So, the book. Actually –

Are all of you quite sick of my pre-review preambles? I like a bit too much context. Exposition, background, setting the scene and other equally cinematic words. That was a rhetorical question of course, you can’t answer. So you may as well have some more, but different, preamble:

As you may have noticed from my past choices, I tend to read books where little else happens other than mundane daily routine, but written by people who write the ordinary extraordinarily well. Poetically even. It makes me feel calm. Like life doesn’t need to be wild to be special. As dull as my life might sound to someone, it’s special in some way. Everything is “aesthetic” when written by Babitz or Didion or any columnist for that matter. I’ve also experienced the recreation that comes from reading other kinds of books. Those with practically no personality, but a fast-paced (usually romantic) plot. Fantastic reads.

Triple T is a great balance. It’s definitely fast, but has little twinkles of wisdom and wonder which you might miss if you get swept up in the story too much.

Triple T spans the life of Sam and Sadie, who meet as children at the hospital, playing videogames. They become fast friends and go on to design a video game of their own together. Stories of friendship have such compassion and sweetness.

Sam and Sadie have a special bond. Without spoiling, I think the most lovely was the chapter where they communicated through a special videogame. Seeing them become friends all over again was so heartwarming. What’s the word for heartbreaking but like good? It was cozy. Reading it felt like a cloudy grey day, but like warm and maybe rainy. By the sea. Gross sentence but stay with me. I don’t know really why it felt that way but maybe because the friendship was never really sunny or happy. It was more about freedom, to be yourself with someone else. To be get and be gotten.

Maybe the lack of sun in their friendship is what made it interesting.

I had a little bit of problems with how the relationship was handled towards the end of the book. I was perfectly happy for Sam to be tied to Sadie platonically and still deeply. But then there grew this implication, that romance would have added the missing sunlight to their relationship. This implication felt a bit like a betrayal of my personal understanding of their friendship. Romance is not everything. Some other things bothered me too. Like (as Ambre noticed too) the speed at which their bond was broken by Sadie.

Ambre congratulated this book’s soft and digestible perspective of the video game world – and so do I. It’s not a book just for gamers. Or just for violent teen boys who can’t shower. It’s peaceful and pretty. Genderless even. Much like my favourite video games. I know I haven’t quite yet racked up the hours to add “Gamer” to my linkedin profile, but as an Animal Crossings and Sims fanatic, I felt understood by Sadie’s desire for cozy nostalgic gameplay when her life turned upside down.

Plus – and this is really a plus – the book had that thing I talked about in my review of The Woman in the Purple Skirt in terms of how it led me into the lifestyle of gaming. Assume your reader’s intelligence (however wrong that assumption may be), but carry this reader through the complications. Gabrielle Zevin was a wonderful, gentle hand to hold and shoulder to lean on.

Although the book club never managed to meet to discuss the book, texts and opinions were exchanged. The knowledge of others reading the same material with me made for a changed reading experience. If you’ve ever done this, I wonder, are you protective of your own connection with a book?

I guess I thought I would be. I thought I would want to keep my personal meetings with authors to myself. But it was in fact unlike my expectations. My favourite sentences, the parts I would highlight were I as organised as Julka (expert annotator) going unnoticed, is okay. I guess. But I have to say, when someone points out as revolutionary, some sentence which to me seemed banal, I’m displeased. MY sentence (because they feel like my own in some way at that point) was SNUBBED. It’s kind of selfish and snobby but also, I love my sentences. They’re beautiful and they should be recognised by all as such.