Why I keep giving away copies of The Alchemist, even though I'm not sure I like it

This one divides people, and I get why. It's very simple and it keeps telling you what the lesson is. On a bad day it reads like a greeting card.

But I read it when I was nineteen and scared about changing my subject at university, and it helped. Sometimes a simple book at the right moment does more than a brilliant one at the wrong moment. So I hand it to people who are stuck and I tell them they're allowed to roll their eyes at it.