Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is the debut novel by Robin Sloan, and a publishing sensation - it was Amazon's Best Book of the Month in October 2012, and received a lot of attention and praise from reviewers, authors and readers. No wonder - who wouldn't want a 24-hour book store?The novel aspires to be classified as a "literary mystery", or an "intelligent thriller" - both labels are somewhat insulting by suggesting that mysteries and thrillers are by default a lower tier of literature, and

What the fuck did I just read??????

Authors are magicians. I was in the early pages of Mr. Penumbra when I realized that Sloan was sneaking in a major chain of events in only a few short paragraphs with the intention of moving the story to where he needed it. It was the authorial equivalent of "look, nothing up my sleeve" in preparation of a hat trick. Rather than irritation from this momentary flap of curtain or glimpse of rabbit ear, I was rather captivated.Thinking back on books I've loved or hated, it occurs to me that in that...

Meh - 1.5 stars because the plot was interesting enough that I finished the book and there were some funny moments. While Mr. Sloan is imaginative and quick witted it does not make up for poor writing and boring characters. The book is just bad first person narrative. This would be an acceptable as a Syfy Saturday movie but not for a novel.For example "It's early in the morning. We came straight from the airport. Neel visits Manhattan all the time for business and I used to take the train down f...

This book reminded me of Ready Player One a lot. I think fans of that book will enjoy this one. The ideas may not have been as tight in this one, but pop culture, book, and computer geeks should enjoy this.

Forgive me, people, this review will be all gushing! This book charmed me from the very beginning -- with fresh internal monologues, from Clay Jannon, a recent unemployed young man, who just lost his first job out of art school... Then he walks into a bookstore (OMG BOOKSTORE!!) and he climbs the ladder, and I'm in love. How could I not? This book is a love letter for books, bibliophiles, but also for technology. We know that the world of books, publishings, and reading have changed in the recen...

HOLY MOLY, BATMAN, EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS. I am actually so excited to write this review... I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO SAY!Because I have so many thoughts, let's do this bullet-point style.- This story was so positive and mood-uplifting! Geez. I never felt that horrible dread you feel sometimes when you're reading: that loss of faith with the author where you ask the horrible question "Is the author going to screw this all up?" All throughout reading the book there were moments where I felt the...

I am so happy that we happened to be walking past the booth were Robin Sloan was signing, and someone was holding up a copy of the attractive ARC trying to lure people onto the line (which I now see the cover has been added to the book on goodreads, the book looks better than the picture suggests). This is good and I'm thinking if the world has any fairness at all this will be a fairly good selling book this fall. In a perfect world this would go blasting up the sales charts and topple the Fifty...

suuuuper fun! this book is going to sell like gangbusters when it comes out in october. mostly because each and every one of you reading this review are going out and getting yourselves a copy. this is a command. you like books, right? yes, you do, because you are a member of goodreads. and this book is about books! and puzzles! and adventure! there's not a whole lot that's better than that.it is shades of Salamander and The Grand Complication: A Novel and If on a Winter's Night a Traveler and T...

I have just lost the will to live. Have spent two hours writing a review of this brilliant book and then saved it but somehow Goodreads managed to lose it . Will probably kill someone if i sit here any longer so am off to the gym to do something sweaty, noisy and pointless and maybe will try again later. Very f***ing annoyed. Bye for now....................its a brilliant book by the way. I hate the 21st Century sometimes'Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in''All t...

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of those books that appears to have the perfect blend of ingredients for something brilliant. It's a mystery/adventure set in San Francisco, revolving around an out-of-work marketeer and web designer who takes a job as a clerk at the odd little bookshop of the title. He soon realises that there is more to Mr. Penumbra's than meets the eye, and together with a group of his friends, he embarks on a mission to get to the bottom of the shop's real purpose. Wha...

Ugh, not recommended. I considered stopping reading several times, but it was such a quick read that I just sped on through.The novel made a dramatization of numerous topics that I do feel like I have a bit of expertise around - San Francisco, Googlers, data visualization, encryption - and the book's representation came off as a shallow, borderline painful overt dramatization. It seemed ridiculous. I know little of the author's background, but the novel itself gave the impression of too strong a...

DNF @ 48%Just... so very boring. There's literally a MAGIC BOOKSTORE this should be AMAZING. But instead it wastes time on:- a protagonist so boring I've forgotten his name- a manic-pixie-nerd-girl who's soooo down-to-earth guys (she seriously only owns 10 replicas of the same shirt because she just DOESNT care about fashion and she works for Google, she's just super chill, okay??) - random my-roommates-are-making-out-drama- a bunch of technobabble about how because of Kindle and Nook books will...

A mysterious old bookstore with some kind of secret society to be infiltrated and unraveled? Cool! Except, alas, here we have a fun premise ruined by bullshit nerdbro execution.1. An everyman nerd protagonist with no personality beyond a degree in design and deep knowledge of the internet whose main development is his realization he has talented friends who are more interesting than he is. Congrats?2. A best friend whose company does boob physics for video games and whose major contribution to d...

The first third of it was promising, then everything about it petered out. The Harry Potter meets techie vibe began ok, but got tedious. A romance started off interestingly, then quickly wallowed. The same for the author's philosophical ruminations on book love in all its forms: print, ebook, audio. Be it characters, settings, or situations, all started interesting, then turned into duds. I skimmed through the last third, finished it only because I'd started it.The audio book reader, however, wa...

Should probably be two stars, but I feel mean and petty today. Sorry, Mr. Sloan. It all just seemed so...amateur. I feel kind of pretentious saying that, which makes me sad, because there's nothing I hate more than pretentious book reviews. It's just a mess of worn-out tropes and utterly unoriginal characters. Mysterious dusty bookshops and peculiar old men. I think Sloan tried to revamp that old line with some "hip" new technology stuff, but he just failed miserably. He almost made me hate Goog...

Well, I can't say I've been charmed by a book more in a while, and jealous I didn't write it. This is a totally hipster book that rings all my bells, I feel like it sort of summarizes the zeitgeist of our internet generation, the gap between old and new.Basically the main character, Clay, is unemployed tech guy, gets a job in a run-down bookstore that has a mysterious agenda that he can't help but get roped into. I'm a sucker for secret societies, and there's a touch of Amelie whimsey that is ri...

Rating: 3.9* of five The Book 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 bookstoreThe 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 a...

OK, I'm going to try something different with this review...a bit of snark!I have been wanting to read this one for so long. I was enchanted about the idea of this 24 hour book store. A book about a bookstore, with book references...yeah! But what I got instead, was a drinking game. That's at least what I got out of this one. The story starts with Clay Jannon, who has lost his job at a bagel place where he is doing tech work and then goes to work at Mr. Penumbra's 24 hour book store. He tells hi...

This is not a review, it's a love letter.I adored this book. Why? It had a likeable narrator in Clay Jannon, a mysterious bookshop, romance, puzzles, secret societies, a San Francisco locale (with side trips to New York), and a sly sense of humor. The theme of Old Knowledge (books) vs. Internet knowledge gave the author the chance to slip in scenes at Google, a museum dedicated to knitting overrun by first graders, information about fonts, a character who made his fortune creating realistic 3-D