Manuscript Found in Accra: My Book Review

After reading my friend Eden's gift to me, Paulo Coelho's The Spy, I discovered that he had copies of most of his books in our school library so I decided to read this one next - which I finished in just about an hour or two.

I love the premise that he presented in the beginning - it's so seductive and alluring - lost Egyptian papyruses - only to be found centuries later.

Anyhow, for the longest time,I have always avoided self-help books, preferring actual fiction and celebrities I like and many inspiring movies to be my main life guiders - aside from the Bible and what my parents taught me.

And then middle age arrives and while I was reading this, I was also simultaneously reading Malcolm Gladwell's 'Blink' and a book on how to harness your hidden genius! I feel like I'm 18 years old again, singing U2's classic "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".

Not everything in this book applies to me though. I love what he wrote about love, and failure - and I agree to most of it. This is a book you can read during Holy Week, when you want to make muni-muni in your life. I will keep a copy close to me just in case that urge arrives.

Why I Rarely Read Self-Help Books

Whenever I meet a new friend, sometimes the conversation turns to what books we are currently reading and most of the time, their list would always include self-help books (although Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist is a novel, it actually reads like a self-help book), a genre which I normally do not bother to browse for the simple reason that since I read fiction, I learn all my self-help knowledge from how the characters of these books I'm reading face the dilemmas and deal with the problems that are dealt to them.  In my experience, I find it more interesting and in a way, I could learn more from the character rather than reading advice from a self-help book.  I actually find reading the latter a bit tedious.