drink #3: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
a book about a boy, a girl, their love for video games across thirty years.
summary
a book about two childhood friends who become video game developers. a story about friendship, loss, and video games. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow follows Sam and Sadie, as they navigate the growing pains of their friendship, becoming business partners, and learning to be game developers across thirty-so-years.
my thoughts
as a big fan of video games and coming-of-age stories, i loved this book. The characters are all kind of not amazing people and the way that the book tackles their flaws and struggles felt incredibly realistic. I’m not a video game developer so I’m not too familiar with how realistic (if at all) the plot line revolving around the way Sam and Sadie develop their game is, but the struggle of collaboration was certainly realistic. Also, I loved that the author was willing to take risks with her writing style, switching it to an entirely different narrative style now and then. I finished this book in a day, and I think that about sums up all I have to say about this book!
quotes
“Come on Sadie. There’ll always be another class. How many times can you look at something and know that everyone around you is seeing the same thing or at the very least that their brains and eyes are responding to the same phenomenon? How much proof do you ever have that we’re all in the same world?” (7)
“Sam looked at Sadie, and he thought, This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently.” (8)
“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.” (21)
“life is very long, unless it is not” (41)
“’Why do you keep coming,’ she asked. ‘Because’, he said.” (57)
“As he rounded Kennedy Street, he began to chant to himself a poem that he had heard once, he wasn’t sure where. ‘That love is all there is; is all we know of love. It is enough; the freight should be proportioned to the groove’” (106)
“We are all living, at most, half a life, she thought. There was the life you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn’t. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living“ (142)
“You go back to work. You take advantage of the quiet time that a failure allows you. You remind yourself that no one is paying attention to you and it’s a perfect time for you to sit down in front of your computer and make another game. You try again. You fail better” (219)
“It occurred to Sadie: She had thought after Ichigo that she would never fail again. She had thought she arrived. But life was always arriving. There was always another gate to pass through. (Until, of course, there wasn’t).” (228)
“’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’” (336)
for my full list of notes on this book, check out the blog page here