171. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
Rating: ☆☆☆1/2
Recommended by:
Author: Robin Sloan
Genre: Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery
288 pages, published October 2, 2012
Reading Format: Audiobook on Hoopla
Summary
The Great Recession finds protagonist Clay Jannon working in the San Francisco bookshop known as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Clay soon discovers that there is more to Mr. Penumbra and his bookstore than meets the eye. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything, instead “checking out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the enigmatic Mr. Penumbra. A curious Clay and his archetypical friends (including a love interest who works for Google) embark on an adventure to discover the secrets hidden inside Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.
Quotes
“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this: A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines — it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”
“…this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”
“Why does the typical adventuring group consist of a wizard, a warrior, and a rogue, anyway? It should really be a wizard, a warrior, and a rich guy. Otherwise who’s going to pay for all the swords and spells and hotel rooms?”
“But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn’t be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.”
“You know, I’m really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.”
“I’ve never listened to an audiobook before, and I have to say it’s a totally different experience. When you read a book, the story definitely takes place in your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes.”
“Let me give you some advice: make friends with a millionaire when he’s a friendless sixth-grader.”
“So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. Our friendship is a nebula.”
“Have you ever played Maximum Happy Imagination?”
“Sounds like a Japanese game show.”
Kat straightens her shoulders. “Okay, we’re going to play. To start, imagine the future. The good future. No nuclear bombs. Pretend you’re a science fiction writer.”
Okay: “World government… no cancer… hover-boards.”
“Go further. What’s the good future after that?”
“Spaceships. Party on Mars.”
“Further.”
“Star Trek. Transporters. You can go anywhere.”
“Further.”
“I pause a moment, then realize: “I can’t.”
Kat shakes her head. “It’s really hard. And that’s, what, a thousand years? What comes after that? What could possibly come after that? Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.”
“… nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment – maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere.”
My Take
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was an entertaining audio book (I especially enjoyed the voice of narrator Ari Fliakos). The characters are engaging, there is an appealing fantasy oriented plot and there is a nice little romantic connection between the main character and a charming girl from Google. However, while it was enjoyable to listen to at the time, once finished, it fades quickly, leaving not much to remember. A far superior book in this genre is Ready Player One.
