Matt Haig

party but it's socializing because you're having a kind of conversation that the person you're talking to might be or listening to might be dead but you're having you're exchanging minds and you're getting something out of that book that no one else will be quite getting in the way that you're getting

So I think that's amazing.

And when you said about books being there for you at the right time in life, I mean, the patch I went away from books was during illness, like in my 20s with depression.

And when I came back and was living at my mum and dad's house, obviously the books on my shelves were children's books because it was my childhood bedroom.

So I was rereading.

What got me back into books was rereading.

At the time, I couldn't even like watch TV without having a panic attack because everything was like overstimulating.

Couldn't listen to the radio, couldn't do anything.

Books were like the quietest, easiest, most comforting way for me to sort of like build my mind back again.

Do it, say it, be better, apologise, all those things.

And we're famously so bad at it.

You know, like Mexico has a whole day where we just celebrate it and get drunk and think about it.

And we are so bad at it.

And you're exactly right.

I feel like, and especially like after sort of like suicide attempt at 24.

And then after that, for a little while, I just thought how ridiculous is it?

How hilariously ridiculous that we have all these finite little worries about car keys or emails.

And then, you know, when there's this big macro thing, which we don't ever talk about.

And I feel like books are the way we can legitimately talk.

speed through a life yeah speed through a life and get that perspective because i think look there's a great book it looks incredibly cheesy from the cover but the five regrets of the dying oh yeah yeah bronnie weir who was a palliative care nurse and she spent a lot of time in hospices researching and talking to people and the five regrets of dying i can't