Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

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Characters edit see section history

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• Clay Jannon: The novel's protagonist, an art school graduate and curious night clerk at Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.
• Ajax Penumbra: Owner of a very narrow but tall bookstore shelving a collection of mysterious books.
• Oliver Grone: Book clerk at Penumbra's while in graduate student at Berkeley seeking a doctorate in archaeology hoping to be a museum curator. Clay relieves him at the bookstore.
• Mathew Mittelbrand: One of Clay's roommates who works on special effects at Industrial Light and Magic.
• Ashley Adams: Clay and Mat are renters in her apartment. She is employed as an account executive at a PR agency.
• Kat Potente: Clay's girlfriend, he met when she came into the bookstore. She current works at Google as a programmer.
• Neel Shah: Clay's best friend since sixth grade who is very rich after staring a successful company.
• Rosemary Lapin: A member of the Unbroken Spine described as "the little eccentric that could."
• Aldus Manutius: Printer and publisher in 14th Century Venice; founded the fellowship of the Unbroken Spine; motto was 'festina lente.'
• Griffo Gerritszoon: Developer of the typeface Gerritszoon, the most used type in the world. Manutius' first disciple.
• Clark Moffat: author of "The Dragon-Song Chronicles."
• Cheryl: secretary ar Consolidated Universal Long-Term Storage.
• Marcus Corvina: Former friend of Penumbra; CEO of the Festina Lente Company and the Unbroken Spine's First Reader.
• Igor: Hacker/programmer employed at Neel's company.
• Mohammad Al-Asmari: Previous owner of Penumbra's bookstore, then bearing his name; mentor to both Penumbra and Corvina.
• Mr. Fedorov: Member of the Unbroken Spine.
• Muriel: Member of the Unbroken Spine.
• Tabitha Trudeau: Oliver's girlfriend and deputy director of the California Museum of Knitting Arts and Embroidery Sciences.
• Edgar Deckle: Former clerk at Penumbra's bookstore and currently the gatekeeper to the Reading Room for the Unbroken Spine.
• Maurice Tyndall: Member of the Unbroken Spine.
• Mr. Imbert: Member of the Unbroken Spine.
• Eric: Courier for the Unbroken Spine.
• Grumble: Hacker alias who has been involved in the pirating and scanning books.
• Raj: Kat's co-worker at Google and current member of management. Clay is jealous of Raj when Raj and Kat are together.

Quotes edit see section history

• “Inside: imagine the shape and volume of a normal bookstore turned up on its side. This place was absurdly narrow and dizzyingly tall, and the shelves went all the way up -- three stories of books. I craned my neck back (why do bookstores always force you to do uncomfortable things with your neck?) and the shelves faded smoothly into the shadows in a way that suggested they might just go on forever.”

  Narrator

• “The shelves were packed close together, and it felt like I was standing at the border of a forest -- not a friendly California forest, either, but an old Transylvanian forest, a forest full of wolves and witches, and dagger-wielding bandits all waiting just beyond moonlight's reach.”

  Narrator

• “His inventory is eclectic; there's no evidence of pattern or purpose other than, I suppose, his own personal taste. So, no teenage wizards or vampire police here. That's a shame, because this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”

  Narrator

• “Penumbra's customers are, in fact, exactly the kind of people you'd see in coffee shops, working through one-sided chess problems or solving Saturday crosswords with blue ballpoints pressed perilously hard into the newsprint.”

  Narrator

• “I wonder if this silence and solitude might actually be damaging my brain.”

  Clay Jannon

• “Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful to have a job, to sit in this chair, to quietly accrue dollars (not that many) that I can use to pay my rent, to buy pizza slices and iPhone apps. But I used to work in an office; I used to work on a team. Here it's just me and bats. (oh, I know there are bats up there.)”

  Clay Jannon

• “Have they all bought Kindles? I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering. Traitor! -- but come on, I have a lot of first chapters to get through.”

  Clay Jannon

• “But Ruby, my language of choice since NewBagel, was invented by a cheerful Japanese programmer, and it reads like friendly, accessible poetry. Billy Collins by way of Bill Gates.”

• “This is an interesting girl. Kat's utter directness suggests home-schooling, yet she is also completely charming.”

  Narrator

• “Each big idea like that is an operating system upgrade. Writers are responsible for some of it. They say Shakespeare invented the internal monologue.”

  Kat Potente

• “If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages.”

  Narrator

• “If I made five million dollars selling books, I'd want people to carry me around in a palanquin constructed from first editions of The Dragon-Song Chronicles.”

  Narrator

• “Well, actually, I love books because books are my best friends.”

  Rosemary Lapin

• “After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”

  Narrator (Clay Jannon)

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: The novel's primary setting where Clay is employed.
• New York City: Headquarters for the Unbroken Spine.
• San Francisco

Organizations edit see section history

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• Unbroken Spine: A bibliophile cult, which includes members that frequently request Waybacklist books.
• The Festina Lente Company: Licenses the typeface Gerritszoon and handles e-book copyright infringement cases, which funds the Unbroken Spine's operations.
• Google: Google, Inc. is a mult-national technology company based in Mountain View, California. It made its name as an internet search engine but has since branched out into email, operating systems and computer hardware. Its mission statement, 'to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful' contributes to the themes of the novel. Kat Potente, Clay Jannon's love interest, is a data visualization expert at Google.
• Industrial Light And Magic (ILM): Is a motion picture special effects company founded by film producer George Lucas. It is headquarted at the historic Presidio in San Francisco. Mat Mittelbrand, one of Clay Jannon's roommates, works at ILM as a prop and set designer.
• Consolidated Universal Long-Term Storage (Con-U): The largest advanced off-site storage facility housing artifacts west of the Mississippi River.
• California Museum of Knitting Arts and Embroidery Sciences: Location of an Accession Table, which is an enormous database that tracks all artifacts in all museums everywhere.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Waybacklist: Clay's name for the mysterious books the furthest away from the store front shelves, both in height and depth, that can't be found in any external computer database.
• Matrapolis: Mathew's miniature city created from household items which sprawls within the apartment's living room.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Robin Sloan (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Finalist, 2012: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, Shortlist)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3619.L6278M77
• Dewey: 813.6

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Mystery & Thrillers › Thrillers › Technothrillers
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

More Books Like This edit see section history