Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B009KF05D8 | Format: EPUB
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel Description
A gleeful and exhilarating tale of global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, rollicking adventure, and the secret to eternal life - mostly set in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore.
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone - and serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days on the job, Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead "checking out" impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he's embarked on a complex analysis of the customers' behavior and roped his friends into helping to figure out just what's going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore.
With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the 21st century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that's rare to the world of literary fiction. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like: an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave, a modern-day cabinet of wonders ready to give a jolt of energy to every curious listener, no matter the time of day.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 41 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: October 2, 2012
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B009KF05D8
I had placed this book on my "want" list as soon as I read a blurb about it some months ago. The concept was one that I hoped would not let me down. It didn't. Not one bit.
Number one, Mr. Sloan writes well. Number two, he can tell an enjoyable story. Number three, he understands that the past still has meaning in the present (and the future).
The story is deeply simple: a semi-secret society is trying to translate a five-hundred year old encoded volume in order to learn the secret to immortality. The robe wearing members race to be the first to do the decoding. This society recruits new novices through a series of bookstores.
Aside: the first minute I spent in Mr. Penumbra's was grand; just like the first moment I spent in a "real" antiquities type of bookstore over half a century ago. I still remember the smell of those books and it wafted through the room as I read this book (in a room with nearly two thousand books).
Our protagonist, Clay Jannon, goes to work in Mr. Penumbra's bookstore and proceeds, as Mr. Penumbra, hoped/knew he would, to break the rules Mr. P. had laid down. Clay has friends of the type we all need to have when we need help or money or extra brains or a date. This is a reminder that, for most of us, there are many fictional elements to the story.
Clay and his army somewhat secretly seek to bring the five-hundred year old book into synch with the present and put all the resources of google at work to decode it. All that follows is then devoted to that effort. I found myself turning the pages faster than I would have liked and the end came too soon.
Comparisons are made on the back cover of the ARC to Haruki Murakami and Neal Stephenson.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore is two books woven together. In one book, Clay Jannon happens upon a secret book cult while working at a mysterious store run by the eponymous Mr. Penumbra. In the other book, author Robin Sloan hijacks his characters' voices in order to deliver introductory lessons on font type, The Singularity, immortality, and anything else that happens to interest him.
If it sounds like that last sentence is being written in an annoyed tone, you're only getting half of my emotions. The truth is, I enjoy Sloan's viewpoints and his interests. The way they are written and explained is--like the rest of the book--not only entertaining but even gripping. This is because Sloan employs a casual voice throughout the book that makes you feel like you're hanging out with him at a coffee shop in downtown San Francisco. Sloan sits across from the reader for the entire book and doesn't let the written words overtake what is being said.
Having explained that, I must admit that annoyance is definitely there. These scenes of history and theory are not fit neatly into the narrative of the main plot: which involves the mystery of the cult. Instead they take place at odd interludes--while characters are having drinks or going out on dates. The reader rarely understands why these characters are talking about these things and many of the subjects raised do not have a bearing on the plot.
They could have! The most interesting conversation Sloan starts is a much more subtle one. It involves the question of "Digital versus Physical" (this was particularly ironic for me, reading the book on a Kindle) and gives some startling examples of what cannot be done with all of our vast technology that CAN be done through tactile sensation.
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