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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 1 post · 41 views
By Lynn · 1 post · 41 views
last updated Jun 20, 2025 08:37AM
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Schedule for January 2013 - June 2013
By Sherry , Doyenne · 1 post · 234 views
By Sherry , Doyenne · 1 post · 234 views
last updated Dec 04, 2012 04:40AM
What book was so riveting that you missed your stop, forgot to turn the oven off, or otherwise completely lost track of time?
By Portia · 64 posts · 158 views
By Portia · 64 posts · 158 views
last updated Jun 26, 2013 08:47AM
What I'm Reading - July/August 2017
By Mary Anne · 174 posts · 83 views
last updated Sep 01, 2017 05:46PM
What Members Thought
You could argue that Robin Sloan has stacked the deck in his own favor by writing a book that is an unabashed celebration of ???
Why is that sentence hard to finish? It's because "Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" is not just a celebration of "books", or "reading", or "the written word", or "the pleasures of quirky old bookstores", or "digitized content", or "Google books", or "the aesthetics of a particularly pleasing font", or "the printing press and everything that resulted from its invention", ...more
Why is that sentence hard to finish? It's because "Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" is not just a celebration of "books", or "reading", or "the written word", or "the pleasures of quirky old bookstores", or "digitized content", or "Google books", or "the aesthetics of a particularly pleasing font", or "the printing press and everything that resulted from its invention", ...more
I really loved the beginning of this book - mysterious bookstores, even more mysterious readers, secret societies, programmers, codes. It almost feels like the author got tired or handed it to someone else to finish because the magic fizzles and suddenly everything seems ridiculous. I had to push to finish all the way to the end. I didn't even review it for a few days. Blasphemy!
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I liked the book, but didn't love it. I mostly kept going because I swear I've read a part of this story before somewhere--like I read an excerpt in the New Yorker or I had an English class with the author or something. It was driving me nuts. I still not sure why I had such deja vu, but it doesn't matter. It was an interesting plot, well-written. I don't think I've read a book recently with so much current culture--Google, House of Leaves, NSA, Dumbo, etc. It was weird to feel so connected to i
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Well, this was short and sweet, mixing some of my favorite things: books, fonts, Google and, ooh, intrigue. (Yeah, somehow it works, though not in the typical fashion.) The narrator falls upon a strange bookstore, open 24 hours and applies for a job. The books are all in code and the sparse customers, take out one book at a time, in a certain sequence, explicit details of each customer are kept in logs. The narrator's curiousity leads him to a secret society and, ultimately, to the meaning of li
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Fun!
I really enjoyed this entertaining story. I listened to it while I worked through DIY home issues, so the puzzle solving aspect helped my mentality just a little. I think later (a few years or decades down the road) this book may appear dated, but I enjoyed it and found the writing funny, entertaining, and engaging. The characters were likable and enjoyable.
Three stars out of five. This book was enjoyable and I liked the plot, but I feel like it wanted to be more ambitious than it was.
Surprisingly fun read full of wacky characters, larger than life technology, old books, and a puzzle.
Sep 07, 2012
Jade17
marked it as to-read
Oct 08, 2012
Kristin
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Oct 14, 2012
David
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Oct 26, 2012
Robert
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Dec 14, 2012
Debbie
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Mar 27, 2013
Kel
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May 17, 2014
Becca
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Aug 29, 2015
Jennifer
marked it as to-read
Sep 05, 2017
Shelley Giusti
marked it as to-read
