Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

By Robin Sloan

  • Release Date: 2012-10-02
  • Genre: Literary Fiction
4.5 Score: 4.5 (From 1,678 Ratings)

Book Synopsis

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 twenty-first 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 reader, no matter the time of day.

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Latest Impressions

  • Great at first…

    2
    By heyyyjesssie
    This book was so interesting from the very beginning and I wanted to read more, but it completely flopped in the middle. The author kept writing about how one character works at Google. Then it became a book about Google and how Google is so great .. blah blah blah and all the geeky terminology. Honestly this whole book is about the Google company. It was pretty annoying to read and took away from the mystery of the book shop. I am only half way done because I lost interest. It’s bad when you have to force yourself to finish a book.
  • 5 Stars

    5
    By The Bam Master 5000
    Delightful, fascinating, magical. Got into the story right away.
  • Can a book be awesome AND adorable at the same time?

    5
    By asapr212
    This is a perfect COVID-19 getaway. Fun, well written and thought provoking (if you let it be) I loved it from first page to last. No, it’s not Hemingway or King or Gaiman ... it’s just its own fabulous thing. Enjoy!
  • Wonderful

    5
    By johnthebassist1807
    Simple in the best way. I really enjoyed this book. If you like the first chapter you won’t be let down.
  • Entertaining, but ultimately too light-weight...

    3
    By KevinRubin
    This is an entertaining book, a light-weight take on the theme of secret societies. It starts with the main character, Clay, in San Francisco, out of work and wandering by a quaint, used bookstore with a “help wanted” sign in the window. He passes the unusual job interview with the eccentric owner, Mr. Penumbra, and begins working the night shift, 10pm to 6am. He can’t help but notice that the store hardly sells any books at all, but that there’s a creepy set of “customers” who return and borrow books from the way back stacks, and he’s required to log each of them, describing the patrons, what they’re wearing, how they’re acting, etc. A visiting friend of his one night convinces him to break the rules and look at one of the way back books, and that, combined with his boredom and writing a computer program to model the bookstore, starts the adventure. Dating a young woman from Google, he enlists her help, plus the varied skills of other friends, trying to use Google’s massive computing resources into solving a five century old puzzle from the books that’s eluded scholars since the dawn of the printing press. It does remind me of an experience I had as a teenager in a bookstore in Whittier, CA. It was a creepy bookstore, used books jumbled all over, no rhyme or reason to them. I managed to find a small stack of fantasy books, and when I went to pay, the clerks behind the counter started to count them up, then just sort of said, “ah, never mind, Merry Christmas!” that I could just take them, no charge. My parents and I were puzzled and figured, the store may have been a front for something…. Who knows… Anyway, “Mr. Penumbra’s” is a quick read, and a little disappointing as the secret society just isn’t menacing enough to create any tension on Clay’s journey through the book.
  • I can’t tell you how much I loved this boom

    5
    By Miss_sassyfrass
    There just aren’t enough of the right words and I’m not talented enough to put the ones I do have into the right order. Just... read it
  • So fun...

    5
    By bolderright
    Fast-paced lark. (Okay for kids other than one mention of naked girlfriend breathing hard.)
  • A bookish speculative fiction mystery

    4
    By Venice Native
    And charming from beginning to end. I'm going to read everything Mr. Sloan writes. I highlighted so many passages that touched me or I thought were especially well-put.
  • Way too much fun

    5
    By Marina Ariadne
    The last time a book pushed so many of my interest buttons was in 1987: Charles de Lint’s Moonheart. Worked for a rarebook research library out of college (one of the two best jobs in my life), studied calligraphy, lived up the block from a digital typesetter—in the 1970s!—my SCA persona was from the Tudor period, when Aldine books would have been available, and read a wide variety of topics, and had the books to prove it. How could I not find this interesting? There was a bit of a wobble toward the end, but the only thing I didn’t like was that the folks on the email list forgot to mention that the (physical) cover glows in the dark. Startled me good one night. Now I have both versions. Can’t get ebooks signed, nor lend them around.
  • Fantastic

    5
    By Lwdz
    High brow concepts but still an easy read. I loved it and was sad to see it end!