Beth Bonini's Reviews > Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

3.75 stars

I was just sort of skimming through this one for a while, not at all sure if it was for me, when I was suddenly won over. Clever, funny and nerdy in the best sort of way, it takes elements of the adventure story and the quest story and melds them into something unexpected.

Written in 2012, when e-readers were all the rage and the ‘end of the book’ was being forecast with gloom or glee (depending on your POV), at first it seemed like this story was just going to be one big metaphor for why bookshops were going out of business. Just like the San Francisco based bookshop from which the novel takes its name, bookshops seemed like places catering to an eccentric few, and containing only arcane OK (‘old knowledge’). Compared to the shiny mind-bending possibilities of new tech, bookshops (and the physical books they traded in) seemed like a no longer viable format and a dusty relic. Not so.

I learned a few things - about Aldus Manutius, early books, typefaces, the accession table used by museums and archives and the inner workings of Google (maybe) - but mostly this was just an enjoyable romp with a likeable cast of characters. It’s a ‘book about books’, but not quite in the sense you might imagine.