A lifelong reader and a vocational writer invites you on an intimate tour of her home and its multifarious bookshelves, sharing the contents of her library and how all those volumes transmuted her own life  from a childhood as a bookish caterpillar bookworm into the adult, full-fledged butterfly ofo a publshed writer in her own right. A luminous guide through the written word, through personal essays, book reviews, anecdotes, and insights. this book is a recipe for a literary elixir consisting of equal parts inspiration, revelation, and transformation; anyone who has ever surreptitiously sidled up to a bookshelf on a first visit to a stranger's home, just to  see if there were any familiar friends living there, will find a treasured companion in 'Alchemy of the Wrord"e;.