Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour bookstore: I read this off a
recommendation of my friend Allison, who raved that it was one of her
favorite books ever. I really wasn’t into it. I actually started it
last fall, but put it down when my Kindle said I was 60% done. I
finally picked it up again to finish it. I’m glad I did, but I was
still left unimpressed with it. Clay, recently unemployed and desperate,
applies to be the night clerk at a 24 hr bookstore in San Francisco.
While the bookstore has no regular customers, it does have a string of
late night people who visit the lending section of the vertical books,
taking books written entirely in code. Although warned to not open
these books, he does, and gets curious about the whole project. Thus
begins a largely unrealistic journey in which Clay, his new girlfriend
who is a hotshot at Google, and his best friend, a wealthy software
developer, travel across the country to the HQ of the secret society
whose members produce these coded books. The premise is interesting,
books hiding the secret to immortality, but somehow it just doesn’t fit
together well.
Dad is fat. I like Jim Gaffigan, the stand-up comedian, but
I don’t know about Jim Gaffigan the author. The book started off slow,
and then got funnier as it progressed. I’m not sure which came first,
this book or some of his shows, but sections of the book I’ve seen
verbatim in some of his shows. Not that it wasn’t hilarious when seen,
but reading it after the fact was less entertaining. I do love his
perspectives on parenting, toddlers Catholicism. Background: he’s an
Irish Catholic with 5 kids (and counting), who’s raising his family in a
2 bedroom apartment in NYC. All of his kids have been born at home.
He’s fantastic.
One last thing before I go. Funny funny and really easy to
read. Silver gets diagnosed with a heart condition and finds out his
only child, his 18 year daughter is pregnant. The whole book happens
within a week. Silver can have surgery to fix his heart, which will be
performed by his ex-wife’s soon to be new husband, but he chooses to
wait, driving everyone crazy. Silver is a washed up former music star,
deadbeat dad and ex-husband who is living in a tiny apartment in a
building filled with other struggling men. It’s a cute story of how
people get stuck in a pattern of life and have a hard time getting out.
My single complaint is that it reads really similarly to *This is where I
leave you * another funny book (and now a movie) by the same author.
Wild This was my favorite of the five; the autobiographical
book of Cheryl Strayed as she traverses the Pacific Crest Trail.
Cheryl lost her mom in her early twenties and really struggled to
survive it. She cheated multiple times on her husband, eventually got
divorced, and decided to walk to the PCT for therapy. I hope if similar
events ever happen to me, I made the badass decision to walk through CA
and OR to recover. The book was intriguing, interesting, and a fast
read.
Where angels fear to tread I finished Room with a view
by EM Forester and loved it. This is his first one, and after I found
it for $2 at a used bookstore, I knew I had to read it. Naughty British
woman marrying a man outside her social class in heathen filled Italy
that resulted in a baby boy. Her late husband’s family is furious
attempt to get the boy back. For a classic book written in the time
period is was written in, it’s a bit scandalous. I didn’t enjoy it as
much as Room with a view but it was still a good read.
Currently reading: Watership Down, Girl from Junchow, and a manuscript written by a coworker’s wife that she’s trying to publish.
