So I"m going out on a limb here and am going against the vast majority of reviews that say this is only about video games and you must love video games to like this book. This book is actually about friends, chosen family, and the struggles when work and friends are the same. If this book had been about, say firefighters and the close family that forms within a station, we wouldn't rant about how you really have to love firetrucks to enjoy this book. That's preposterous. But video games are polarizing.

Loved the book, loved spending my time with the characters, and sad to have it end.

I’ve heard and read so many conflicting things about this book over the past few months. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Now, as I try to gather my thoughts for this review, I finally understand why there have been so many differing opinions. On the one hand, I agree wholeheartedly with every reader who was annoyed by the numerous hot political topics that fueled this story. They’re all in there - gender identity, homosexuality, abortion, gun violence, racism - just to name a few. Also, the author’s needless use of big words was pretty irritating. (I personally don’t like having to keep a dictionary or thesaurus by my side while reading.) If you’re not a fan of the gaming industry then this isn’t the book for you because gaming IS the main focus of the whole story. My two grown sons have been gamers their whole lives, so I’m used to it, and this didn’t bother me. However, the two main characters, Sam and Sadie, have a very toxic friendship, and they seriously got on my last nerve. (I’ve never seen two “friends” hold so many grudges!) So, you might be wondering, why did I give this book four stars? Well…because once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. Because the author’s writing style is flawless. Because even with the aggravating parts - political topics included - she somehow kept me turning page after page, and I was totally enraptured. Would I recommend it to someone? Probably not without a warning. Am I sorry I read it? Not in the least.

This was an interesting story and one that I was not expecting. This is is also a book you have to pay attention too because the writing styles will change on you if you don’t and you will get confused. 😂

In 2007, when I wrote a book about gaming in libraries, Will Wright was exploring how games could make people feel emotions (like guilt), and the US was slow in recognizing video games as an art form while the UK had already established an award category for video games at BAFTA, while I was arguing they were valid ways of telling a story that involved the player in the creation of that story. Zevin pesents a world where creators set out to make works of art, even based on the style of a famous work of art, in this brilliant, intricately plotted novel about friendship and gaming.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow follows the trajectory of two friends who love one another but never get together. Their partnership at Unfair Games, their video game company, is more important At twelve, Korean-American Sam is recovering from a car accident in the hospital while eleven-year old’s Sadie’s sister Alice is getting cancer treatment. They form a friendship playing Super Mario Bros. and the staff begs Sadie to come back and visit–Sam, coming to terms with his mother’s death and a crippling injury hadn’t spoken until she showed up. She makes him her bat mitzvah volunteer project and wins a community service award from Hadassah. When he finds out, they don’t talk for six years, until he spies her in a subway station–she’s attending MIT and he is at Harvard. Hollering “you have died of dysentery!” gets her attention, and they resume their friendship and eventually talking about designing a game together. His friend and roommate Marx bankrolls an apartment and they name Marx their producer; he takes care of many details for their company, their friendship, their lives. The narrative follows their intertwining paths through the games they design together.

With characters that attend Ivy league schools, the vocabulary is smart and lush: nihilistic, verisimilitude, deictic, obfuscation, jejune, azure, simulacrum, portmanteau, fecund, echt, tautology. The allusions reference The Phantom Tollbooth, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, the Illiad… and indirectly, Grand Theft Childhood. The timeline spans nearly twenty years and is set squarely in Generation X, with many familiar touchstones: Tamagotchis, Magic Eye, texting, same-sex marriage, MMORPGs, groundbreaking video game titles, September 11th.

The writing is spectacular and frequently, beautifully profound as the characters reflect on their abilities and disabilities; their identities and ethnicities; love and loss; mazes, puzzles, and maps; immortality and do-overs; art and sex and death and play. The narrative moves back and forth in time and yet never gets lost. So many details come back full circle, like when you die in a game and go back to the save point. Throughout the novel, the narrator breaks the fourth wall, such as when the reader is invited to consider an interview with game designer Sam Mazer in Kotaku. This also allows us to review events through a more modern lens of systemic racism, appropriation, and sexism. Another section goes meta like a game and changes the perspective to second person, playing on interactive text adventures. Another is in third person, narrating the lives of the avatars the characters create. Full disclosure: this book made me weep.

Sometimes the writing reminded me of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, with its detail on coding and debugging akin to the drudgery of magic drills at Brakebills Academy and flawed dynamic characters who stick together no matter what. Sometimes it called to mind Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat, with it’s LA setting and evocative lists of things and strong sensory detail. And as a gamer about to turn 48, who cut her teeth on the Oregon Trail on a classroom’s Apple IIe and Donkey Kong on a cocktail arcade table at the local Papa Gino’s, I kept seeing this as a love letter to gaming that recognizes video games for the art they are.

I checked this out through OverDrive at my local public library and logged onto bookshop.org to order a copy and it’s currently out of print and backordered! I blame Harry and his 2 million copy first print run.

Everyone said I would love this… I almost DNFed at like 30%. Ultimately I am glad I finished because there were good parts but overall I was underwhelmed.

I had heard mixed reviews about this book so decided to go in open minded. It seems people either love it or dislike it.
Having read the story I, on the whole, liked it. Although I do not consider myself a gamer I did spend a portion of my youth playing Sonic, Mario and Streetfighter so I went into this book feeling like I might have a little bit of knowledge on my side. This did not really seem to make a difference to the reading of the book though. There are a few technical parts that were above my head but I just kept on going. Although this book is set in the gaming world it is primarily about friendship. The ups and downs a friendship takes over the years. Small omissions that can end up being misunderstandings and the burden of lost opportunities. I enjoyed all of these aspects of the book and really became absorbed in Sam and Sadie’s friendship. This, for me, carried the whole book.
The only part I wasn’t so keen on was the chapter which was based inside a video game. I kept flicking forwards through the pages to see how long this chapter would last and hoping it would be over soon!
Overall, I give this book 3 and a half stars which I have rounded up to 4. It’s definitely worth a read even for the non gamer ( except the video game chapter!).

I loved this book. As someone who played Oregon Trail in middle school and is a female in tech (though not video games, sadly) I really loved Sadie's point of view, even when I didn't love Sadie so much. I loved the unusual formats for some of the chapters, and the vivid descriptions of the worlds that they built.

This book was so good! I am not surprised that it was chosen as book of the year in many places. Thank you for allowing me to read an advanced readers copy.

Wow - Zevin does it again. I loved this book. As a child gamer, there were so many little bits that made me feel nostalgic, but you do NOT have to have been a gamer to enjoy this. Ultimately, this is not a book about games - it’s a book about humanity and relationships and life with gaming being the storytelling device. If you have gamed, you’ll appreciate bits of that device, if you haven’t - you’ll read a beautifully written book about being human and what it means to love. Either way, it’s a win.

This book made me laugh and cry. It’s gut wrenching and BEAUTIFULLY written. It was smart and intricately plotted. I literally can’t find fault with it. Just read it.

I enjoyed this book however found some parts to be dragging. The character development was fantastic and I thought that the complexities of human relationships in all of their forms was expertly done!

I’ve heard so many great things about this book, and was intrigued to find out for myself if it lived up to the hype. This was at times slow, and long winded and I found a lot of the gaming talk went over my head a little at no fault but my own. I often found myself struggling to get through it in places, but it did pick back up again after a while. However, despite this i did enjoy the book and think it was worth the occasional difficulties. I loved the characters, and fully understand how so many people can connect to them. There is no denying that this is an incredibly well written book, with great character development. It is an incredibly well thought out and moving depiction of friendship.

This is very different than my usual reads. It was recommended as the book of the year on Bad On Paper podcast so I had to give it a try. I was nervous about the whole video game aspect but it fit so well within this book. I wish I was still teaching high school because I think it would wonderful for those students.

I received this book as an ARC and this is my review. I loved this book! The story follows several gamers who were friends and the story is amazing! I am not a gamer but that does not matter with this book that grabbed me by the throat and never let go. It travels coast to coast and the friendships are a real part of the story. I recommend this book to readers who enjoy a quirky group of characters and appreciate an unusual story.

Absolutely beautiful character-driven novel. Rich, deep and so easy to get lost in. One of my top reads of 2022.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Firstly, this is the most complicated review I’ve ever written. I have changed the star rating multiple times and had a lot of trouble finding the right words to explain the experience of reading this book.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow follows two friends, Sam and Sadie over decades. Sometimes friends, sometimes in love (not lovers), sometimes business partners (and other times competitors within the same business), sometimes at odds, but always bringing to light the intricate nuances of real committed friendship.

The characters of Sam and Sadie feel so real, they are flawed humans (as we all are) and we see that through their thoughts and choices, which often makes them unlikable, annoying and difficult to read.

The character of Marx is much more likeable, written more as a typical book character who we are guided to like and gives us windows of quiet amongst Sam and Sadie’s quiet chaos. Marx also offers both Sam and Sadie an opportunity to be better in their separate relationships with him.

The way that Zevin has written this book is painfully real at times, inviting an almost unwilling exploration of self as the reader brings their own story, their own experiences and their own feelings to the reading experience merging this with Sadie and Sam’s story. At every point there is something that we can latch on to from our own world.

It is this aspect of the writing which makes it hard to rate and review. Not only does it feel too close to home to see the story clearly but it also feels more like a memory, which as we know changes over time as we reflect on our experiences and draw new understandings.

My initial read had me wanting to put the book down at many points. Sometimes this was due to the gaming talk which completely went over my head but other times the focus point in the story just felt like it was lagging. Having unintentionally thought about this book for awhile now, I realise that I also found some of my feelings towards different parts of the story were confronting.

As someone whose formative years were in the 80’s and 90’s I was captivated by the details of these eras in the story. It brought me straight back into my childhood with great memories I hadn’t thought about for such a long time. It was this aspect which made the book immediately real for me, sometimes too real to simply enjoy the story.

So, would I recommend this book to others?

Yes… but only if you’re willing to go in with and open mind, willing to explore what comes up for you as you read.

It isn’t a difficult read in itself, the story moves, slowly but it moves. It is the pace that gives you time to think as you read.

But, it explores themes of friendship, partnerships, the gaming/programming world, inequity, disability, violent reactions, racism, but all from multiple perspectives layered with the reader’s own thoughts, experiences and memories. This is what makes it harder to read.

As someone who reads to escape the world, to escape my life for awhile… this book did the opposite… and I think I’m grateful for the prompt to reflect on my life and my choices so far!

“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!“

As the title promises, we’re given small, day to day moments at a petty pace. This is a masterpiece of the slow pace genre. A look at the lives of two friends who through small life moments build something extraordinary to some, and frivolous to many. And in the end, what matters more? The moments or the accomplishments?

Highly recommended and one of my top reads in the last year.

3 stars

This is a fairly tedious book. Some parts flow wonderfully but then I’d find myself not interested. However the writing is wonderful. I was unsure how I’d like it because of the gaming aspect, but that didn’t bother me so much. Overall it is definitely worth a read but not the best book Ive ever read.

This one is worth the hype. Completely absorbed, I read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow in essentially one sitting during a 6-hour cross-country flight. I was honestly a bit shocked by how deeply I loved this book. Scenes kept playing like a movie in my head, even a month later. Once they started to fade, I bought the hardcover to re-read in print format to experience it all over again. The New York Times called it “a love letter to the Literary Gamer”—but let me assure you, even if you don’t consider yourself a gamer or a reader of literary fiction, you will connect with this story of creativity, trauma, forgiveness, love, and, most importantly, friendship.

A bighearted saga of friendship and found family set in the world of video game designers, Zevin's latest novel is an intimate portrait of the passions and pitfalls of a creative partnership spanning decades.

Sadie and Sam meet in the hospital as kids. Sadie's visiting a family member, Sam is an all-too regular patient after a car accident left him with injuries that would become permanently disabling. From different social classes, cultures, and familial structures, Sadie and Sam share a love of puzzles and games, a stubborn nature, and a deep-seated, often buried, love and respect for each other.

Through estrangements, reconciliations, and tragedy, Sadie and Sam make ground-breaking work, grow up, and find ways to make sense of their past, honor it, and find their way through the present.

A compulsively readable book that will have you reading longer than you intended and, if you're like me, crying on Thanksgiving morning (but in a good way). If you loved The Ensemble, you'll probably love this. Also for readers who enjoy seeing characters at work in an interesting industry--particularly a female character in a male-dominated one. And for creatives and the people who love them.

I know everyone has been loving this book, but it was just too slow for me and not my style. I love video games but the teacher student relationship gave me the ick.