"Now: I was pretty sure '24-hour bookstore' was a euphemism for something. It was on Broadway, in a euphemistic part of town. My help-wanted hike had taken me far from home...I pushed the bookstore's glass door. It made a bell tinkle brightly up above, and I stepped slowly through. I did not realize at the time what an important threshold I had just crossed."
-from the novel
This novel was passed on to me by a friend. It took me a while to get around to reading it. I think I would have enjoyed it much more if I could have wrapped my head around it!
The story is narrated by Clay Jannon who is looking for work in San Francisco when he comes upon the bookstore of the title. He says "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, maybe more." His description aroused my curiosity. He goes on to tell of the organization of the place which included the Waybacklist, and about the strange customers and obscure book titles.
Mr. Penumbra, the owner, seems to be a rather charming old man but when he disappears, things get really crazy with the entry of a bibliophile cult called the Unbroken Spine, a secret underground library in New York City and mysterious figures of the past, Manutius and Gerritszoon, who have seemingly written in code the secrets of eternal life.
Clay meets Kat Potente who works for Google and gets her involved in efforts to decode manuscripts and figure out what the Unbroken Spine is all about. There is so much technology described that was over my head, that my enjoyment took a dive and I sort of made myself finish. I can only rate this a 2. I feel like readers in their late teens, twenties or thirties might like it much more.
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