Reading through this book took some effort. The writing is simple and lacking in obvious metaphor. I became bored just past the halfway mark.

Perseverance paid off, however. No, the writing did not become more colourful, nor did the plot become more intriguing. In fact, the reason that this book has satisfied so many millions of people is because of the simplicity of the truths that it presents.

The book shows that life is about the journey — and true satisfaction in life is about a single-minded journey to achieve that which we feel calling out from our deepest recesses.

Everything falls into place along this path. Be it good or bad we learn from it all and step forward towards our goals. In the end, does it matter that what we desired was in front of us from the beginning?

The Alchemist is an allegorical story of wisdom. Most of us will lie on our deathbeds before we ultimately realize or understand what Coelho tries to show us in this simple tale.

Paulo Coelho is on Twitter here and has over 60,000 followers.

I found this book to be a surprise. It’s a well-written adventure that has good pacing. The scenes are interesting as are the characters. I now have a more intimate understanding of the Balkans and am intrigued with the annual Burning Man event in Nevada.

On the downside, however, I did find the book a little dumbed down. I was able to stay one step ahead of the protagonist for the most part and that sort of thing tends to make for a frustrating read.

I am definitely going to involve myself in Evans’ other books. If they are anything along the vein of this one, they will also be travel-adventure at its finest.

Evans is one of the new breed of author. He has a strong internet presence via his website and is on Twitter. To boot, he’s a Canuck.

Barker brings his usual colorfully sophisticated language to this book along with some very graphic imagery.

The substance of the book felt less thematically mature than his earlier works, yet still graphic enough to make this book not safe for kids.

I am a die-hard fan of Barker and in my eyes he really can do no wrong with anything that he creates. Then again, I said the same thing about Bryan Adams back in the early 90’s.

Not a bad read, but I found the plot somewhat disjointed with various parts bringing limited value to the overall narrative. I was neither emotionally or intellectually intrigued by the story. There are parts of the novel, however, where there is some brilliant writing.

As many of you know, The Girl has never taken to cooking. We have managed just fine with her doing the grocery shopping, chopping stuff up, and me doing the actual application of heat to food.

My brother and sister-in-law had us over for dinner a few weeks ago and served us an absolutely delicious meal. Kelly, my sister-in-law is a registered dietician and knows that I’m trying to watch my saturated fat intake. Even with minimal sodium and fat in the dishes that we had, we couldn’t believe how exotic and tasty they were.

That’s when she told us that the recipes were all from Rose Reisman’s book, The Complete Light Kitchen. We were so impressed that we bought a copy for ourselves and over the last week The Girl has actually been cooking. She’s discovered the joy of cooking. She’s still discovering how not to use every utensil and dish in the cupboards during the preparation of food.

I’m sitting at work having leftovers of Swordfish with mango salsa. Yummy.

We cooked this last night. The recipe called for either barbecuing the swordfish, or baking it in the oven. We thought the barbecue was a good idea. I haven’t sparked it up for the year as yet, so this would have been a good occasion.

This is how it looked as I walked out onto the deck towards it:

And this is what I found inside it:

Note the string over the burner:

For some reason, seeing all of this gave me a bad case of the HeeBeeJeeBees, so I shut the lid, ran back inside, and told her that we’re baking the swordfish. Which we did. The BBQ will stay that way until the weather gets a little warmer and I can arm myself with a garden hose.

This is how the dish looked:

And this how we ended up after a delicious dinner:

Although, to tell you the truth, Ameloblast is in that position for most of the day (especially since he’s been retired from blogging).