My Bookish Life

I brought The Poppy War  by R.F. Kuang last year in autumn. I saw it on Instagram and did some research on it and thought "this sounds interesting, let's order it". Only to read it over the last three weeks and to finish it on Monday. I've one word for it: brilliant! “If there is a divine creator, some ultimate moral authority, then why do bad things happen to good people? And why would this deity create people at all, since people are such imperfect beings?”  The story starts with a young girl, Rin, who's living in the south of Nikan with abusive foster parents. She's a war orphan and supposed to marry an opium dealer. She's out of the way with this and the Fangs - her foster parents, who are also dealers - will have full control over their opium business in their village with this arranged marriage. But Rin has own plans. She manages to convince the Fangs to try taking part in the Keju to study at one of the Academies in the country to get away. Her goal

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? I started this book on a late evening during work after I finished another one. I haven't read anything from Matt Haig before but heard so many good things about this one and the synopsis sounded really interesting. So I started it, not knowing what I would get and immediately was hooked... It starts with Nora, a young woman who works in a music store where she teaches the piano. The day starts with her, sitting in the school library as a young girl, playing chess with the librarian, Mrs Elm. They talk about glaciers and what she wants to become, when she gets some terrible news. Then we're at the present. A day like everyone else it seems. But it's the day Nora deci