Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)
by Robin Sloan
For bibliophiles and those with an interest in the history of typography, this book is a must-read! But beware if you are over thirty years old! For this is a book of tweet-short sentences; a world of google coders and vegan oatmeal cookies; a world of women who are called girls, where they are admired multiple times for their micro-muscles to be contrasted to the micro wrinkles of older women; a world where the hero says things like:“I am really into the type of girl you can impress with a prototype.” Indeed, this is a world where the hero remarks on his "spider senses tingling" because of course, these are gamers, coders and fantasy novel readers.
As the one of the characters remarks, “If this sounds impressive to you, you’re over thirty.”
Yep, I am over thirty! And I was impressed!
A well-known science writer recently tweeted how he felt his daily tweets were a form of writing discipline; for to get your thoughts down under 280 characters is hard work. The author of this novel, a former employee of Twitter, proves the point with dazzlingly minimalist sentences. In fact, I typically don’t prefer minimalist, journalistic style writing but I think when it’s well done --like here-- it can be really a great pleasure to read. This book clips along! Beautifully written, the writer is also funny and clever.
Like this:
“Kat gushes about Google's projects, all revealed to her now. They are making a 3-D web browser. They are making a car that drives itself. They are making a sushi search engine -- here she pokes a chopstick down at our dinner -- to help people find fish that is sustainable and mercury-free. They are building a time machine. They are developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.”
The book is surprising. Not at all a cookie-cutter MFA graduate type of novel (as I was suspecting given the New York Times review for a first time novelist). It deals with big ideas. It also talks a lot about old books and typography. My favorite font is garamond and now I know that garamond stretches all the way back to Renaissance Venice, to a man called Aldus Manutius.
https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/...
New York Times reviewer complained (along with a few other reviews I read) about its neat and tidy plot-- "too convenient..." I was all set to hate that since by nature I dislike efficiency in anything, but I found the end to be less convenience and more fairy tale. I loved the book.
Planning to read his latest book soon. Bravo!
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