Siddhartha

Enjoyed the hell out of it, quick fluid read with just enough substance to keep me engaged.

I’m reading this at a point in time in my life where I want to change myself while also seeking to learn more on what I already know and what I didn’t know. This was my first time reading this book, and throughout, I can admit it changed a bit of the way I was previously thinking. I am only in my early 20s now, and I had been reminded by this book that I have much still to learn in life. The only thing I seem from other reviews prior to reading was that what is written tends to often get repeated over. This I can somewhat agree as it’s doubled down and reiterated at times. I think in defense of this, I can say some of the passages written the first confused me, having me to reread it, but the second sentence would reiterate and slightly expand more on the first sentence making it more fulfilling. In the end, I loved how the characters all have something to give, something worth taking from, and something worth discovering when looking inward and outward.

I 1st read this book in college in the early 1970s, and it's message echoed in my thinking off and on till now. To realize that such states of awareness exist is a gift in itself. This digital copy has annoying typos in important places, but the ideas still resonate.

Compared with other Hesse’s book I bought the other day, this book is unbelievably cheap. Not a very thick book, nor too difficult to keep reading. Print is good and I don’t find why this book is this cheap. Maybe Siddartha is a lot easier to acquire? I like reading Hesse so have no complaint. Thank you.

Beautiful. I’m told I need 19 more words, but they will all come back to one single word: beautiful. Beautiful.

A good look at self sacrifice and dedication to a belief. This is a most inspiring look at Sidartha's journey to find enlightenment and to find himself.

This is literature in the Mark Twain sense, a book I want to have read but don't want to read.First off, I want to mention that the translation I got was abysmal. When I first started reading I though it might be like the Spanish in For Whom the Bell Tolls, which is translated directly rather than idiomatically so you knew when they were speaking Spanish instead of English. Like "How are you called?" instead of "What's your name?" But as I read on it was obviously not that.This wasn't someone writing in German but trying to convey the feel of Maghadi Prakrit, or whatever language would have been spoken where the story took place. No, it was someone who has a horrible grasp of English translating the original text. Badly translating, and not being edited AT ALL. Seriously, there were even points where the translator's notes to the editor were left in, in German, with some words he cannot decide on the correct translation for. The left them in, in a different font and bracketed to make them obvious.The grammar was not just bad, but inconsistently so. The same sentence would be repeated in the same context and the verb tense would change. Commas would, randomly, be, placed so that they made no, sense. And the word choice was so bad that no subtlety of meaning was conveyed anywhere.In case Amazon smooshes this review in with reviews for all versions, mine was the paperback with the green cover and gold "Siddhartha" on top and Herman Hesse in green on a gold stripe along the bottom. If you insist on reading this book don't buy this version.As for the book itself, ignoring the fact that it was translated by someone for whom English was probably not their primary language, I thought it was awful. I always heard stories about how it changed people's lives, changed their view of the world, and the like, so I guess I had too grand of an expectation. I'm giving it three stars because, for some reason, lots of people seem to like it so I'm obviously out of the mainstream. But I threw my copy in the recycle bin rather than give it to a friend, I thought it was such a stupid story.The story is very linear. It is stilted, contrived storytelling at best. Without throwing in spoilers, you have to suspend belief to understand that characters and events all happen (even decades apart) at the exact time and exact place with the exact people you know. There would be absolutely no reason for many of these coincidences, and they're obviously just a plot device.The philosophy is similarly contrived. It's the story of the son of a priest who wanders around what I assume is Maghada (because that's where Buddha "attained enlightenment") trying on different lives until he finds his own enlightenment. He's an amazingly crappy, selfish, small minded, self centered, awful human being. He has no control over himself, even though he was supposed to have been an ascetic. He has no regard for anyone else, either. The story assumes that you have to be lustful if you engage in commerce, that you have to be evil if you are part of the material world, and that the only path to true spiritual enlightenment takes a lifetime void of any practical applications. Even after setting up all these straw men, it is still not compelling in how it tries to knock them down.I'm sorry to say it, but you can't have a billion beggars and expect everyone to get fed. The people looked down upon, called children (though confusingly so as it's bad in one context but childlike in the context of the Buddha is a good thing -- I think that was the horrible translation) and worse pejoratives, are the only reason those shaven headed beggars had rice in their bowls and an ex whore's pleasure garden to sleep in. Those "children" are viewed as lesser animals because the hero of the story couldn't love himself, couldn't stop gambling, abandoned his pregnant whore girlfriend and future son, and decided to sit beside a river and row a boat for a couple of freaking decades to think. Somehow this special dude, this guy who listened to the water for 20 years before he finally thought of something came to the same conclusion that every damned stoner burnout in the parking lot of a Dead show worked out the first time the dropped a tab and listened to American Beauty at the age of 19. God is everywhere, Everything is connected, blah blah...I suppose if you're 15, or you really haven't read anything too deep, and you don't know anyone from anywhere other than your tiny town, this is mind bending. If you read Jonathon Swift and though he just wrote a book about a dude who got to see giants and tiny people, Siddhartha is just about your speed. If you honestly think he wanted the Irish to eat their babies, then Siddhartha will totally wrinkle your brain. If you understand allegory, farce, or metaphor, skip this one and move on to something written for adults.

You haven't read Sidartha? Life is a journey, mindfulness is the key, enlightenment. How do you attain the unattainable?