From the Bookshelf of EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club…

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Gabrielle Zevin

Start date: March 1, 2023

Finish date: March 31, 2023

Discussion: MODERN / POPULAR READS

Why we're reading this: March 2023 - Modern Selection
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What Members Thought

Mar 19, 2023 Beth rated it really liked it

Shelves: 52-books-challenge-2023

I give this one 4.5 stars. At least half the reviews of this book note that you don’t need to like video games to like the book; I happen to dislike video games, indeed I’m not a fan of pretty much any game, but obviously I liked this book a lot. It’s not so much about video games as about the creation of the games, hence about creativity and about collaboration to create the games—the deep connections between creative collaborators. And it’s about why (some) people play the games. The games the I give this one 4.5 stars. At least half the reviews of this book note that you don’t need to like video games to like the book; I happen to dislike video games, indeed I’m not a fan of pretty much any game, but obviously I liked this book a lot. It’s not so much about video games as about the creation of the games, hence about creativity and about collaboration to create the games—the deep connections between creative collaborators. And it’s about why (some) people play the games. The games themselves function as reflections of the characters—they select and design games to play that reflect their emotional needs, and these are some very needy characters.

I read a review on Goodreads (liked by more than 1000 people!) where the reviewer complained that she didn’t like the characters from the start and grew to dislike them more. I totally disagree. Sure, the central characters are flawed people, but I found that one of the book’s strengths. Each of the central characters is damaged in some way and has difficulty connecting with others; games allow them to be close, to share a love they cannot otherwise communicate. But failure to communicate also creates conflict of course (and what good book lacks conflict?), which isolates them once again. I found that terribly touching. The book has several deaths in it, and returns frequently to the idea that while one dies frequently in a video game, one can just go back to the last “save,” and resume play (tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow). Comforting and, again, touching.

So why not 5 stars? Well, with the exception of one stream of consciousness section late in the book, I found the style clear but far from mind blowing. My 5 star books usually have an astonishingly powerful style. Also, and this may seem small, but I really liked the way the book riffed on literary allusions, including the central one to Macbeth, which inspires the title and is made plenty clear, indirectly and pretty subtly. But then the author just plops in a section of really unsubtle direct discussion of the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech: “Hey, reader, here’s what the title means. Here's a long quote. Let me explicate it like a paper for an English lit. class but with not very believable dialogue” Believe me, I’ve read enough explications, and they’re fine in their place, but not in the middle of a novel about video game creators. The speech should have been in the epigraph (instead of a minor Dickinson poem that is also important in the book, but not AS important), and the exposition about it should have been cut by about 90%.

Using for the “enemies to lovers” prompt in the 52 books challenge, though more accurately, it’s friends to enemies to friends to enemies, and I won’t give away where it ends in that cycle to avoid spoilers . . . . my one really big objection to that prompt. ...more

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Mar 12, 2024 Melanie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2024

My goodness. This was just an absolutely beautiful book.

Some quotes and passages I want to remember:

This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met—he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly un My goodness. This was just an absolutely beautiful book.

Some quotes and passages I want to remember:

This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met—he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly understood the nature of Marx’s good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know—were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before. My God, she thought, he is so easy to love.

“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.”

She was trying hard not to romanticize her daughter’s personality. She didn’t want to ascribe characteristics to her that were not truly hers. A good game designer knows that clinging to a few early ideas about a project can cut off the potential for the work. Sadie did not feel that Naomi was altogether a person yet, which was another thing that one could not admit. So many of the mothers she knew said that their children were exactly themselves from the moment they appeared in the world. But Sadie disagreed. What person was a person without language? Tastes? Preferences? Experiences? And on the other side of childhood, what grown-up wanted to believe that they had emerged from their parents fully formed? Sadie knew that she herself had not become a person until recently. It was unreasonable to expect a child to emerge whole cloth. Naomi was a pencil sketch of a person who, at some point, would be a fully 3D character.

Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair. ...more

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Apr 07, 2023 Kathleen rated it really liked it

Shelves: utgc-book-club

My stars! I so groked this book, but only after I reached the mid-point or so. Please persevere, future reader.

Warning: my most humbling moment was one, when this gentle reader (while reading this gem of fiction at breakfast) found herself glancing up at the muted tv screen to … ANOTHER police chief describing, explaining, decrying, apologizing…

Ellipsis apologies.

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Jun 02, 2025 Ashley Morgan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Ugh….this book was honestly so painful for me. I had a lot of hope the first half but then it got so boring. All the gaming talk (when all I ever heard was that it wasn’t a book about gaming….lies) then there was no chemistry between the characters for me. I honestly could not stand the FMC Sadie. The relationship she finally had made no sense and didn’t build. The MMC Sam was just overlooked and depressing. Overall just a sad boring book to me. I never thought it would end.

I’m glad so many oth ...more

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