I don’t want to say this, but I should’ve trusted my instincts when I tossed in my hand a 150 odd-paged book, in an inviting hard cover. The enticement was set in bold “PAULO COELHO”. I should’ve guessed it had nothing to offer than selling the name. The last person to be interested in any kind of sport, Archery was something I could never read about-but I had myself buy “The Archer”.
While paying the bookstore manager I mocked at the thin book, “Looks like he’s forgetting how to write.” Retrospectively, I was right!! I wish I could write a more decent review about the most un-book like book. It has no story element, and is more of a parable, written in the most drudged possible way. Would Penguin publications ever put to print anything close to this had it not been the work of the author of The Alchemist?
Coelho seems to have been looking at putting together all the purposeless scribbling to add to the number of pages. With non-essential illustrations and one paragraph filling up most of each page, he delivers a book on his unconvincing wisdom.
The book is literally like jotting together the gist of forty boring essays on ‘Archery” written by a class of students who seemingly struggled to think unconfidently about the insights that could be extracted from the various aspects of archery. Uninspiring rapid flip of pages brings the reader to the Epilogue which again fails to bring some structure to the babbling pages behind.
So much for the sake of bringing out a book that’s telling nothing a book reader wouldn’t know of? Feeling dumb!