A Book Review and a Slight Detour

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Britta Wolker, Journalist

When a book is able to teach a precious life lesson in a fairly simple, yet highly praised fashion, it’s guaranteed a read. One-hundred-and-sixty-four pages that guide the main character, a young shepherd boy, across mountains and deserts, a lesson about patience, and all the many takeaways along the route of achieving something big. In his static lifestyle that hardly confronts any deviation from the norm, meeting a gypsy and a king who tell him his life is planned out for a momentous personal destiny initiates quite the adventure. From country to country, month to month, he learns the beautiful art of achieving something, and how it takes more than just success upon success, but rather disappointment and small victories that appear interchangeably. As to not spoil the specific personal destiny he’s destined to pursue, or the reason for ‘the alchemist’ as the title, this summary will end short. After all, the main takeaway from any book at all is ultimately the moral. Like Tuedays With Morrie. “What’s so special about a book that’s short and sweet is that it teaches the reader with fewer words, but the loudest of all. A book like Tuedays With Morrie is a perfect example of a short read that follows along with the life of the main character Mitch, who meets his life teacher Morrie. Someone who makes him realize an entire perspective within two minutes; realizing that success has no one-way path,” Harmony Calata (10). After failing to pursue music for nothing more than half-empty bars, he finds his passion for writing, and later on, finds people like Morrie that completely transform his life in the best way possible.

Books are quite the work of art. But just in case they may seem a little long and tedious, settle for shorter ones. That is, the ones that are short and even sweeter.

*Make note: The Alchemist and Tuesdays with Morrie.*