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CT State Norwalk’s Common Read Program’s mission is to provide first-year students with a shared, enjoyable, academic experience that introduces them to an educational community where intellectual discourse is fostered and valued.

This year's Common Read is The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. See Common Read selections from previous years.

Common Read 2025-2026

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Midnight Library book coverBetween 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?”

A dazzling novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived, from the internationally bestselling author of Reasons to Stay Alive and How To Stop Time.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?

In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting new novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.

(Copied from author's website)

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Author Bio
Matt Haig

Matt Haig is the internationally bestselling author of the novels The Midnight Library, The Life Impossible,  How to Stop Time, The Humans and The Radleys. His work has been translated into over fifty languages.

The Midnight Library was an instant bestseller and winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction. It has become a worldwide phenomenon and sold over ten million copies worldwide spending 52 weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. The audiobook is read by Carey Mulligan. 

His memoir Reasons to Stay Alive was a number one bestseller, staying in the British top ten for 46 weeks. His award-winning children’s book A Boy Called Christmas was a runaway hit and is translated in over 40 languages. It was made into a film starring Maggie Smith, Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent and The Guardian called it an ‘instant classic’. 

(Copied from author's website)

Fall 2025 Common Read Week Schedule

Schedule coming soon!

Past Common Read Selections

2024

Time is a Mother book cover

Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong

2023

callings book cover

Callings by Dave Isay

  • 2022 - Girl Decoded by Rana el Kaliouby 
  • 2021 - The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman 
  • 2019 - Born a Crime by Trevor Noah 
  • 2018 - Bullets into Bells by Dean Rader, Alexandra Teague, and Brian Clements 
  • 2017 – Lottery by Patricia Wood 
  • 2016 – When the Emperor Was Divine by Julia Otsuka 
  • 2015 – Spare Parts by Joshua Davis 
  • 2014 – Intimate Apparel by Lynn Nottage 
  • 2013 – Garbology by Edward Humes and Joe Barrett 
  • 2012 – The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore 
  • 2011 – Outcast United by Warren St. John 
Last updated: August 11, 2025 | 4:20 pm