Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

It's been a lo-ong time since I posted to this blog, but six years later I thought I'd try it again - partly inspired by something written at the end of this book.

Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.

For various reasons I've ended up with a few too many roadworks in my city, and it really is time that they finished what they were doing, packed up and let the roads open again - so let's see how we go. :)

I can't remember where I came across this book - maybe on a Wordery post, or just via an algorithmic recommendation somewhere - but I'm glad I did. It sounded like just what I needed, which, in general, is books about fabulous bookshops, and it turned out to be that and something else and something more, and it all worked. :)

Clay Jannon graduated from his art degree to find himself in a job as a website designer, and then to find himself made redundant in the recession, with nothing but a laptop as a severance package, and determination to find some kind of job. Somehow he ended up outside Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore, and going inside to apply for the job advertised on a sign in the window: "...I'd watch for Help Wanted signs in windows - which is not something you should really do, right? I should probably be more suspicious of those. Legitimate employers use Craigslist." My immediate thought was oh my, but I'm old, because I'm probably more likely to trust a sign in the window - a real person must have put it there! - than internet adverts.  But it also kept me reading, because here was a character with their feet firmly in the present - and maybe even the future.

And sure enough, Clay's world is not just dusty bookshops and art, it's computers and code and Google. In fact there's a lot of google, because another main character, Kat, works there, and there are references to company plans to develop self-driving cars (it was published in 2012), which they are - and other things which I've not heard of. The bookshop draws Clay into an ancient puzzle, but he is a child of the twenty-first century, with all the friends and connections that are made possible by that, and he uses threads from the past and the present - which in his world is very much tipping into the future - to try and solve that puzzle.  Okay, it helps that he has friends with serious amounts of money, and that would be my one niggle about the book, but on the other hand, it's good to see money being used like this rather than just piled up and spent on bling.

Clay is positive and energetic and thoughtful and witty, and the book has the same kind of energy to it, which made it a joy to read. It was thought-provoking (for me, anyway!), and made a really nice change from books where the focus is on people doing horrible things to each other - theft, betrayal, murder and the like - which seem to end up as the bulk of my fictional reading. Maybe I should start a Positive Books list in my sidebar...