## Review Date #note/sourcereview/book | #source/book📚/fiction | #source/book/audiobook ## What is the story >"When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past. Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning." ## What else do I wonder about? One idea that struck me in this book, is the idea that there is so much that we do not know. What used to be magic is now science, how much magic still exists? So much is the best answer! Embrace the magic that still exists. If it is a sunrise's spectrum, the crunch of snow, the shapes of ice, or the sound of birds, so much magic still exists. Let's work to not forget that. ## Action Stay grateful, stay aware of the magic of anything. “We are never at the finish line of understanding. There is always something about life and the universe that we are still to discover” ## Source: Haig, M. (2024). _The life impossible_. Viking. ## Quotes: "This is the challenge of life, isn’t it? Moving forward without annihilating what has come before. Knowing what to hold onto and what to release without destroying yourself. Striving not to be both the meteor and the dinosaur at the same time." "I always think that the quickest way to understand someone is to look at what’s on their bookshelves. Especially if they are honest bookshelves, not the fancy ornamental kind. And there was nothing fancy or ornamental about this place." "People say that love is rare. I am not so sure. What is rare is something even more desirable. Understanding. There is no point in being loved if you are not understood. They are simply loving an idea of you they have in their mind. They are in love with love. They are in love with their loving. To be understood. And not only that, but to be understood and appreciated once understood. That is what matters." “I suppose that is one of the purposes of all reading. It helps you live lives beyond the one you are inside.” “All reading, in short, is telepathy and all reading is time travel. It connects us to everyone and everywhere and every time and every imagined dream.” “We are never at the finish line of understanding. There is always something about life and the universe that we are still to discover” “Sometimes in order to be helpful we have to give up the desire to be liked.” “That is one great thing about having someone by your side. They are a shock absorber to the madness of experience.” “The point of desperation is often the point of truth. When things are wrong, we need to reach rock bottom in order for change to happen. We sometimes need to feel trapped in order to find the way out. We don’t meet ourselves in the light and air. We don’t understand the radio when the song is playing. We sometimes need to smash the thing to see how it is made.” “Maybe that’s the truly ridiculous thing, the way we don’t even blink at the sheer improbability of our lives here on this rock spinning through space. The way we exist out of nothing, the way the whole universe exists out of nothing, and here we are, the impossible something that made existence out of the void. Impossible life. A fluke to be cherished.” “I had thought, foolishly, that coming to Ibiza would shake things up, dust the cobwebs, reduce the mental weight. I thought, basically, what we all want to think when we step on a plane: that I was about to escape. But no. The trouble with having a change of scene is that if you get there and find that you feel just the same, then you really are trapped. And that was my conclusion.” - Matt Haig