The Midnight Library

Uau, este livro foi uma viagem.

Não foi nada do que eu esperava que seria - as reviews que fui encontrando marcavam-no como sendo muito mais triste do que eu achei que seria -, mas foi bastante bom ainda assim. Todo o conceito da biblioteca, da verdade por trás dela, da viagem interna que a Nora faz ao longo das suas vidas, da evolução que ela vai sofrendo como personagem...

Para muitas pessoas, este livro pode ser entediante. As vidas que a Nora vive são bastante normais, até as mais entusiasmantes. E ela nunca fica tempo suficiente em nenhuma para que sintamos esse entusiasmo. Mas as vidas normais das pessoas não são sempre entusiasmantes e não faria sentido que as da Nora fossem, com base apenas em alguns minutos que passamos nelas.

É um livro existencialista. Achei algumas vidas, e algumas cenas em particular, bastante tristes. Mas não creio que seja um livro triste. É um livro optimista. É um livro sobre avaliar a nossa vida sobre o que queremos que ela seja em vez do que gostaríamos que fosse. É sobre dar valor ao que temos em vez do que poderíamos ter tido. E acima de tudo, sobre o que nós queremos para nós próprios, os nossos sonhos, em vez do que as outras pessoas queremo de nós próprias e os seus sonhos.

Só não lhe dou um 5/5 porque realmente adorei, mas não adorei o suficiente para ser um dos meus favoritos.

I will start off by saying I had really high expectations of this book based on the reviews and it being a Goodreads 2020 winner. It's engaging and easy to read, and I'm sure it could help some people get through rough times.

That being said, I found The Midnight Library to be a bit shallow and entirely predictable - like I was reading a mediocre YA book. I feel that the way depression is addressed in this book is immature and solved with empty platitudes. It's A Christmas Story with a modern woman twist, guided by a frustratingly apathetic librarian instead of ghosts.

Nora is down and out. Everything is going wrong, or at least she feels it is. Her spiral is the most gripping part of this book. When she eventually feels so in despair that she commits suicide, it kind of feels.. Like it comes from the plot needing to be driven rather than the character herself.

Once we get to the Midnight Library we start to go on our wild ride of different lives, something that you'd think should be super fun. Instead, every new life offers a view of the worst possible scenarios that Nora would be in if she did something she regretted not doing or vice versa. The author basically takes away any accountability in Nora's character by weaving a series of scenarios where her life is worse if she made different decisions:

Stayed with your ex-fiancé you walked out of your wedding on? He would have cheated on you and had a drinking problem anyway.

Didn't quit a promising swimming career? You would still be depressed, your dad would be a cheating scumbag and your mom would die alone.

Didn't back out last minute on an Australia trip with your best friend? She would die in a car crash on your birthday if you went.

Went out to coffee with that cute guy you turned down? Life is pretty good but your piano student's life goes down the wrong path and now he's a juvenile delinquent.

It feels like the book was made to show that no matter how good or bad your decision is, the life she lived is somehow the best of them all. It feels like there's a lack of self-reflection. Maybe Nora is kind of a shitty person for the things she's done to the people closest to her? No, that can't be. She shouldn't regret any decision she's made. Maybe she could take an ounce of accountability for where she is in her life? Well sure, but the only accountability you need to take is +staying positive+ when life temporarily sucks. There are a lot of people in situations where letting go of things and keeping your chin up isn't the cure to depression. This feels like the self-help 101 bandaid approach to the idea of mental illness.

Nora is also a self-proclaimed philosophy nerd, but I have never read a character lacking this amount of self-awareness or understanding of “the point”. She spends well over a year, maybe multiple years going through different lives and still doesn't spend a moment to think about all those philosophical perspectives of the mind and reality that the author tries to say she loves. After all her experiences she's still floundering in this alternate reality asking her guide what she's supposed to do. How can she quote philosophies and not take a minute to delve into literally any of the self-improving philosophies or ideas? It makes it feel like you're watching a teenager with limited understanding of philosophical concepts go through the motions rather than a highly educated 30-something year old.

The ending wraps up in a beautiful little bow that's sickeningly sweet. All of Nora's biggest regrets, all the things that were leaving her in despair are suddenly fixed. Her brother and her were on bad terms? Turns out a cry for help fixes everything. Best friend and you are drifting apart? Turns out she was just busy and she's moving back to your country next month! Your only piano student quit? No, he wants to continue lessons now! For all the unfixed things, well, didn't we learn they aren't her problem? Got fired from her job? Don't worry, it was a failing business anyway! Cat died? He would have died anyway! Ex-fiancé is still heartbroken? He was a fucking jerk, who cares!

It turns out that Nora was just suffering from situational depression, regardless of her history with anti-depressants. After the Midnight Library she has a new outlook on life. That's great for her, but the reader could have seen that coming within the first 80 pages. Once the first alternate life was so unsubtly wrong it was obvious that this was a self-help, don't-wallow-in-your-regrets type story. Sometimes it's okay to know the ending because the journey is enjoyable, but in this book it just felt like every different life somehow had the fun sucked out of it in order to spell out a moral or empty platitude. You knew she would inevitably be disappointed (whether it be by something so big as the death of a loved one or so small as boring sex) and she would learn that no life is perfect so just enjoy the one you have.

Overall, super preachy, lacking any subtlety, with a lead character whose main personality trait is that she doesn't have much of her own personality or identity at all.

I loved this book!

Who doesn't have some regrets..? I think all of us have them, some can deal with them for others it is the biggest issue, and it can consume them to the point of no return. This is basically what happens to our MC. She is so obsessed with her life not being the best version that she ends up dead. In her in-between stage, she is invited to see alternative versions of her life.

This was a great read. I understand why people will not like it but for me, it was on point! I loved her exploring the different perspectives and understand better life and how important is to live.

I picked this books up off a whim since I was bored at the bookstore and I'm super glad I did. This book was really touching and deeply moving. Coming out of this book felt like taking a shower and feeling awake for the first time that day. I think Matt Haig touched on parts of the human condition that are really important to people today and did it in such a way that we go through the main character's journey of self-discovery in a way that makes us think about our own lives. I certainly did. Apart from a bit of stilted dialogue, over-explanation, and tendency toward self-help books in the later bits, this book was great and it felt like a great way to refresh my perspective on life

Vaguely a self-help book that focuses on the impact of decision making and regrets on mental health woven around a story that goes into the realms of fantasy every now and then.

I shelved one Matt Haig book i.e. Reasons to stay alive in hope of reading it someday but before that could happen I found this book on GR recommendations and thought of giving it a shot as the idea of undoing the bad decisions of our life sounded kinda interesting to me.

The book was slow and boring in the first half with too many unnecessary details and events that killed my interest to know the story furthermore, but in the second half I found it a little interesting. The story has a happy ending where everything falls in place for Nora Reed. But who is Nora Reed?

Nora Reed is a woman in her 30's who is suffering from depression, panic attacks and has a miserable life after losing family and friends as a result of her bad decisions which she regrets later. She was a bright girl since her childhood from being good at academics to acing in water sports but later gave up on everything because of her bad decisions fueled by the pain of losing her father to a heart attack. Things were getting worse until she finally decides to end her life one day.

Soon after attempting suicide, she thought she'd died but she opened her eyes to a mysterious place called the Midnight Library which later she found out to be a simplified form of a complex state in-between life and death created in her mind due to a neurochemical event, where she found hope of changing her life for good by undoing her mistakes in the past.

For each book she picked from the library, it opened up a portal to a different version of her life resulting in different outcomes from what she expected, some of which she liked and some she didn't.

Floating through lives, she found a version which she actually wanted her root life to be, and then for one last time, she is transferred to the Midnight Library where she was told by her guiding spirit(a mental metaphor) Mrs. Elm, to take back the control of her root life once and for all and that's when she wakes up choking the pills she consumed when attempting suicide.

Things get clear and hopeful for Nora as she ponders upon the experience she had in The Midnight Library as she begins to understand the dynamics of life and deducing that she now wants to LIVE.

ABOUT THE CHARACTER?

Nora Reed was a dull character that is somewhat okay for the whole mental health thing the book is all about but I felt the need to know more about the character's past and especially her childhood which shaped her into a person making such crazy-bad decisions one on top of the other. Except for the blurred-out memories of her past, there was nothing solid to learn about her life as a child or a teenager or why her relationship with her dad, mom, and brother was the way it was, which left me asking for more. Book has unnecessary dull parts where she lands in different lives and does irrelevant stuffs, that bored me a little.

People who have known what depression is like especially due to their bad decisions (which is again most of us) will find it relatable.

It's a good story to know what it's like to live with regrets and the consequences of our bad decisions but more importantly to learn to live embracing the happy parts of our life. If you could relate to this then you should probably give this book a try.

This was the Goodreads choice 2020 winner and I was really excited about it.
I love the premise of the book. After all, don't we read to experience different lives and universes?
I was expecting something different, something more.
It was a fun read but pretty obvious. It was quite clear where the book was heading and, for me, it just took too long to get there.

The concept of this book itself earned an extra star - what would you do if you could undo any regret you had and could enter any possible life you would have lived?

Life is so full of regrets and wanted do-overs. If any of the above situations had changed, I wouldn't be where I am today. I have a job I enjoy, with people I love working with. I have a husband who constantly encourages my goofiness and love of reading.

I was disappointed in Nora at the end of the book. She had a life where she had everything she wanted, and it still wasn't good enough. She even started settling into her perfect life, actually living it, and still was disappointed enough in it to go back to the library.

I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new fiction book this much. It might have been Dark Matter or Recursion by Blake Crouch. I love the premise and I love the way it unfolds. I just loved it from start to finish!

Sweet and earnest. But kind of like Bedazzled but without Elizabeth Hurley to balance out some of the it's a wonderful life-ness.

this book is a cure for social media addiction and FOMO - live YOUR life, not someone else's

Banalt og dyp livsfilosofi på en og samme tid, svært leseverdig om valg og anger, om valget mellom å angre på de valgene du har gjort eller å legge vekk angeren og heller se på muligheten i hvert nye valg. Man trenger ikke 288 sider til å påpeke det, men det gjør ingen ting.

3.75?

Beautiful and profound messages in this book. The end was extremely heavy-handed which is the only reason why I gave this 4 stars instead of 5.

Thank you. If I could tell the author anything, it would be ‘Thank you'.
I used to be an avid reader and I have not finished a book in over ten year. But yesterday a friend handed me this book and said, ‘I think you would like this'.
And I bought it because I wanted to be the kind of person that still buys books for joy, that still reads them.
And I did. I sat down and I got drawn in and I kept coming back to it. And I fell a little bit in love with reading it.
I cried reading this story - from joy, from sadness, because sometimes it just aches to finally have words giving name to something previously intangible.
It's a beautiful way to remember how very revolutionary, how fulfilling, it is to live.

I waited for months for my hold of “The Midnight Library” on Libby to come through.

What a waste of time!

This poorly-disguised self-help book filled with page after page of morals hangs on the shoulders of the excessively dull Nora Seed. She has to be one of the dimmest main characters I've come across in some time and can't seem to learn anything.

Creo que se ha vuelto uno de mis conforts books. Es una oda a la vida muy bonita y ya no solo eso, sino que creo que es un buen libro para leer en verano. Cuando la cantidad de posibilidades que se nos presentan, acaban por abrumarnos. Hay muchas frases que he marcado y tengo destacada este libro porque se que en algún momento lo releeré. Sobre todo porque creo que es muy buena opción cuando te encuentras en medio de un bloqueo lector.

Rating: 4.5 leaves out of 5
Characters: 4/5
Cover: 5/5
Story: 4.5/5
Writing: 4.5/5
Genre: Fantasy/Contemporary/Magical Realism
Type: Audiobook
Worth?: Yes!


I will happily admit that the cover is what got me to read this book though the synopsis did intrigue me.


FROM THIS POINT ON IS SPOILERS



Nora is afraid to LIVE. She had wanted to become many things and ended up being alone and depressed and sad. She let fear take over her and all that she dreamed to be has been left behind. When I began to read the book what I feared most was that Nora would be mostly complaining, annoyingly, about EVERYTHING. She does complain but it was... in a way that it went well with the book. As the story progressed I loved how she gets to live the lives she wanted to see where those lives headed and in the end... well the end was beautiful. I don't know what she did after coming back to her original life but I sure hope it was something great!

I liked this book a lot. It's poignant and heart wrenching, though it does have some light hearted moments too.
It's a book you will either love or hate. If, like me, you prefer to make up your own mind about a book then don't bother reading the reviews, just read the book.

Meh.

I never really got a sense of what Nora wanted out of life. The ending is very much, Look at all the potential my life has, I just couldn't see it! Which was annoying and trite, because Nora is portrayed as having depression, which is an illness, and you don't just “get over” being depressed because you no longer have regrets. That's not how brain chemicals work.

I don't know. I don't get why this book is so popular. It felt cliche, predictable. I didn't hate it, nor did I like it. The prose was fine, the reading experience pleasant enough, I guess. This has the feel of a book that I will forget immediately.

I did wonder if Nora screwed up her brother's happily ever after in her root life by knowing too much about his husband, and pushing him so heartily toward that relationship because she knew he was happy in other versions of HER life.

This was an utterly heartwarming novel that was and will always be available for those who are in despair, getting lost in this so-called life thing, and grieving upon it. It surely has a self-help sort of nature with it, which I don't find it the least bit annoying. Rather, I would say it was quite necessary to have a book focusing on that topic, especially for the time we are in.

I like the way how philosophers are being quoted throughout the book, and I found it even more compelling to see how a philosophy graduate cannot help herself even after studying about the subject. To me, it seems like it is a notion of ambiguity that Nora has, that she was actually willing to live and die at the same time; not loving others but actually wanted to be cared for; wanting to achieve something or to commit but eventually stop midway... I wouldn't say this is an absurd idea to put in a novel, but that is what life is—you get stuck sometimes, and for me it's how you're going to get through the rigmarole and to seek a meaning from it.

It helps me to realise, also, what a life I would like myself to be in. But then there's no ends if you skip the process, and yet it's still long way to go for all of us, isn't it? So a few more words to go, this book helps to alleviate the pain you're experiencing at the moment, and it's not some sort of inundated self-help guru recommended type of book. I think there's still the essence of it, as speaking of the book alone.

Give the book a read, there's surely some enlightening ideas for you to grab some bits of.

a well timed book about hope

A couple of chapters in, you already know how it's going to end, but it's still an enjoyable ride

Het vorige boek dat ik las (The Dragon Republic) eindigde zó deprimerend dat ik dacht: ik lees eens iets anders voor ik aan het derde boek begin.

The Midnight Library is een fijn boekje. Een beetje zeemzoeterig, een beetje oppervlakkig misschien, maar hey: het moet ook niet altijd allemaal zo diepgravend zijn.

Nora Seed heeft in haar leven een stapel beslissingen genomen die ze zich eigenlijk beklaagt: ze had kunnen blijven zwemmen en dan was ze misschien wel gelukkig geworden naar de Olympische Spelen gegaan. Ze had kunnen blijven muzikant zijn en dan was ze misschien wel gelukkig geworden en had ze succes gehad. Ze had kunnen studeren voor wat haar écht interesseerde in plaats van voor filosofie te gaan, en dan was ze misschien wel gelukkig geworden als glacioloog. Ze had kunnen blijven schrijven en dan was ze misschien gelukkig geweest. Ze had haar trouw niet op het laatste moment af kunnen geblazen hebben en dan was ze misschien gelukkig geweest.

Inderdaad ja: er zit een zekere constante in: Nora Reed is diepongelukkig, zit vast een doodlopend leven in een doodlopende job (waar ze in het begin van het boek trouwens net ontslagen wordt), en had zo veel anders kunnen doen.

[Kort intermezzo: zo wérkt het natuurlijk niet: er is meestal niet zoiets als één moment waarop het leven kantelt. Verkeerde keuzes zijn meestal lange aaneenschakelingen van géén belissingen nemen. En het is ook natuurlijk lang niet zo dat iedereen in potentie álles kan doen — de manier waarop Nora hier zowel in potentie een gevierd auteur als muzikant als olympische zwemmer had kunnen zijn is meer dan een beetje Mary Sue-achtig.]

...en dus beslist ze dan maar zelfmoord te plegen.

[Kort intermezzo twee: zo wérkt het natuurlijk ook niet noodzakelijk. Ik heb de indruk dat de beslissing “gho ja, ik pleeg dan maar zelfmoord” hier redelijk snel en weinig subtiel aangebracht werd.]

Tussen leven en dood, gaat het verhaal in The Midnight Library, is er een bibliotheek. In die bibliotheek staan ontelbaar veel boeken, die allemaal een ander levensverhaal vertellen tot op dat moment tussen leven en dood. Nora komt in die bibliotheek terecht en kan er aan de bibliothecaris vragen om in gelijk welk boek te stappen, en daar dan verder te leven — als ze wil.

Ze kiest leven na leven. Als olympisch zwemmer en internationaal rolmodel. Als gevierd glacioloog. Als wereldberoemde zangeres. Als allerlei verschillende uitkomsten van allerlei keuzes die ze maakte.

De vraag die weinig subtiel gesteld wordt, is: is ze in al die verschillende aflopen eigenlijk wel écht gelukkig? Zijn die andere levens écht beter?

Schaamteloos en verfrissend pretentieloos sentimenteel. Ik heb een grondige hekel aan pretentie, en ik ben te vinden voor sentimentaliteit. Ik heb dit graag gelezen.

This was really just okay for me. I knew exactly what this book would be saying and what the quotes I was supposed to pull from it were going to be before I even opened it; that isn't necessarily a bad thing and I thought I might end up loving it anyway. However, the writing was really flat for me. It felt like it didn't have anything to it, and Nora as a character was such a blank canvas it made it hard to relate to her. I liked the general format of the story and it had some nice things to say, but I knew what every beat of the plot would be and exactly the message the book was trying to tell me, and it didn't do anything else to make it impress itself upon me in a super meaningful way. I understand why this book would mean a lot to people, but it just didn't emotionally affect me. I still had a good time reading it and it didn't do anything wrong, by any means. It just didn't do anything to impress me either.

Loved the premise. Absorbing read.