The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

 This book is on the best read list of the New York Books list. That sentence is redundant I know. But as I see it, it has a reason to be. It is a good tale.

What is there were a library that contained all the books concerning life choices you could have made during your life time. Call this library The Midnight Library and it is located between life and death  Each book there concerns a life you would have experienced had you chosen a certain way. 

For example, had you stayed in that band you were in at some point in your life, or you had chosen that profession over another? Would it be a satisfying decision?

in this book we are presented with Nora Seed. She wants to die. Her life has been one full of regret and misery. She feels has has let everyone down, including herself. 

She finds herself between life and death in The  Midnight Library. Time has stopped. She finds a librarian there and books. And a book of regrets. The librarian tells her she has a choice now. Each book in the library contains a different life if she had done things differently. She is allowed to sample books and experience a new choice. But time is running out. She can go a number of infinite ways. But time is short. She can undo her regrets. But by doing so she puts the library in extreme danger.

The book reminds me a bit, not entirely , of the books of Charles Williams who wrote in his novels of the two  universes, spiritual and mundane, going on at the same time. But not completely. Or of C.S. Lewis The Great Divorce. But not quite that either. It is  familiar to those two.

Nora grows through her choices. She finds the peace she was looking for..

I recommend this book. It presents a story about the choices that go into a life well lived. It is worth your time to read with a cup of coffee. it is published by Viking and runs about $26.00. Try to find it in your library (not the Midnight Library) and enjoy. Or locate it, if you want to pay for it, at your local bookstore.

A Beginner's Guide To America by Roya Hakakian

 "Think of America as a bus" the author concludes. 

This book is written by an Immigrant from Iran, so the insights are real. The struggle to learn the new language, to  adapt to the form of commerce, this is real. Adjustment is a journey .That may be what the author was getting at when she likened America to a bus. It can take you anyplace you want to go. But only if you wish to travel. There is no free lunch. "No one will inject you into the American story. You must do it yourself"

This is a book people, not just the immigrants, should read. Since America is a melting pot in that we are not mono-ethnic, it will help the nonimmigrant to understand why the immigrant is having trouble with sentence structure and social habits., 

It is not that they don't want to be normal, but that they are filtering events through a filter of their past.

I personally found the chapter, The Diaspora., to be instructive. Hakakian, having  settled in the United States in 1989 walks us through the texture of life in a new place with its' complexity, She doesn't just talk about  the impact of the immigrant but the Asian, the Black, the alien,

She states that "beautiful landscape does not always make for happy nations. The people who envision just societies  and those who work to build them do."

The book is easy to read.  It is 216 + pages. It may not be a classic. Not all books have to be. But you can sense she loves her adopted country and would not change it. Well, she wouldn't stay silent either. She seems to believe the answer to our problems we see is a simple devotion to  America's founding father's principles.  And for her that would include speaking up and letting your voice be heard.  Something she couldn't do back in Iran.

This book can be found in a local bookstore and  is priced at $27.00. Or maybe your local library will have a copy you can borrow.