Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel (edition 2012)

Utterly delightful and imaginative. Hope this is a show if some sort!! ( )

Really enjoyed reading it, but the ending did not satisfy. Too many important details left dangling:
How did the founder know how to arrange the reading sequence to create the shape?
What was in the books anyway?
The great reveal was bound to be vastly disappointing to the heavily-invested participants, yet they took it so calmly. ( )

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan 4 stars

Delightful! Such a good book-the plot is fantastical and fantastic: Clay loses his job and comes to work as a night clerk in Mr. Penumbra's bookstore. From tall, shadowy bookshelves containing strange books to mysterious customers that are logged with great attention to detail, this story just unfolds and doesn't stop! I liked the mix of high-tech and print books. There is a quest and some quirky characters help in the fun. Google features prominently in the story in a good way. There is romance that actually plays out like they sometimes do in real life. My only critique is the writing style is a little stark, I would have liked more showing instead of telling the story but all in all a great read that would be a fantastic movie. 4 stars. ( )

A delightfully fun story of an out of work designer who gets a job as the night clerk in a strange bookstore. It's strange because it only rarely sells any books. But regularly, strange people people come into to borrow strange books from high on the shelves of the strange bookstore. ( )

I liked aspects of the book, there were parts that were interesting to me, but as a whole it was a bit of a disappointment compared to the amount of hype it's received. It was okay, but not spectacular.

I did enjoy the books eclectic characters, and the main plot was a fun read. A bit odd, but it did make it worth reading. I just found that while the plot was fun and eccentric, it seemed to lack in depth and I found that it didn't come together well. I felt like there was a big piece of the story missing to make everything come together. I also found the book went overboard in mentioning things like, "Google", it began to feel like I was reading something sponsored by the company, rather than a book. And while the character were eccentric and fun to read about at times, they weren't very concrete characters, and where rather one sided - none of them are all to memorable and they were, at times somewhat stereotypical.

The narrative and writing were fine, and overall I did enjoy the book, but it wasn't a spectacular read like I thought it would be.

Also found on my book review blog Jules' Book Reviews - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore ( )