Koontz

That's an old favorite of mine and maybe the most interesting story by prolific writer Dean Koontz in my opinion.

It's a clever mix of science fiction & horror with a beautiful love story, the usual dense writing and full of fun & frightening ideas.

I particularly like how Dean includes depiction of themes like weather and music into the story.

I'm not going to spoil this one AT ALL in this review. So stay away from Google and Wikipedia. Just trust me and buy the book and enjoy it completely fresh from scratch.

Note to self: This a review with practically NO INFORMATION about the story of the book. Interesting concept.

Zeitraffer Verdict: Go get it

Zeitraffer Rating: 6 out of 7