Just Finished Reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Portuguese writer Paulo Coelho is said to have written The Alchemist in the span of two weeks in 1987...yet it's clear that he had already worked out the philosophy of living that he espouses in this short novel.  Santiago is a young man living in Spain with a dream of adventure and treasure...his visit to a nearby fortune teller confirms this and a subsequent encounter with a man calling himself King Melchizedek of Salem (the same who met up with Abraham in Genesis) sets him forward on his quest.  A shepherd by trade, he sells his sheep and ships over into northern Africa and an excruciating crossing of the Sahara Desert to his destination: the Egyptian Pyramids.  Along the way he meets up with the Alchemist of the book's title...as well as romance, a much deeper appreciation of the world around him as it exists in the present, and a whole slew of maxims, one of which is that when you set out to accomplish the dream of your life, the universe will conspire to help you.  Perceiving and heeding omens is another absolute necessity...I think I'll present yet another idea of the Alchemist on this blog's next "quote of the week" article on Friday.  The concept Coelho presents here of someone leaving his home to travel a dangerous path on an adventurous quest for a big prize is very vivid and literal...maybe that's been how you picture fulfilling deeply held dreams of your own, but my dreams aren't quite as easy to present like that.  Still, as the author pointed out through other characters, it is only too easy for one to get so caught up with their routines of everyday existence that they eventually abandon and even forget the dreams that they had earlier held to be important in their lives.  And to this extent the book resonated with me.  The prose is written in beautiful, simple language, the characters are easy to empathize with, and as I said before, the story is brief. I think most anyone would get something positive from reading it as I did, and I thought the ending was perfect...