{"id":615,"date":"2013-03-11T10:00:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T18:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/?p=615"},"modified":"2013-03-04T15:41:45","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T23:41:45","slug":"mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-review-on-goodreads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/11\/mr-penumbras-24-hour-bookstore-review-on-goodreads\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore– review on Goodreads"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mr.<\/a>Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore<\/a> by Robin Sloan<\/a><\/p>\n

My rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

So here\u2019s another book about books. Not a bad thing, not at all, as I love books about books. Lately, thanks to the internet and all those Amazonian algorithms, I’ve been reading more and more books about books\u2014each one leads me to another. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s some deep seated spirituality that can be gleaned from this kind of thing. So even if, in the end, Mr. Penumbra\u2019s 24 Hour Bookstore<\/em> isn’t, actually, about books, that it\u2019s considered to be about books will nevertheless leads me to other books that are.<\/p>\n

Do you follow me? No? No matter. This was a fun read anyway. I read it one day, more or less, a feat that requires free time (I was on vacation) a decent writing style (Robin Sloan\u2019s sentence crafting is fine) and a compelling plot (it\u2019s a book about a puzzle). I’ve seen other reviews compare Penumbra\u2019s<\/em> to The Da Vinci Code<\/em>, The Shadow of the Wind<\/em>, and The Name of the Rose<\/em>. (Let me add Ready Player One<\/em> to that list). I\u2019ll agree to those comparisons with a grain of salt, like I said above, in as much as it means people will be led to this book and others of the same ilk if we allow the comparison.<\/p>\n

Because in the end, there\u2019s not much of a puzzle at Mr. Penumbra\u2019s, more of a mystery, which is fine. I do like how Sloan uses the internet as a thing and<\/em> the internet as a theme to sort of modernize a philosophy of what it means to be creative. I liked the allusion to Erasmus, and even though it was a bit one-dimensional, I liked the earnestness of the characters.<\/p>\n

There were a few things along the way that were not handled well\u2014pretty much everything the book mentioned about Google was just silly, especially the big brute-force puzzle-solving fiasco near the end. (Spoiler alert\u2014they fail to break the code, but I can tell you from even my limited knowledge of puzzlecraft that, actually, a brute-force approach would have worked, given the actual final solution). Major flaw? Sure, if this was just a book about a puzzle. But if you let the book be more about other themes, about the human condition, how people are the real resource of interconnectedness, I suppose such flaws can be overlooked.<\/p>\n

I overlooked them for The Da Vinci Code<\/em> and Ready Player One<\/em>, and Penumbra\u2019s better written than those, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan My rating: 4 of 5 stars So here\u2019s another book about books. Not a bad thing, not at all, as I love books about books. Lately, thanks to the internet and all those Amazonian algorithms, I’ve been reading more and more books about books\u2014each one leads me to … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore– review on Goodreads”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p24y52-9V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bukkhead.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}