the midnight library
Dec. 28th, 2023 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
isunshowergot this book for christmas. had sorta high hopes for it, because i've heard it was really popular? am kind of disappointed.
like, you can tell that this is a book written by a guy who loves philosophy and that it's a story about philosophy rather than just being... a story. some of haig's message feels a little heavy-handed sometimes. like his commentary on social media? he sounds like my mom, blaming it for a lot of nora's problems and so on and so forth, but it's just... a tool, and it's part of life, and it's bad for you, sure, but he's just preachy about it. the part where he just glosses over a bunch of the lives that nora lives felt abrupt and took me out of the story.
also, the story? kind of subpar. i like nora, and i relate to her, i'm going through a major quarter life crisis right now about wanting kids and probably never being able to have them for "chronically single" and "makes not a lot of money" reasons and i'm also trying to figure out whether or not i'm actually transgender or if i should just go back to being a woman, i have a LOT of regrets. you know? i relate to her. i understand that the message is that you can't get bogged down by your regrets because even your "perfect" life won't be perfect to you. but it was very heavy-handed, and the summary's whole business about "nora is putting the library in danger" didn't feel relevant to the plot of the book at all. it felt like it was shoehorned in last minute. i went in expecting, like--say, nora's interactions with hugo and her life-jumping habit to threaten the structure of the library and actively bring her closer to death, or in limbo with no library but also not awake or dead. there was no suspense in this book, really.
like, you can tell that this is a book written by a guy who loves philosophy and that it's a story about philosophy rather than just being... a story. some of haig's message feels a little heavy-handed sometimes. like his commentary on social media? he sounds like my mom, blaming it for a lot of nora's problems and so on and so forth, but it's just... a tool, and it's part of life, and it's bad for you, sure, but he's just preachy about it. the part where he just glosses over a bunch of the lives that nora lives felt abrupt and took me out of the story.
also, the story? kind of subpar. i like nora, and i relate to her, i'm going through a major quarter life crisis right now about wanting kids and probably never being able to have them for "chronically single" and "makes not a lot of money" reasons and i'm also trying to figure out whether or not i'm actually transgender or if i should just go back to being a woman, i have a LOT of regrets. you know? i relate to her. i understand that the message is that you can't get bogged down by your regrets because even your "perfect" life won't be perfect to you. but it was very heavy-handed, and the summary's whole business about "nora is putting the library in danger" didn't feel relevant to the plot of the book at all. it felt like it was shoehorned in last minute. i went in expecting, like--say, nora's interactions with hugo and her life-jumping habit to threaten the structure of the library and actively bring her closer to death, or in limbo with no library but also not awake or dead. there was no suspense in this book, really.
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Date: 2023-12-31 04:36 pm (UTC)