The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig · first published 2020
50% recommend38% neutral13% critical
Between life and death there is a library, and within that 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 if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?” A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time. Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one t
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The book "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig does a good job easing that "what if" regret. It shows how each "ideal/better" life can come with its own major negative consequences.
on “What If You Could Do It All Over?” ↗I can recommend Midnight library (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52578297-the-midnight-li...). It is about what path we choose in life and what other paths could have for us.
on “Ask HN: Books for Reevaluation of Life” ↗Last week I finished "The Midnight Library" by Matt Haig, it's about having regrets for the things you did or didn't do in your life and how those things could have turned out if you made different choices, pretty good book. Currently I read…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading these days?” ↗I didn't read as much as I normally do, mostly due to school, but I really enjoyed "The Midnight Library" and "Recursion" for fiction. I am mostly done with Antifragile, and it's pulling me between political and philosophical sides. Don't know which side I'll land on, or how long I'll stay there. As a…
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗I love the design and the site. but.. I am not liking the recommendations. I consider The Midnight Library to be one of the worst books I have read this year, but it has highest ratings in Sci Fi beating Project Hail Mary By Andy Weir and Klara and the Sun By Kazuo Ishiguro https://shepherd.com/bboy/2023/science-fiction
on “Show HN: Crunching 1,200 Authors' Favorite Reads of 2023” ↗…stop time' but would never mark either of them as 5 star books, mainly because I would count books like 'Madam Bovary' or 'Rebecca'or 'Crime and Punishment' as a 5-star book. Nonetheless the praise for Midnight Library irked me before I even took a look at it. Folks are so keen on jumping to 5-stars without a critical approach to it. Rather than a single 1-5 star system, a questionnaire with 1-5 stars for aspects of…
on “Hacking the Goodreads Review System” ↗Thanks! Everyone loves books for different reasons, it is something I am hoping to start peeling apart in future years. I find that Midnight Library is enough not traditional sci-fi that it pulls readers that way. So you get a lot of non sci-fi readers who love it. I hope it is a gateway drug :) Try the sections on space opera, cyberpunk, and hard…
on “Show HN: Crunching 1,200 Authors' Favorite Reads of 2023” ↗…Song of Achilles in particular is beautifully written and a personal favorite of mine, at least among books published in recent years. Then there are other works like Little Fires Everywhere and The Midnight Library that I might not consider super literary but nonetheless are also often considered so by book shops or libraries (e.g., https://lightsailed.com/catalog/book/the-midnight-library-a-... the lit fic code…
on “The cultural decline of literary fiction” ↗