Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme that was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners but is now currently being hosted by Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog. This meme is quite easy to follow – just randomly pick a book from your to-be-read list and give the reasons why you want to read it. It is that simple.

This week’s book:

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Blurb from Goodreads

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends–often in love, but never lovers–come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.

Why I Want To Read It

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you had a great start to the week. Woah. We’re nearly halfway through December. We are inching closer ao a new near. 2023 is so near! With the pandemic slowly getting under control despite the emergence of new variants, the new year is surely brimming with hope. Brighter days are ahead as everything is slowly going back to normal. Still, the virus remains a real threat. I hope we don’t become too complacent lest we will not be undoing the progress we have made thus far. With 2022 drawing to a close, I hope that the remaining days of the year will be kind to everyone. I pray that you will all be showered with nothing but blessings. I aso hope for healing and recovery. I also hope that all your hard work will get repaid. I pray that all your prayers get answered or that they have already been answered. I also hope that the rest of the week will go great for everyone. More importantly, I hope that you are all doing well and are in a good state of health, both in your mind and body.

To kickstart the blogging week, I am posting a new (late) Goodreads Monday update. As the year draws to a close, literary publications and websites have been posting about the best books of the year. This is nothing uncommon I guess and has been going on for quite some time. It was for this reason that I acquired a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s latest work, Demon Copperfield, a book I wasn’t really planning to read until it was listed in several Best Books of 2022 List. It was also the book I featured in last week’s Goodreads Monday update. For this week’s update, I will still be featuring a book that is figuring prominently in this best Books of 2022 discourse: Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

Prior to this year, I have never heard of Gabrielle Zevin nor had I read any of her works. Woah. I just learned that her debut novel, Margarettown, was published in 2005. I have also learned that Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is Zevin’s fifth novel written for adults; she wrote novels for her young adult audience. I think it was midway through the year that I encountered the book. I kept encountering glowing accounts of the book. Several book reviewers, and even literary critics, were singing nothing but heaps of praise for the book. That should have been enough to convince me to read the book. But of course not. I was a little ambivalent about the title and the book’s cover. The cover, in particular, reminded me of a strange mix of dystopian fiction, Japanese art, and video game.

Another element of the book that convinced me to try and dip my toes into it was its premise. I read somewhere that the story involved the creation of a video game. From what I understand, the story does explore the virtual world. If such is the case, I then see the book as an examination of our current conditions through a different, more creative lens. Perhaps it is even an extension of Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This. I just ordered a copy of the book and can’t wait to experience for myself what many a reader have experienced. How about you fellow reader? What books have you added to your reading list? Do drop it in the comment box. For now, happy Monday and, as always, happy reading!

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