Library

One reason I've been borrowing books the way a hoarder does is that I decide to keep a good trove of reading materials. Tough anti-pandemic measures loom for the city. Who know? The public libraries can be shut down anytime.

With more than a dozen library books - fiction and non-fiction - on hand, I don't feel all that needy. And it's pretty much guaranteed I can pick the one that fits my day. I dived into the novel The Midnight Library by Matt Haig today. That's about a depressed 35-year-old Nora who is on the point of taking her own life. And my daughter told me a Hong Kong student jumped from height yesterday. Alas, that wasn't her school but her teachers decided to have a morning meeting to help students go through the saddening news.

As I read about Nora's story, I got carried away with the plot that there is a library between life and death. Nora was fascinated, too. She found herself in the Midnight Library before she decided to die. There were aisles and aisles of shelves, with books everywhere - definitely more than my trove. The bookshelves go on for ever in that library, as it turns out.

"Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived," the librarian told Nora. "To see how things would be different if you had made other choices."

The way Matt Haig narrates the infinite number of ways to pick our book, our life, and our decision, turns out to be the best antidote to the shocking news story.