The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
“As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. ‘I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure,’ he said to himself.”
This is just one of the many quotes I loved from The Alchemist. To start, I have to let you know that I really enjoyed this book. It’s very different from other novels that I have read this year. The story is a fable that is highly metaphorical, as opposed to being a biography or fictional drama.
This was also the first book of the Borderline Millennials Book Club I started! So, I got to read this with the members of the book club and host group discussions over Zoom, which made reading this even more fun!
I had been recommended this book years before, but it finally felt like the right time to sit down and read it.
It’s all about a boy on his personal journey, in search of a treasure. This boy starts his journey with one goal in mind, but he ends up on a different path, meeting new people, and learning valuable lessons along the way. As always, I won’t go into the exact details of the book, but I can tell you that I found this book to be incredibly relatable, and the lessons of the book to be transferrable to my own life.
Even while discussing the contents of The Alchemist in my book club, we all found ways to relate to what the protagonist was going through and relating the lessons from the book to our current situations in life. I can’t even tell you how many times something would happen to the main character and we would all be like “Yass, I feel that!”
I’m not sure if it was the sense of community I had while reading The Alchemist, the book itself, or some combination of the two that made me like this book, but for whatever the reason, I’m rating this book pretty high, and would recommend it to anyone, especially to my fellow Borderline Millennials.