MoFo Book Club - March '22

I've finished the book too. Gonna be hard to wait till the 22nd to discuss it, though.

By the time I finished (without spoilers), my main feeling was that this felt completely derivative and not at all clever beyond the very basic idea of the library itself. The whole ending felt like the author simply was preaching at us and laying out his entire theme by just outright writing it. Like he was afraid we wouldn't be able to figure it out on our own through the story and plot points.

Frankly, I'm glad this book wasn't any longer than it was. I was beginning to get annoyed at the author's inability to cloak ANYTHING he was trying to say with this book.

__________________
Linda's Author Website
Linda's Amazon Author page

Bingo!

Bingo again!

So I read the first half this morning, and like many of you, I'm finding this to be a poor man's version of another book I like very much.

Have any of you read Life After Life? It's a book by Kate Atkinson wherein we see many of the different variations that one woman's life takes. Every time she dies, she starts over again, sometimes not making it past birth, other times making it to old age. Sometimes she seems to carry some knowledge from one life to the next, while other times she repeats the same mistake over and over.

I particularly loved Life After Life, so The Midnight Library is definitely suffering by comparison.

I do like the concept, though I have some really serious nitpicks about the execution, like for example the way that .

I do not take any anti-depressant medications or any other medications to manage anxiety or mental health, but I know a lot of lovely people whose lives have been vastly improved by them. So I find it really distressing that the book keeps using anti-depressant medication as a shorthand for "this person's life has gone horribly wrong!!!".

It's frustrating, because my current feeling (at page 150) is that this is a neat concept that's getting a very pedestrian execution. And that for all the conversation about what happiness or success looks like, those themes are being addressed really superficially in the text.

I do like the idea (not explored as well as I'd prefer!) that it's important to analyze regrets. That some regrets may be unfounded, and that sometimes we take on the burden of guilt in a situation where we are actually blameless. I also like the idea that we can sometimes elevate people or possibilities in our heads because we sort of filter out the doubts we had at the time. For example, when .

Finally, I appreciate the small acknowledgement that some regrets can be in flux, like having or not having kids. I feel that truth deep in my childless bones.

I'm also now done with the book (finished it last night---it's been a while since I read a whole book in one day!).

I think that my opinion of it is basically the same as how I felt when I was halfway through it.

I'll not say any more until the 22nd, but my general feelings about the plot and the writing didn't change.

I think MovieMad is the only one that hasn't checked in yet. When he does, and if he's finished, I think we should move the date up for whole book discussion.

Any objection?

I was going to ask if we've all finished it. No sense in hanging around till the 22nd if we're all finished. Where's @moviemad then?

I am fining with accelerating the discussion if everyone is finished!

__________________

@MovieMad16

Hi, could you let us know where you are in the book currently?

Finished it ages ago. Sorry, haha.

Yeah, loved the book. Great story. Great central character. Couldn't be happier.

Ok.... lets discuss!

I was disappointed overall. Not that I thought is was bad, just disappointed by the lack of nuance and 'straight line' progression of the story.

I was most disappointed by the fact that what I initially took to be a nod to 'It's a Wonderful Life' was in fact foreshadowing. That realization allowed me to know the ending with right at 100 pages remaining.... ugh! I think that people not familiar with the movie will enjoy this book much more than I did. The only thing this book didn't take from the movie was Zuzu's petals.

I gave it 3 stars out of 5 and would only recommend it to those not familiar with the movie.

This was a cocktail of other ideas from other works. I understand that nothing is new under the sun, but for instance, to lift not only the chess analogy from The Bridge Across Forever, but to also casually compare life to the movements of a symphony just drilled it home that this guy was channeling Bach, who in his book dedicated a chapter comparing chess and the movements of a symphony to life.

My main issue for most of the book was that she wasn't trying out a life dedicated to family, which just seemed like a glaring blind spot up until she finally chose to do so. Then she was actually happy! I did like that she figured out she couldn't just take that life, and I think this exact decision point in the book is why the author chose to give her a sort of pseudo-amnesia, which obviously has its own problem if I read other opinions correctly re: that mechanic.

While I also saw the ending coming a mile away, when I try to look at it objectively, as a sort of retelling of It's a Wonderful Life with a focus on depression, I think I can see how it might be helpful to a fairly large portion of the reading world at large.

This book lacked finesse, was derivative, and the author came across as kind of a hack. I know I shouldn't compare random authors to wordsmith's like Thomas Wolfe or Ray Bradbury, but I read them both recently, which tended to magnify the shortcomings of this guy. I think I mentioned it before, but there are good writers and good storytellers, and I don't think this fellow made the grade in either case.

I am going to go with a for an interesting premise and stronger last third, filmic derivations aside.

I did enjoy some of the philosophy quotes, but in the end they seemed nothing more than platitudes better suited for a Hallmark card, a coffee mug or perhaps stitched on a throw pillow.

Harsh, I know, but such is my level of disappointment.

If this hadn't been a book with more than 142,000 (!!) high ratings on Amazon since September 2020, I might not have been quite so disappointed. With numbers like that (astronomical!), I expected to be completely wowed.

I was not.

Almost nothing about this story felt original or clever. At no point did I think, "Oh, that's a clever take on this premise!" Even when she zaps into the family with Ash and is temporarily happy, I wasn't impressed. It almost *had* to go there after hitting so many clear dead ends before this point.

It felt a lot like a bad derivative form of It's a Wonderful Life (without much of the humor or delightful moments strewn around) and even The Wizard of Oz (there's no place like home...). The themes are all so similar. But those two movies had so many clever, interesting, endearing moments that could have carried them even without the main concept.

This book? Not so much.

Throughout, but toward the end especially, the author was quite preachy, and seemed to take the shortcut of just TELLING us what his big point was rather than letting the story and plot teach us more subtly. (Fair enough, though, both the movies above had moments like that at the tail end, but they were brief and were not the main way the stories unfolded.)

"What? You don't quite know what I'm trying to tell you? Then here! Let me whap you over the head with it for the last hundred pages! That'll teach ya!"



I was at least pleased to see this book wasn't any longer than it was. The only real point of empathy for me was when Volts died. Go figure.

Oh, I'll add this. I DID like the small twist when Hugo showed up. I didn't really see that coming (but I should have, as a fan of the Outlander series), and it was an interesting twist that I felt the author just let die a quiet death without being properly explored and exploited.

I'll go ya one better... On Goodreads this book was the 2020 readers choice winner in fiction and has over. 870,000 ratings with a 4.06 average.

How on earth?

Agreed 100%

When I made my only post at the halfway point, Hugo had just showed up and I was certain we were in for a wild ride. Then it just fizzled away.

As an author, I can tell you that Goodreads ratings can be FAR more brutal than Amazon's, so I find this particularly astounding. Where's the appeal?

The only thing I can think of, off the top of my head, is that it was a smooth, easy read. Get in, get out, nobody gets hurt. Nothing taxed the system, and the reader was easily spoon-fed the story AND its theme. I suppose in this day and age of instant gratification, that alone might account for the book's appeal.

Sadly, I must report the Six Wakes shares the whole "bad author" problem.

It says on the front cover that it was a runner-up for the Hugo award. Must have been an off year, or that awards panel is now full of insipid jack wagons.

I think that the author was slightly backed into a corner, because the character is "alone" all the time unless she's in the library. So everything is either presented as internal musings OR we get scene after scene of her literally giving speeches (the TED Talk, the Podcast, etc) explaining her philosophy.

I personally wasn't that charged by Hugo's arrival because, for heaven's sake, what are the odds that on her, what, third trip she ends up on a boat with a handful of people and one of them is also a dying person who just happens to be in that life at the moment? It felt like such a stretch and it really didn't feel as if he added anything to the story.

This was very much my experience with this author's past book. Interesting idea but poor execution. For example, in the life where she goes to Australia, her friend is dead in a car crash. Like, what?! This is why it's the wrong life? It feels like a huge cheat to say "a life in Australia was clearly wrong for you because if you go you'll get really depressed when your best friend dies." It also felt kind of goofy that we're supposed to believe that this woman had the potential to be both a major rock star AND an Olympic athlete. I continued to be disappointed by the use of anti-depressants as shorthand that a life was "bad".

Like I said before, both the book Life After Life and even the YA novel Every Day cover similar territory in a more interesting and much better written way. (I'd highly recommend both books).

I'm halfway through Six Wakes, and while the writing is a bit clunky, I'm enjoying it a lot more than Midnight Library, at least so far. We'll see how all the threads come together and if my current theory about what's happening is correct.

I did just finish reading a really strong fantasy book (Vita Nostra--strongly recommended), so there's kind of a higher standard in my brain right now!

I just finished it. It had its good points, but I did feel the author was just sort of a poor writer. Like you said, it's clunky. It's almost like I am reading some sort of fan fiction blog on the internet or something. Also, one of the concepts that is kind of spoilery, reminded me of a mechanic in another, far superior book. Maybe I read too much? *Shrugs*

Since it is still March and I have already finished the April book, I am going to dive into a big tome I have had waiting in the wings in an attempt to get at least part of the way through it.