The Midnight Library by Matt Haig **

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig beat out Anxious People by Fredrik Backman by 5 votes for the 2020 Goodreads novel award. I highly recommend the Backman book. This one, not so much. IMHO Haig’s book is a cross between a self-help book and It’s a Wonderful Life.

The Midnight Library is about Nora Seed, who wants to die, but instead ends up in the Midnight Library where she gets to relive all the decisions she regrets and visit all her lives that might have been. Unsurprisingly, the answer is there’s no place like home.

Advice to live a better life: Acceptance.

“And there really were quite a lot of things she hadn’t become. The regrets which were on permanent repeat in her mind. I haven’t become an Olympic swimmer. I haven’t become a glaciologist. I haven’t become Dan’s wife. I haven’t become a mother. I haven’t become the lead singer of The Labyrinths. I haven’t managed to become a truly good or truly happy person. I haven’t managed to look after Voltaire.”

"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 your regrets?

More advice to live a better life: An attitude of gratitude.

“I have run out of lives. I have been everything. And yet I always end up back here. There is always something that stops my enjoyment. Always. I feel ungrateful.”

“We only know what we perceive. Everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it.”

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” — Thoreau

A cross between The Wizard of Oz and A Christmas Carol.

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