Review: The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: A library you land up at between life and death filled with infinite books each with a path your life could have taken.

The book 2020 deserves I feel. Matt Haig checks the boxes on a number of fronts to make this a good read and a commercial success - relatable characters, imaginable real life regrets, wishful dreams of how life could have been , life long learning/advice all of this wrapped up as a present using the ribbon of metaphorical fantasy in simple written style.

“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?”

The protagonist Nora has yet another terrible day - one too many for having the will to live [Trigger warning: suicidal tendencies] landing in this library with infinite books and her school librarian Mrs. Elm to help her make sense of it all. Borrowing a bit from quantum physics as she soon starts to make sense of this library and the infinite possibilities which make for a whirlwind of stories ( reminds me of many masters, many lives by Dr. Brian Weiss ) as she bumps into familiar characters from another life. Since she is dropped into the alternate world, she literally needs to wing it to come up to speed with this new life and the people around and that peeling of fact after fact and the realisation that follows adds to the momentum of you thirsting to know of the what ifs.

The ending whilst predictable (I will not put out spoilers) is something you look forward to wrapping the book up with. The smattering of life lessons that Nora learns through her journey hit hard on the reality we find ourselves in.

I'd give this a 4.5 because you don't want to hold too many high expectations from this book and be disappointed. It's a great way to wind up 2020 for sure.

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Review: Open

Open by Andre Agassi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hooter: The few ups and a lot of downs of his career through his eyes - a relatively honest and realistic take that doesn't try to airbrush himself into perfection.

If Andre Agassi's life was an iceberg, his successes were just the tip of the iceberg and failures didn't meet the eye. That realistic take was a refreshing read as he jumped from frying pan to frying pan , he called them the same and tried to persevere through them. The fact that he hates tennis and was living everyone else's dream makes for a hard hitting insight and how that plays out through his life. It also helps explain the rebel streak he was known for early on in his career and how he was not media's darling. He opens up on all his relationships - dad, brother, best friend, ex-wife and so on keeping everyone in positive light. It's interesting how he adds colour to all the brand names we know in tennis and sharing his interactions with them on and off the court especially in the locker room before a game and right after.

The writing style takes you to the moment sitting in the court at each of the grand slams seeing Agassi lose out more often than not, often driven by his mental thought process than any skill or technical prowess shown by the opposition. He clearly didn't make the most of his talent we know but this book opens up to his background and thought process and explains a lot about why he never really claimed his full potential except for the last streak which is often considered as the final hoorah a flame goes through before getting extinguished. A lot he does is driven by the importance he lays to family and friends like family.

A refreshing take on a celebrity's life with an honest acknowledgement of the failures with the fleeting highs of successes and a peak into the facade that the rich and famous tend to put out because they are expected to. His ghostwriter has done a wonderful job and this is one of the best sports biographies I have read.

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Review: Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hooter: Graphic novel following the history of the quest of pure unadulterated logic through the eyes of Bertrand Russell.

A very nicely done light take on a heavy academic topic as we navigate the various schools of thought on logic and its flirtations with mathematics and all the power players around it specifically through a fictionalized representation of Bertrand Russel's thought process. The book captures history, philosophy and biography and tackling the struggle of the thin line between genius and madness ( similar to the Netflix show Queen's Gambit)

Another variation is the narrative style as the authors and illustrators grapple with how to present the story and intersperse the main story track with their discussions and "logic" of going down a path.

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