This post contains affiliate links!
Have you ever read a book that you can’t stop thinking about? Have you ever read a fiction book that changed your life for the better?
This past Thanksgiving I read the book, the Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Now, this is my second Matt Haig book, having read How to Stop Time last year. I love how different and unique his books seem to be.
The Midnight Library is about a woman, Nora Seed, who travels to a library. This isn’t a regular old library, but a library filled with special books, each one a path to another life.
As you go through your own life, you have made so many different decisions. Do you ever wonder what your life would look like if you had chosen differently? Well, the books in this library will take Nora to those other lives. The ones she never actually lived.
As I read about Nora’s travels through these other lives, I couldn’t help but think about all the other paths I never took. The lives I will never get to live.
I think about a job at a water park I didn’t pursue my junior year of high school. I think about the boy I dated when I was 17 and how I held on too long to that relationship. I think about the colleges I decided to go to and the ones I decided againt.
I think about a moment, I can still remember that day so clearly, when I was 20 years old and had to make a big decision. I went left but I could have gone right and I know that would have led me down a completly different life path.
I think about the different career choices I have had in my life. I majored in Sociology but I never found a job in that field. What if I had tried harder to do so?
I have worked as a doula, a photographer, and even started going to nursing school. Those paths didn’t work out for me, but sometimes I wonder what life would be like if they had.
While reading this book, I started to feel so strongly that sure, there were other paths and they may or may not have led to “better” lives but what does that mean anyway? Who says what makes a good life and what makes a bad one?
As we go through life, we all have to make choices. We all have to decide what the best path for that moment will be, based on the information we have. And each decision has lead us to where we are today.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig was such a great book. I flew through it and didn’t want to put it down. I would recommend the book to most people but there are some triggers to be aware of.
The book has a plot point about suicide. I know that can be hard for some. There are also other things that come up, such as different types of deaths or tragic events.
I gave The Midnight Library by Matt Haig a solid 5 stars and might even be my favorite book of 2020!!!