“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it
Author: Matt Haig
# of Pages: 288
Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52578297-the-midnight-library?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=qRbbdugATm&rank=1
Rating:
Every once in a while you read a book that you know is going to stay in your mind for a really long time. It may not be the perfect book or the easiest to read, but it will make you question the meaning of life and change how you live moving forward.
Between life and death, there is a library. Up until now, Nora Seed's life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. When she finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. Each one contains a different life, a possible world in which she made different choices that played out an infinite number of ways, affecting everyone she knew as well as many people she's never met. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every decision she regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things aren't always what she imagined they'd be and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.
I love quotable books. For me, a book is INSTANTLY better when I can quote lines that stood out to me. I am also more likely to remember my emotions when reading a book if I have quotes or paragraphs that I can connect them to. The Midnight Library is EXTREMELY quotable. I want to include one of the chapters from The Midnight Library: "A Thing I Have Learned (Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody)" that I will remember for the rest of my life. I hope you read these two pages and that they convince you to put The Midnight Library on your TBR next! (As always, I will have more quotes at the end of my post, but this chapter felt the most important to me!)
The Midnight Library immersed me in a life outside of my own. In my recent review of WandaVision, I mentioned that watching Wanda and Vision live so many different lives made me forget about how boring and repetitive mine is right now. That is exactly what The Midnight Library did. Nora See jumped into different versions of her life where she made different decisions than in her "root life." She was a lead singer in a band, a glaciologist, a mother, a professional swimmer, a winemaker, and so much more. All of these were made available to her through books. In the end, the journey she took from life to life taught her that "We don't have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite." In a way, every book/movie/show ever made is a part of a worldwide Midnight Library. Every time you dive into a new book or movie, you step into the shoes of a person outside yourself. You could be reading about someone extremely similar to you or someone who stands completely outside of your comfort zone. I never thought about literature and entertainment this way until Matt Haig made it clear with this book. I can say with confidence that The Midnight Library will get anyone who is already a reader out of a reading slump and those who aren't into reading hooked.
Nora taught me quite a lot in this book. She goes from looking at life from a depressed and suicidal perspective to one of hope and possibility, and it was beautiful. I won't give any spoilers as to where she ends up at the end, but the ending is not just a set of pages, but an experience that will leave your mouth drop and your heart full of happiness.
Whether this is your first life, your only life, or if you are a slider jumping into multiple realities where you made different decisions like Nora, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is a book worth your time. This will forever be a novel I will recommend on Goodreads to anyone going through a tough time or to those wanting to learn a little more about "the meaning of life." I think about places like the Midnight Library a lot. What place do we go to between life and death if there is one? Is it a black hole? A white room? A field of grass? A DVD store? A library? Did I have any regrets? Did I live my happiest life? Was life really worth living? Up until now, death has been the biggest fear of mine. Matt Haig gives me hope that there is a beautiful place in-between life and death. One where I can look onto other lives and wonder what I could have done differently. Maybe there is a world where I became an Olympic volleyball player. Maybe I could have been a journalist for The New York Times. We will never know what other lives we could have lived, so there is no point in wasting our one shot pining for them Take in the life you are living right now. Give your parents a hug the next time you see them. Buy a cake for yourself, even if it is not your birthday. Wear that bathing suit you have been too scared to try on and post an Instagram photo of it. Rock that job interview. Round up for charity the next time you shop. Go on that trip you have been wanting to plan. I only have this life, but books like The Midnight Library let me experience a little more.
QUOTES:
“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
“If you aim to be something you are not, you will always fail. Aim to be you. Aim to look and act and think like you. Aim to be the truest version of you. Embrace that you-ness. Endorse it. Love it. Work hard at it. And don't give a second thought when people mock it or ridicule it. Most gossip is envy in disguise.”
“A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole. There may be bits you don't like, a few dodgy side streets and suburbs, but the good stuff makes it worthwhile.”
“And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you’re in.”
“Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.”
“Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.”
“Maybe that's what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself.”
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