THE SECRET LETTERS OF THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI

I am not really a huge fan of self help books.I do come across them several times but I usually skip reading them.I feel they tell you stuff that you already know,but when you see it in print...it feels like a revelation.I picked up Robin Sharma's bestseller 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari' around seven years ago when I was in a completely different stage in life and gave up reading it midway.I dont really remember why I did that...but maybe the book did not captivate me at that time.So when my sis recommended this book to me saying that I would love it,I was a bit skeptical at first.I thought it was a sequel to the first and kept it lying on my desk for the longest time until one fine day I picked it up and read it without a break.

It is not a sequel but the book does have Julian (the monk) in the first book as the guide.The story is about Jonathan Landry,(Julian's distant cousin) a troubled man trapped in the inescapable rat race of modern life.With an over demanding job,a failing marriage and a disappointed son,Jonathan is a man in trouble.One day at the insistence of his old mother he agrees to meet his old cousin Julian who has expressed his desire to meet Jonathan . He is assigned with a task of collecting nine life-saving talismans from safe-keepers located across the globe from Istanbul to Japan to India. Thus begins his journey of rediscovering his life and the joys he had been missing in it as each talisman and its safe-keeper has an important message along with it.

We travel to various places with Jonathan and along the way learn important lessons in life,the importance of being true to ourselves and deriving pleasure from even the most simple things in life.

This book could not have come to me at a better time.I guess we need to be reminded time and again about what really is important in life and not get lost in the race.What made the book even more interesting was that it told us these truths while taking us on a long journey across the world.

I strongly recommend it.It provoked me to stop and think about where I was going.I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.