I was fooled by Jeremy Irons

I was fooled into listening to this because it was narrated by Jeremy Irons. If you find this on overdrive or the library and you’re thinking Oh! Jeremy Irons….Scar! Hans Gruber’s brother in Die Hard with a Vengeance! I will listen to this and it will be great.

Well, it will be, kind of, because Jeremy Irons truly is great. But instead, you should get his reading Lolita instead and you will be treated to a truly beautiful and terrible rendition of that novel.

Here’s what you’re getting here: Jeremy Irons’s immense and wonderful talent being used instead to read bad or at least mundane self-help being passed off as ancient wisdom.

It’s just not good. It’s a good set up….an ancient manuscript is found in Accra and after decades of these kinds of pseudo-religious texts being found and casting light on Biblical studies, rocking the religious world etc etc etc, a new manuscript is found and because it’s the words of a prophet or scholar and not a would-be sacred text, it’s not subject to preservation laws.

The text itself is job and career advice being handed down by scholar to people about to be invaded in one of the crusades.

The advice, rather than being profound, is stuff like “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” or “love people and they will love you, kind of!”

It’s all fine, but it’s so boring and annoying I felt cheated. Or rather I didn’t actually feel cheated, I felt swindled. I guess Paulo Coehlo fancies himself something of a Khalil Gibran for the modern age, but yeah.