The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig

Nora Seed can no longer face the missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential that define her life, and she tries to kill herself. But rather than dying, she ends up in the Midnight Library, a zone between death and life, in a building full of books that contain her alternate lives. But first, she must read her own Book of Regrets, a thick volume of panic-inducing shoulda, coulda, wouldas. Her list consists of dropping out of a rock band just as it was about to sign a recording contract, calling off the wedding to the man of her dreams, backing out of competitive swimming, being a bad cat owner, and not becoming a glaciologist. The latter niggles on Nora’s consciousness after her beloved high school librarian, Mrs. Elm, suggested it decades ago as a possible career path.

Nora, who is 35 when we meet her, has more talent than the average human, but that means more chances to miss. At the Midnight Library, she meets Mrs. Elm again, who offers her a world of parallel universes in which she can embrace lives that erase her regrets. Mrs. Elm helps her decide which books she might open first, based on the mistakes she feels are her biggest. She opens a book and is off—to the remarkable success, happiness, and fulfillment her “root life” lacked. Or not, otherwise what kind of book would this be?

The chance to relive your life and overcome perceived failures is a popular theme in movies (It’s a Wonderful Life), television (Quantum Leap) and literature (Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life). It’s a means of offering the main character a way to redefine success, happiness, and fulfillment into digestible bites. Why did Nora pass up her chance to become an Olympian with such an obvious happy ending? As we learn, it’s for good reasons, but she’s forgotten them. In her backward glance, she sees only rosy promise, not the barriers that stood in her way. She thinks she had power and control that never existed.

As Nora experiments with one life after another, author Matt Haig shows that all decisions operate within a fluid environment, creating a context that we tend to simplify in our memories. We believe we could have done things we shouldn’t or couldn’t have. In Nora’s case, parents die, friends and family disappoint, people she loves mess with her head, and fate sometimes simply stinks.

But, as she learns, the winds that swirl around her also include real love and support, which she must first recognize and then accept. Basically, Nora has to recognize that perfection has never been in her grasp.

This is a book about shedding regret by gaining perspective. It’s full of quirky plot lines, with glimpses of opportunities and potential in unexpected places and people. Nora pays attention to the characters who populate her stories, who show up in multiple lives, and realizes that her life begins when she starts looking at her people and at the small details that create meaning and kicks the blame to the side. Is happiness defined by medals and albums and quaint English pubs? Or by simple, calm contentment?

It remains midnight in the library until Nora realizes that life in general is usually a mess and always uncertain and that humans, including her, are incurably flawed. This frees her to turn away from the dark and toward her own light.

— Pat Prijatel

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

I started this book with a bunch of trepidation because of the strange title. Who would have thought of a story about a snail? Who would have thought that watching a snail go about its daily life would help someone get through a devastating illness? Who, also, would have completed so much excessive factual research into a small, relatively insignificant animal?

I mean, how interesting can a snail be? Entirely captivating, as it turns out. Enjoying reading the book slowly, I found that perhaps there’s something to be said for moving at a snail’s pace. I found the book to be a fascinating glimpse into the life of an animal most of us ignore or even dislike, and ended up with a new-found appreciation for a miraculous little creature that I never thought much about before — except that I hated them eating my hostas every Spring. 

In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s account of her uncommon encounter with a common woodland snail (she never gave it a name) when she is bedridden with a mysterious pathogen she contracted during a trip to Europe. She withstood long months unable to even turn over in bed without exhausting herself, spending those months in a room with a window she couldn’t see out of and surrounded by plain white walls.

But, one day a friend brings her a pot of wild violets with—of all things—a snail in it. The mere idea of the responsibility for this is almost overwhelming for Elizabeth, but the quiet, slow, peacefulness of the snail gradually wins her over. What started as a bizarre unwanted gift became her main focus and companion.

Spending long hours watching the snail, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, providing a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal. She found that a snail’s world is far more interesting than one might imagine as they get by with only three senses—smell, taste, and touch. She became fascinated and intrigued by the snail’s molluscan anatomy, clear decision making, hydraulic (slimy) locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities (e.g. Romantic encounters between a pair of snails can take up to seven hours from start to finish!)

Set over the course of one year, she and the snail share an intimate journey of survival and resilience. With a naturalist’s curiosity, and told with wit and grace, Bailey delves into a wealth of gastropod literature, filling her chapters with fascinating mollusk biology (They have thousands of teeth! They can mate with themselves!)

Author Bailey reminds us that every living creature is here for a reason. Her book is well-written and is one of those sleeper books that could become a classic. The only thing that would have made it better would have been color photographs.

— Kenn Johnson

West With Giraffes, by Lynda Rutledge

West With Giraffes is a charming novel based on historical fact. Lynda Rutledge has taken the 1938 acquisition by the San Diego Zoo of two giraffes from Africa and told us their story. Belle Benchley, aka The Zoo Lady, was the first female director of a zoo, although she was not accorded her rightful title until she had been running the zoo for many years. She purchased two young giraffes from Uganda and had them shipped to New York. During their voyage, a massive hurricane nearly killed the female and destroyed people and property all along the eastern seaboard.

Our story begins with the journey of the two giraffes across a United States countryside mired in Depression. The giraffes provided much-needed excitement and entertainment as they proceeded through cities and small towns on their cross-country trip. Imagine trying to truck two giraffes across the country without any interstate highways!

That’s the factual part. The rest, while based on these historical facts, is both conjecture and delightful flight of fancy by Rutledge. She introduces us to Woodrow Wilson Nickel, whom we first see at the advanced age of 105 in a nursing home, trying to write the story of his youth. He remembers himself at 17 years old, starving, penniless, orphaned, arriving in New York from Dust Bowl west Texas in search of the only relative he knows. “Cuz,” though, has died in the hurricane. Woody spies the giraffes at the dock in New York harbor and is mesmerized. He steals a motorcycle and follows them to their quarantine location where he hides, steals whatever food he can find, watches and waits. When they begin their trip west, with their handler Riley Jones and a driver he has hired, Woody does whatever it takes to follow along.  

But so does “Red,” a young woman with a camera, a “borrowed” green Packard and a passionate longing to become a famous photographer like Margaret Bourke White.  She is hell-bent on taking photos of the entire journey that she will sell to Life Magazine. Woody is pretty mesmerized by Red, too! Not too long into the story, Woody is hired by Riley when the truck driver shows up drunk one day.

Adventure follows adventure as they meet up with various challenges (like mountain roads) and unscrupulous folks along the way. 

This book is not just a fun read, a good story engagingly told. It’s also a pretty clear picture of the state of the people of this country during the Depression. The description of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Texas is wrenching. And the snapshot of “Okies” being turned away at the California state line is heartbreaking. More often than not, however, the resilience and determination of the characters – and their love of the giraffes – give the book a hook into our hearts that leaves us smiling.

— Jeanie Smith