Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Executive Summary: This makes for a great summer read. It's light and fun, and a really quick read. As both a book and computer nerd, this hit a lot of my buttons.

Full Review
So I have something like 100 books on my “owned and unread” pile. I tend to read a mix of book club reads, just released books, and spur of the moment picks depending on my mood. I'm really bad about working off my backlog. I got this one as a Christmas gift from my sister a few years ago, and it's just been sitting unread on my bookshelf.

I took finally doing this as a group read with my side reads group to finally get me to pick it up. I'm really glad I did. It was a lot of fun.

It's a fairly short book, and I don't have a lot to say about it. The main character is fine, but I never really clicked with him. I liked most of the supporting characters better. For me what really hit home was the idea of this strange little bookshop that was really more of a library than a story.

The other elements that resonated with me were the uses of technology and just the San Francisco setting. My sister lives there, and I've visited her a few times now. There are elements of the city wound throughout this book that I probably would have glossed over had I not experienced them myself. Those things aren't really important to the story's plot, but makes me itching for my next visit.

I thought this book had a nice message, and I was happy with how the mysteries of the book were resolved. It's always refreshing to pick up a book that stands alone, especially one this short and feel satisfied. It seems like everything is stretched out into monster tomes of no less than 3 books. Then again, maybe that's just the result of me reading so much fantasy.

I don't read much contemporary fiction, but this one worked really well for me. I think most book nerds will find some things to like here.

The best way to describe it is as some sort of cross between a Dan Brown novel and a techno thriller with a snarky narrator and a D&D analog named “Rockets and Warlocks” tossed in for flavor. As interesting as this may sound, my reaction to it was a more or less resounding “meh”.

This book is about a down and out web designer named Clay who's last chance at putting supper on the table is a job at an odd book store that he just happens to pass by. Of course the book store turns out to be more than what it seems. Its actually a front for a secret society of what amounts to code breakers, and Clay brings all his technology whiz buddies to bear in cracking the centuries old code that consumes the lives of the code breakers.

I really wanted to like this book, and one interesting thing about it was the way it brought together elements of an old fashioned, mystical, secret society with the technology of google, and the internet age in general. And the plot pacing was pretty good, good enough to keep me reading through the end anyway. However . . .

In the beginning the prose alternated from being readable to being really clunky. Most of this was smoothed out by the beginning of the second though. I wasn't kidding when I said the book was sort of like a Dan Brown novel. I'm not going to give the end away, but if you have read either Angels and Demons or The DaVinci Code its not hard to guess the gist of the ending of Mr. Penumbra. I guess there is more I could say about the characters, and especially what seemed to me to be the contrived (and painful) use of a fictional fantasy series as a necessary piece of the plot, but I think I'm going to stop there.

In summary, it wasn't a great read, but if there is a dearth of reading material this will keep you entertained for a while.

If you liked this review, check out other ones by me at http://lazerbrain.wordpress.com

It's a crude definition (books > movies), but this felt like the National Treasure for bibliophile computer nerds. As both of these things (I picked this up partly because the protagonist was described as a web designer), it was delightful. There's a mysterious ancient bookstore set in the Silicon Valley startup scene, a cast of genius coders and designers, references to both a fictional fantasy series and game, a dash of wry humor, a secret society, lots of code, espionage, and a hacker thrown in for good measure.

The protagonist is a privileged millennial assumed to be navigating an economic crash. All the characters are likeable. It feels a bit like the “least successful” friend in an extremely successful group writing with awe about how brilliant everyone else is and feeling inadequate.

Starts off a tad slow but not for long.

I was duped! I thought this would be a quirky little book about books. But it is just a book about quirky IT people and Google. Oh well....

I don't really read a whole lot of lighthearted, wholesome, easy flowing books. It's not that I prefer deep, reflective, contemplative books more, just that most of the time lighthearted books cause me to roll my eyes and get impatient. This book is another beast entirely, and it was an easy add to my favorites shelf for this year.

Without venturing into spoiler territory, the main character (Clay) takes a part time job at a 24-hour bookstore and meets Mr. Penumbra, the owner of the bookstore. Clay takes the overnight shift, and immediately starts meeting a strange cast of characters and set of rules he must abide by in his new position. Toss in liberal internal monologuing, a secret society, technology, visits to Google, obscure typography references to Geritszoon, and a wholesome message at the end, and this book managed to hit all the right notes for me.

It's not high literature, but I wasn't looking for high literature when I read it. This is a fun, geeky, quick read with a nice message that I really enjoyed. It's a charming book, not a lot of depth, but fun nonetheless. As a sidenote, I listened to the audiobook version of this and really appreciated the narrator's different voices, and the recorded bits from the audiobook the main character listened to near the end.

It Does Not Work That Way. None of it works that way! Not the technical stuff (the cryptography was particularly embarrassing). Nor the human-motivation stuff nor the relationships nor just anything. And it just kept annoying me more and more. There was one person to care about, maybe two, but even they were cardboard.

I’m betting this was written as a screenplay. Whiz-bang descriptions of computer animations and complicated artwork and stuff that has nothing to do with anything.

Meh.

I've been meaning to read this book since we bought it shortly after it came out in paperback. Instead, I kept finding other things to read. However, while on my vacation to Nashville, I was able to finally just lock out all the distractions and dive into the world of Mr. Penumbra's store. And, boy, I should have done this a long time ago. A very interesting, if quirky, story that I was a fan of from cover to cover. The ending was a bit odd, so it lost a star there, but I liked it pretty well anyway.

Thoroughly enjoyable. A light read, nothing world-changing, about a bookstore clerk's investigation into the unusual clientele of the unusual bookstore where he takes employment; I don't want to talk too much about the plot, since the enjoyment is in the protagonist's exploration.

The finest quality of the book is its prose. The author turns a phrase wonderfully. The writing is very modern, and here I want to highlight another excellent trait: it deals occasionally with very current technology, and in many other books this sort of thing is very forced, and sometimes makes me all but certain the writer hasn't the faintest idea what they're talking about. Not so here. Sloan writes about the technological aspects with facility, rendering them well for a technically-inclined audience and simultaneously accessible – I think – to those not so inclined. This is a rare feat. It's very genuine.

If I have any complaint it would be the rendering of Kat Potente, in that she feels a bit like nerd wish fulfillment: a brilliant, pretty girl who's into the protagonist. But she's also a very strong, smart female character, so there's that.

Quite liked this. A nice, well-written summer read.

I absolutely love this book! Sloan channels a Douglas Adams vibe that had me feeling nostalgic and comfortable from the offset, not to mention laughing my head off at times. Jannon is incredibly relatable and nearly all the characters are extremely lovable. I adored the equal love given to the old and the new, like books and e-readers. Mr. Penumbra's has become a fictional place that I would give a great deal to visit in real life.

2.5

Fun, enjoyable read with a unique premise.

A really fun read, combining history and technology together to solve a wordy mystery. Makes me want to alternately work in an independent bookstore like Penumbra's, and Google!

I liked the build up to the ending more than the actual ending, but it was still a good read. I could have done without the epilogue though.

The premise in the first couple of chapters of this book were great, then Kat walked in and I remembered that I hate the way many cis male authors write women. Every scene that involved Kat talking about google or tech period, came with a creepy inner monologue from Clay. Talking about how pretty her ears were and cute she looked in her shirt. He fetishized her nerdy attributes and turned all of it sexual from the moment she appeared in the book. Her character, well all of the characters really, were just poorly fleshed out plot devices. I did find it funny that Kat had a dream of a disembodied digital sublime, when all it took was a pandemic to get us there. It seemed like the author lost steam while writing this book so the ending was anticlimactic and honestly a major let down. The second star I'm giving this book is solely for the one liners in the first 2 chapters.

An absolutely charming book. For everyone who loves adventure, books, and a little mystery.

This had a secret society, mystery, a generally likeable main character, and a side romance that i thought was cute, and it satisfied the part of me that craves romance lol

Clay Jannon shuffles into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore in search of a job and discovers another world. Clay mans the bookstore during the long hours of the night shift and is surprised to learn that there are very few real customers. Instead, the same people return regularly and, rather than buying books, check them out. A mysterious bookstore. A mysterious society. Seeking a mysterious secret hidden through the ages in books. Mysterious.

Clay is intrigued and draws on the knowledge of new and old friends to solve the mysteries.

I was delighted with this little story. Fun. Mysterious, of course. And ultimately satisfying.

This book was an amazing blend of so many different elements that it felt almost perfect. It's a lot like Dan Brown's books except not as gripping, however, interesting. It's got some elements that go deep, while some you could just skim through. I liked the modern-day-relatable factor that it had as the narrator is like so many of us twenty-something people in the current day and age trying hard to find a place in the world.
All in all, a good read.

Not quite sure how to rate this one. 2.5 stars? 2.75? Do I round up and make it 3? If I were basing it solely on most the first section, it'd be 3 stars or more. Lots of promise there. To start with, the story is set in a bookstore. What better place could there be? And there's mystery. And weird goings-on. And odd characters. Fun things that you know all link together and you want to know when and how and why. Granted the writing was a little simple and didn't always flow, but that could be hand waved away if the story is distracting enough. And it was. Until Google and the supposed love interest plopped themselves into the middle of the story and hung on for dear life. The story quickly dissolved into not much more than a love letter to the great search engine of the west with the occasional tangent to the Kindle. None of that added anything to the story and the longer they occupied good story real estate, the easier it was to set this book down. Not a good thing to happen in part 2 of a 3 part story. Part 3 picked up slightly for a moment or two, though I think more because of a couple of character introductions than anything story wise. Then, it fizzled out like a sparkler being stuck in a bucket of sand. What probably should have been an exciting, fast paced adventure to retrieve the font punches from the Warehouse 13-esque desert library felt like a walk out to your car to get the bag of chips that fell out of a grocery bag. The resolution to the great mystery was insubstantial, without any real depth or even a real Aha! moment. I really wish the last chapter had been more showing the reader what happened rather than a long tell me everything monologue. I think I just wanted more than was crammed into the short number of pages. For now - 3 stars. Because at it's heart, it's still about books.

I started this book because City Lights has about 1000 copies of it.

I love any book about San Francisco. Even just when it's referenced or when it's the backdrop of stories.I love living here and I love the city so much that when it's loved by someone else, it just makes me happy.

That being said, I did not like this books that much. I like the general storyline of a weird book store that has that has a secret that the main character has to solve. San Francisco is a great place to have that story, so many of the homes are so old and creepy and beautiful. I think it's a perfect set up. That being said, they fell victim to the Silicon Valley mindset.

So much of this book was just talking about Google and raving about Google and I just really did not like that. The society was so old and beautiful, and I like that Google didn't solve it, but I didn't like how intertwined it was into the story. I like the hacker guy that I can't remember his name but other than that I did not love the “googlers” (that's what they got them in the book)

Overall, I'm glad I read it. It was fun and interesting and I liked how deep the world felt. I like the meaning at the end and I think it wrapped up pretty. That being said, I think it lost points on missing out on how beautiful and wonderful San Francisco is in a local sense rather than just being a home of silicon valley Idiots.

3.2

2.5
I liked the first 60ish% and was entertained but the rest was such a slog to get through. So much unnecessary stuff/details in here that it dragged on and on - very lackluster end. I agree with Kat - “that's it? That's all?”

Summary: When Clay Jannon takes the first job he can find after losing his old job to a recession, he has no idea what he is getting himself into. His new place of employment—Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore—seems at first to be little more than an oddly laid-out building with an eccentric owner, but as Clay continues to work there and to dig a little deeper into the goings on of the store, he starts to unravel a much larger mystery. This story delightful–the perfect combination of exciting and heartwarming.

I dug this! It was on the Alex list of adult books with teen appeal and I could definitely see nerdy teens enjoying this. But also nerdy adults. It reminded me a bit of [b:The Magicians 6101718 The Magicians (The Magicians, #1) Lev Grossman http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg 6278977] and also [b:The Da Vinci Code 968 The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) Dan Brown http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1303252999s/968.jpg 2982101]. (But I don't mean for the DaVinci Code comparison to be a dig, okay???) Fast paced and fun, and deeply rooted in a love of both books and technology. All the references to Google might seem outdated in a few years, who knows? So read it now.The audiobook was fine, and I thought it was cute that the author read the audiobook-within-the-audiobook.

i loved sourdough so i was disappointed. this just made me feel like rushing through to get to the end :( totally can see the comparisons to ready player one. it started out really promising and fell flat as more characters were introduced and the puzzle became unveiled. the main love interest felt like it came out of nowhere and only for the convenience of driving the plot.