The Alchemist, 25th Anniversary: A Fable About Following Your Dream

It is sometimes a challenge to write a review on a book that you’ve read because it could never truly encapsulate the entire experience of reading it or even why you chose to read it. I will do my best to provide a quick snippet of how this book was part of my journey. I worked at a publicly traded FinTech company where I was speaking to a colleague in engineering who happened to be of a familiar tribe. We spoke about a few things, and I’m not sure if I was wearing my “Decolonize Your Bookshelf shirt from TrueDiversitee or some other shirt that I frequent, but through the conversation, my colleague started to speak of this book and said it was a good read and I should give it a try. My colleague proceeded to hand me their copy of the book(which had a different cover) to read set. During this time, I was reading Such a Fun Age, and Between The World And Me before I had the opportunity to read the Alchemist. I decided to order my own copy of the book before reading. It just feels right to me to have your own copy of what you’re reading. I appreciated the read, it frankly fit well into my life and contributed to the journey I was on. I ended up recommending the book to another colleague as we spoke about life events and just elevating and progressing in our professional and personal worlds. A few days later, I received a text from the latter colleague stating that they ordered the book, and a few days after that, they texted me stating how much they enjoyed the reading. My theory is that this book will be enjoyed by those already on a journey or starting one, or rediscovering another journey. Either way, it is up to you to decide if you want to read this or not. But I will continue to flow in which this book flowed to me, it was suggested, so if you are someone who is in between the books, or a moment in life, I would say or maybe write ” Have you ever read The Alchemist? It’s pretty decent. I use to read it while I would catch the city bus and one day I committed a whole day to finish it because it was legit.” Also, why did my car get towed when I parked it in my correct unit designated parking spot, why was it $500 to get it from the towing impound when it was only there for a day, and why did not property manager not call me back after leaving them a voice mail? Can y’all people do better!!! I will also add that the tow company damaged my bumper during the tow, and now the HOA is charging me for a parking sticker. But like Santiago, I will continue forward and it will all work out.

This book has the ability to make you ponder, frown, smile, laugh and learn. I felt like I was in the story with the boy..coming of age and learning the wisdom of the world.

A book to read over and over. In the past ten years I’ve read it four times and have no doubt I’ll pick it up again in the morning too distant future. Each time you read this beautiful story you will take something new away from it.