Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel

tedious

I found reading this book to be so tedious and challenging. I did not enjoy the gaming storyline at all. I had to force myself to finish it. Probably one of the least favorite books I have read. The characters, excluding Marx were exhausting and flat to me.

"What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever."

ccccccccAmazon review: On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy. Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

I listened to the audio book for this one which I felt like was the preferred medium for this story. I thought this was an alright book until I got to the NPC chapter, which was beautiful, deeply sad, well written, complex, and unique in its structure. This chapter increased my opinion (and rating) of this book, as I’m not a gamer (except for the Sims) so the main plot is kind of lost on me. I’d recommend this to anyone that would like to be frustrated by flawed young people trying to find their way in their world, in strikingly poignant prose.

I enjoyed this book in theory. There were quite a few errors that should have been caught before publication. 3.25 discs were used - it was a 3.5 disc or a 5.25 disc. A person with a left foot injury couldn't feel the pedal under his foot - why was he driving with his left foot, anyhow? These little things nagged me during the whole reading.

The story was good. It kept me intrigued the whole time.

I do recommend the book if the reader can ignore the blatant errors that the proofreader and editor missed. Maybe it was only in the audio version? Maybe everyone was very young and had zero experience with computers in the 1980s?