Hi, lovelies. Here’s my month in books, movies, television, and games.
Books
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is one of my favorite reads of the year. The story centers on Sam Masur and Sadie Green, two friends who bonded over playing video games as kids before having a falling out, leading to them not speak to each other for years. When they stumble into each other while at college, they renew their friendship and love for games and enter into a wild adventure — make their own video game, a wild, risky, wonderful challenge. As the novel weaves through their game development and business successes and failures together, the story beautifully explores the nature of creative processes and partnerships and the ups and downs of close friendships, along with love, ego, grief, and so much more.
A lot of the books I love are well written, but it’s not often that I pause while reading a passage and go, woah. Zevin’s writing style is delicious. The omniscient third person perspective (used through most of the book) allows the author to float between the inner worlds of each of the characters, giving insights that they may not even recognize themselves. This is a genuinely gorgeous book, a new favorite read, and one that I will be returning to again and again.
Recently, This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El Mohtar and Max Gladstone hit the best seller lists and with good reason. The book — about two assassins on opposite sides of a time war connecting through letters — is a quick read with rich lush language illustrating a variety of pasts and futures along the threads of time. I don’t know if I want to say much more than that. It’s fantastic and you should read it.
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Geometries of Belonging is a collection of short stories and poems from R.B. Lemberg’s Birdverse, a world said to be created by the mysterious god, Bird. The publisher writes, “The intricate Birdverse has at its core a magic based loosely in geometry, from which comes healing, love, and art. It is a complex, culturally diverse world, a realm with LGBTQIA characters and a wide range of family configurations. Lemberg probes the obstacles behind traditional social boundaries of cultures; overseeing this world is the deity Bird and all its incarnations. Each story and poem, exqusitely crafted, will richly reward long-time fans and newcomers alike.” This was a fantastic collection of stories, and I would love to read more in this universe.
