Talking Book Review

Book Review for the week of April 20, 2014.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Hello Fellow Readers!

I hope that this week’s review finds you as well as your reading going well.

ILAB’s book of the month is Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. To be honest, when I first heard the title of this book I really thought that it would be a boring and uninteresting read. I was sadly mistaken. 

Clay Jannon, an unemployed Web designer, takes a job working the graveyard shift at a 24-hour bookstore, owned by the strange Mr. Penumbra. The store is just as inscrutable, with two kinds of customers — random passers-by who stop in so rarely Clay wonders how the store is able to stay open and a furtive “community of people who orbit the store like strange moons. . . . They arrive with algorithmic regularity. They never browse. They come wide-awake, completely sober and vibrating with need.” These customers borrow from a mysterious set of books, which Clay has been warned not to read. He surrenders to his curiosity and discovers that the books are written in code. With the help of his roommate, a special effects artist; his best friend, a successful creator of “boob-simulation software”; and his romantic interest, Kat Potente, who works for Google in data visualization, our likable hero goes on a quest. He solves the Founder’s Puzzle, the origins of which are never clearly explained, using data visualization and distributed computing and stumbles upon an even bigger mystery: Mr. Penumbra has disappeared. Clay tracks him to New York, and in the city, the friends locate the Unbroken Spine, headquarters of a secret society.

I won’t be the one to spoil the one to spoil this book for you; if you haven’t read it already then I highly suggest you call Talking Books to order a copy of it to read. You won’t be disappointed…trust me!

Until next week…Happy Reading!!