The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The Midnight Library

By Matt Haig

I read fictions very far and wide but it's interesting that after trying to check out how David Lagercrantz continued the series of the Swedish author and activist Stieg Larsson known as Millenium Series whose one of the two protagonists is a journalist, I decided to read another book called The Midnight Library, which I later learned to be written by an English journalist and novelist Matt Haig. But of course, I chose this reading because of the title itself. Who does not like library? Or gets intrigued by a Midnight Library. 

At first few chapters, I thought I wouldn't like the story but it paid me well when I waited a bit for the magic to happen, that is the appearance of The Midnight Library.

If one is raring to find life changes or is nursing regrets, this is the book to go to. I love Henry David Thoreau and the Walden Pond and he is oft-quoted here. Philosophy is pepperred in the pages as well as dreams of becoming. This may be a young-adult fiction for me but this can easily also be for those in a midlife crisis age category. Also, I can imagine a film or cartoon film made out of this and children enjoying this. 

Looking forward to a film version of this book, if ever there is none yet. 

Highlighted portions

"Between life and and death, there is a library. And within the library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be different if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo regrets?"

"Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try..."

To fear Love is to fear Life, and those who fear Life are already three parts dead. BERTRAND RUSSELL

"A person was like a city. You couldn't let a few less desirable parts put you off the whole."

"Sometimes, the only way to learn is to live."

"It is a library of possibility. And death is the opposite of possibility."

"Life isn't simply made of the things we do, but the things we don't do too. And every moment of our life is a... kind of turning."

"In the cosmic order of things, there is no rejection, there is only redirection."

"Sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness."

In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living."

Compassion is the basis of morality. ARTHUR SCHOEPENHAUER

One life's rules -- Never trust someone who is willingly rude to low-paid service staff.

It's not what you look at that matters, ut's what you see. -- THOREAU

NOTHING FOLLOWS lest, I'll spill the magic.