The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho

I really wanted to like this book, given it's a classic and all, but I found it way too fluffy. The whole Personal Legend thing I just found really superficial, especially when the boy decided to drop what seemed, to me at least, to be a near-perfect life (along with the one person who helped him when he arrived) for a chance at gold in Egypt. I didn't finish it, so this whole parable could have worked itself out in a "the gold is the friends we made along the way" sort of way, but I couldn't bring myself to find out. Shame, really, because the story got me half-way there. It tailed off in the desert for me.