I never expected to personally relate to food. Not to a person eating. Not even to anthropomorphized food a la Sausage Party (why oh why is that my first example .. ). Just to, you know, food. And not even finished food. To a sourdough starter. I came to this realization in a very roundabout way because as I finished this book, gave it its all-too-necessary Goodreads 5 stars, and moved to this review, my first thought was: “This is why I read. This is […]
Is there anything more San Francisco than sourdough bread and tech start ups?
I wasn’t crazy about Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore when I read it along with what seemed like half of CBR6. My biggest complaint was the magical realism but the longer I stay in the Cannonball community the more open to new genres I become. Plus Yesknopemaybe read and reviewed Sourdough at the start of CBR10 and prefaced her review by stating she despised Penumbra so if I haven’t stretched my tastes as much as I thought what could it hurt? Sourdough is a quirky story about a software engineer named Lois […]
Do not read if you are not doing carbs right now
I’ve never been to California in my life. I’ve never even been to the West Coast. I kind of have this image in my head that everybody is either Guy Fieri or Mark Zuckerberg with surfboards in cosplay, which intellectually I know isn’t accurate, but I still have a hard time picturing the San Francisco area otherwise. Similarly, the corporate pieces of the story totally matches with the general idea of what your typical tech San Francisco start-up must be like ( I say that […]
Hand the carbs over and no one gets hurt
I was a bit nervous renting this one from the library. Unlike what seems like every other reader on the planet, I reallllly despised Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. I didn’t like the plot, the incessant talking about boobs and Google, or the characters. And yes, I realize I’m a curmudgeon. However, it bothered me how the female character in that book was portrayed which meant that picking up Sourdough, featuring a female protagonist, was a bit of a gamble. Was I going to end up […]
More fun than the DaVinci Code and at least as plausible
In our house, we tend to purchase hard copies of most of the books we read, as opposed to, say, going to the library or downloading digital versions. So I wish I could say I bought Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore in a quaint neighborhood bookstore, nestled between an independent coffee house and and an artisanal cheese shop. The truth is, though, that I bought it online during a “half price on used hardcovers” promotion. Then again, since this tale merges a world steeped in tradition […]
Books Vs. Computers
This was a lovely book. As my first audio-read experience, I couldn’t have asked for a nicer book to be read to me during one of the worst weeks of traffic ever. A big thank you to crystalclear for lending it to me! “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore” follows unemployed Clay Jannon as he discovers the mysteries and secrets of a strange bookstore when he takes a job as the night clerk. This book is fun and beautifully written with a collision of the musty, nostalgic […]