Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters Paperback - Mark Dunn ------------ 3 Stars

Clever, creative, original - just same words that come to mind after finishing the bizarre but somehow quite interesting, Ella Minnow Pea. Released in 2022, I had read the premise of the book and thought it seemed like something I had not seen before; happy I gave it a try.

As noted above, the book is about (per Amazon), "Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is "a love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere" (Myla Goldberg, bestselling author of Bee Season)"

Not sure about you, but the line, "as the letters progressively drop form the statue they also disappear form the novel." This, I thought is interesting; is the author really going to stop using certain letters in his prose (yes!)? Is it going to be weird and hard to read (again, yes!). Is it not something I've seen before (of course, yes!). 

It's a weird book but pretty interesting and I think satire(!?). One huge plus, it's super short (Amazon says 208 pages but it took me like 2 hours to finish). Like a long short story or maybe "novella" length. This helps as it's all letters between people, and as I noted, reading a book without certain letters is hard to do! The book has got some funny parts too and has a pretty great ending. 

Other downsides between the hard reading at the end- a bit hard to follow all the characters. As there are letters you don't know who is writing till then end (or you flip a few pages forward).  Even then, it's hard to always keep straight. The bigger issue is that there were NUMEROUS words on each page I had no idea what they mean. I feel pretty knowledgeable of words but, wow, it was tough. I used context clues for most (too lazy for dictionary) but it seemed like author was just showing off at some points.

Anyway, check it out. Again, different but worth the read at least once.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin ------------------ 4.5 Stars

Release two years ago, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow received critical acclaim since published. After waiting a couple months for the local Kindle copy to come in from the library, I truly enjoyed my read of this book. 

To provide a very simple summary for those not familiar with the book - "The novel follows the relationship between three friends who begin a successful video game company together." Of course, that comes nowhere close to describing the story that I enjoyed over the past few weeks. Certainly the book is about three close friends who are basically teenagers when they begin working; and certainly the book is about them creating video games. But, invariably, the book is about much much more. It's about people growing up; about the grief one faces in life; about over coming adversity; about love. Really, it's about so many things about being human, which is what made it such an engaging read.

What I think I enjoyed most about the book was that it was able to face all those topics above, while offering a straightforward and engaging storyline at the same time. The characters were interesting and deep. The book had plenty of thoughtful and bright dialogue (always a personal favorite for me). And, while the book likely could be enjoyed by a person of any background, much of the book does focus on video games and their creation. I found the specifics and details offered there just as fascinating as when the book pivots to conversations about death of love.

As much I enjoyed this book, and I really did, I thought it useful to check out what others did not enjoy. And while it does have an impressive 4.4/5 rating on Amazon, you can always head over to Reddit to see what others disliked. And, it was a variety of things. Some complain that the first half was much better than the second (I don't disagree; though the first half is also all the good stuff and way up, so things had to come back down). Some thought it was too unrealistic - again, I can see where they are coming from and understand this argument, especially in the context of how real the rest of the book was written. However, it's a book of fiction and if there weren't big twists or surprising elements, I'm not sure it'd be that interesting of a read. Also, many people thought some of the characters were either not believable or just annoying. There is truth there too, and I think they were designed that way. And, I think that added great depth to the story. 

I hope clear by now, and certainly from the rating, that this one of my favorite books I've read in a while. I really struggled to put it down, but at the same time, tried to savor it knowing it would end soon. In fact, it reminds me a great deal of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (review here). Both books are really fun reads with great characters and a great story. I do recommend this book and hope you enjoy it as much as I do.