‘Between life and death there is a library’, she said. ‘And within that library, the shelves go on for ever. 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?
This book was one big ride. It sure has a very fast pace and it keeps you eager to know what comes next. One thing I didn’t really like though was the writing, I thought it was very simplistic and I mean you can read it pretty fast, but for the theme of this book I feel like if it had a more elaborate writing it would be really great.
The only way to learn is to live.
This book discusses heavily on existencialism and philosophical concepts and in some ways it was bordering science fiction, it reminded me bits of Dark Matter and Recursion. I really enjoyed the way The Midnight Library worked out and I was constantly thinking “how is this going to end?”.
Nora is a good protagonist, although I didn’t particularly felt connected to her. She grows and evolves in the book but again stuff felt quite a little too fast at some points , but even as I am typing it I also feel like it was perfectly adequate, the way the plot works out to allow the character’s growth was good. I don’t have any major complaints about this book, in regards to how I feel about it It was good, but I didn’t love it. And I do have to say that there were a lot of great quotes in this story, I kept highlighting them.
I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breed more unhapinnes in the life you’re in.
There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living.
As I neared the end of the book I worried about how the author was going to end the story, especially considering that he deals with some quite heavy topics and hopelessness, but he was able to craft not only and ending that made sense and was coherent with the story, but one that gave the readers hope.
We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinte. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility.
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A History of Crows 