I am constantly having to pick between reading or playing games. I love them both for many of the same reasons. As an introvert who loves to explore, reading and games offer me the opportunity to explore different places from the comfort of my home. As someone with social anxiety, participating in book clubs and online game play help me practice techniques that make me more comfortable. Overall, books and games are beloved to me. So when I picked up Gabrielle Zevin’s novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, my inner self was filled with joy.

The book follows two main characters, Sam Masur and Sadie Green, who have a love for each other and a love for video games, both of which are complicated relationships. The complication for Sadie comes from being a woman in a mostly male dominated world. The complication for Sam is realizing he is a male and not as dominate in this world. They are supportive of each other, but also let their insecurities get the best of them and sabotage themselves and their relationship. I found myself rooting for Sadie one minute as a woman who loves video games, but then wondering why she says what she says or does what she does other times. I found myself sympathetic to Sam who has a physical disability and is not as comfortable socially as those around him (I get it Sam, I do), but then wanting to shake him for being so manipulative other times.

The other characters in this book are the video games themselves. They drive a lot of the story, and are complex themselves. As someone who has loved video games since I was a child playing NES and SEGA, I couldn’t help but want to play each of the video games developed by the characters in the book. I was so excited one night to find out that one of my favorite gamers I follow on the platform Twitch, WhatifJulia, was also reading this book. I am sure Sam and Sadie would have had fun watching others play their games on the Twitch platform, and it may have even helped calm some of their nerves around the games and around each other. I never found out if WhatifJulia finished the book or not, but I hope she did and I hope it brought her joy. All of this to say that when I say I love video games, I mean I love to play them, I love to watch other people play them, I love the stories, the music, the animation, everything. They are works of art in my opinion combining story, music, and animation to create an experience unlike any other.

As usual, here are some of the highlights I found while reading this wonderfully fun, and frustrating, book.

There is a whole section about video game design and who video games are for. The book starts in the 90s when video games were very much still seen as a male hobby. Sadie is taking courses at Harvard in video game design and is one of the only women in the class. She says more often than not she has to put herself in the male mindset or point of view in order to understand most games she plays. This struck me as interesting because her professor, and future terrible boyfriend, says to always think about who will be playing your game when creating it. For this time period, it definitely put her at a disadvantage when trying to create something she could truly speak freely about. It made me think about what video game designers think about today as the number of female gamers is now widely known to be high.

Sam’s insecurity and manipulation (whether intentional or not), drove me absolutely bonkers throughout the book. Early in the book, Sadie mentions she does not play video games with her then boyfriend Dov. This concept of playing was one I loved because being able to play with your partner, or anyone you love for that matter, is so important to being able to be vulnerable and present with others. Sam expresses he believes playing is more trusting and he prefers it to sex or physical intimacy. On the surface this sounds romantic, but Sam is also very much embarrassed by his disability and social awkwardness that limits his ability at times to engage sexually with others to the point where he preferred not feeling anything at all because it was more pleasant. Later however, he grieves and expresses that he feels he wasted his time playing games with Sadie. He should have tried to have a relationship with her. He expresses this at a point where Sadie is secure and happy, which causes their relationship to take a huge hit. Will his insecurities cause him to lose her entirely? Will his insecurities cause Sadie to change the way she does things? You will have to read to find out more about that dynamic.

Some of my favorite quotes:

” A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded…was that it could say ‘excuse me’ while meaning ‘screw you'”

“One of the reasons they had become such good friends originally was because she had not insisted he tell his sad stories to satisfy her own curiosity” – This one really hit me because we too often trauma dump or ask others to open those wounds. We must be mindful of how these experiences, whether ours or someone else’s, can have an impact in reliving them.

Sam is struggling with loss in his life and his grandma tells him while pointing to her head; “There are no ghosts, but up here is a haunted house.”

“She was intelligent, but her intelligence did not get in the way of her enthusiasm.” – I personally love this quote as someone who is genuinely curious about everything and never dismisses something based on the premise that I already know everything there is know about it. This exact thing came up when I was recently walking along the beaches of Oregon and came across a crab shell on the ground. I stopped, picked it up, and was so interested in the story of it and how it formed. It made me write down my own sentiment close to Zevin’s;

“When you lose your curiosity, you do yourself a disservice because you miss out on wondrous things the world has to offer. Or you’ve given in to something more nefarious, like pride, and you think you have you’ve already seen and know of the important things in life and nothing else is worth your time.”

Happy reading, gaming, and exploring my friends!

• Literature