Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow in Reading with Style

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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Oct 03, 2023 Bucket rated it liked it

Shelves: life-and-death, identity, reviewed, love, friendship, many-perspectives, communication

For me, this was okay. The plot clips along and is cohesive and interesting, though not always believable. The characters are well-rounded, but not very realistic. I understood the author's intentions for their motives, but didn't always believe them.

The best part was the world-building in the games themselves, and the pure love and excitement the characters have for creating and inhabiting those worlds. This was fun and interesting, but also had more depth than any of the relationships between ...more

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Feb 27, 2023 Cindie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: winter-src-2022-23

I loved this book. It got a little draggy midway through but then had a twist that woke me right up. Even when it was draggy, it was so beautiful. I will think about it for a long time.

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