From the Bookshelf of Retro Chapter Chicks …

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Start date: December 1, 2021

Finish date: December 31, 2021

Discussion: Buddy Reads

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Showing 2 of -2 topics — 759 comments total

Buddy Reads

* Buddy Reads 2025
By Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Jenn Ƹ̴… , Founding Retro Chick · 128 posts · 22 views

last updated Aug 03, 2025 05:15AM

* Historical Fiction Timeline Tag
By Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Jenn Ƹ̴… , Founding Retro Chick · 208 posts · 24 views

last updated 12 hours, 34 min ago

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What Members Thought

Dec 16, 2020 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it liked it

Shelves: library-book

Damn it! I thought I would love this book so much!! I don’t usually like books that are time travel or kind of like it. Maybe, I shouldn’t have listened to it on Audio. I don’t know. It was ok. I loved the end. I’m thinking of making me a notebook of regrets. I have many.....

and I have many mental disorders including suicidal issues. Seems weird when you battle cancer and fight other medical issues, but mental health doesn’t make sense.

Mel 🐶🖤🐺🐾 ...more

140 likes · Like · see review

Oct 16, 2021 Celia rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2020-pub, 2021-read, 2021-kindle-counted, kindle-library, ten-year-challenge, 52-2021, fantasy-magical-realism

There is a fantasy place called the Midnight Library. You go there between the end of your life and your final death. It is full of books which

1) list all of the regrets of your life
2) provide an infinite number of alternative lives which (ostensibly) would be better than the one you just left.

Nora Seed is the 'heroine'. She is extremely unhappy with her life. On the day her beloved cat, Volts, dies, she decides to die too. First stop after death is The Midnight Library, where her old school lib ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2021 Book Concierge rated it it was ok

Shelves: concierge, library, book-club, audio, england, relationships

Audiobook read by Carey Mulligan
2.5**

From the book jacket: Between life and death there is a library. Up until now, Nora Seed’s life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change. When she finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. Each one contains a different life, a possible world in which ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Dec 12, 2021 Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Jenn Ƹ̴Ӂ̴Ʒ Schu rated it liked it

Shelves: contemporary-literature, fantasy-sci-fi

I read this book with my book club this December as several of us expressed an interest in the story and the positive reviews. The story features Nora, a woman suffering from depression at the losses she recently has experienced and she's full of regret at what she could have been in life.
I will have to say that I was underwhelmed by the story that is a cliché. It is akin to stories like the timeless tale It's a Wonderful Life , which I preferred as it it developed rich characters and backstori ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2021 Lory Sakay rated it really liked it

I loved the message this book expounds, and it was presented in such a unique way. Although we may not look at our lives as dismally as Nora Seed does in the book, we ALL have been guilty of focusing on regrets and often may consider do-overs in our lives. - What would have happened if we moved here? If I would have married this person? If I would have accepted that job? I, too, have often reflected on personal regrets and then, generally arrive to the conclusion that the people I know, the bond ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Dec 09, 2022 Phair rated it liked it

Shelves: book-club, fantasy

Pretty tedious reading up to p 100 or so then we got some interesting philosophical stuff, much based on Thoreau.
I loved learning about Dunbar’s number which states that humans are wired to know only around 150 people and that our brains generally cannot cope with more than that.
Didn’t much care for Nora and could see her final choice of a “best life” coming a mile off.
If not for the frequent philosophical and psychological insights this would have been closer to 2*

1 like · Like · see review

Mar 05, 2021 Kristin rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-stars, what-if

"It is so easy, while trapped in just the one life, to imagine that times of sadness or tragedy or failure or fear are a result of that particular existence... But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in." (179)

I would like to read again before making a review. It was an easy read, interesting premise. ...more

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