Review: The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I heard first time about this book when my close friend Danish Gondal talked about it. He said he read it as a child, in Urdu, and it devastated him. Since then I was curious about it.

As it's a short book, and I am lagging behind my reading goal this year, so I picked up to finish it quickly. While I was reading, I was constantly telling myself to get too emotionally attached as any dark twist could come and devastate me too (Danish is a lot stronger mentally and emotionally than I am). No dark twist came. Hemingway doesn't play cheap-shots. It's not a thriller, but every bit as gripping.

It's a tale about an Old man who goes fishing. The old man is smart and humble, and poor, and skilled at fishing. And he's self-aware. He knows his weaknesses too.

I think it's a book about we we try our best to succeed in our missions, and in life, and we do too. Without giving much thoughts to the missions themselves. I think it's a novel about you have to be wise too, in addition to being clever.

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Book Summary: Seven habits of highly effective people

This is a work in progress.

Summary of first 22 pages:

Character Development is the primary way of being effective. Personality Development is also important, and the lack in any of them would result in failures, Character is primary, and Personality is complementary.

Author and his wife were being bad parents because they were seeings their son's failures in life as their failures as parents. Once they realized their mistake, they accepted their child for who he was, and stopped measuring him against society's expectations. As a result, their son, who was behind academically, physically, emotionally, soared in all aspects of life.