LSSL 5385: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Soan, Robin. 2012. Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour bookstore.  New York: Macmillan. ISBN 9780374214913

Clay Jannon has lost his job and landed a new one climbing tall ladders to retrieve books in the middle of the night at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  After working there for a bit and upon closer inspection, it seems that the majority of “customers” are not even actually customers but borrowers.  They come in at all hours of the night, request books that take some digging to locate, and borrow them, later coming back for something different.  There is a mysterious log book in which Clay must record all of his observations surrounding all the store’s visitors, their loans, and anything else.  When Clay makes a friend who works for Google, he finds himself in a position to begin to unravel the mystery happening under his very eyes at the bookstore.  This ends up causing a snowball effect that leads Clay and his friends to New York, then all the way back to San Francisco, and buried in years of mysterious code that no one has ever been able to break.

I listened to the audio version of this book read by Ari Fliakos and enjoyed it immensely.  The narrator’s voice seemed to perfectly match the character of Clay Jannon which made the listening experience even more enjoyable as the story is written in first person.  I loved Sloan’s style, wit, and humor.  He had me chuckling throughout the entire story.  I will say that even though I enjoyed the audiobook, it is one you really can’t zone out due to the technicality of some of the content (technology, coding, etc).  I found myself rewinding a few times because my mind had wandered and I realized I didn’t know what they were talking about.  This book would appeal to anyone who enjoys code cracking espionage and a whole lot of wit.  This audiobook reminded me of the Magic 2.0 Series by Scott Meyer, one of my personal favorites.  Though Magic 2.0 contains time travel causing it to fall into a different genre, the writing, characters, and story content run along a similar vein and would likely both be of interest to the same audience.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was on the Language Arts list of Outstanding Books for the College Bound.