Clay Jannon used to design the website of NewBagel, a San Francisco startup that made the perfect bagel, based on an algorithm. Shape. Texture. Taste. All perfected with NewBagel's recipe. But then the Recession arrived, taking NewBagel with it. Clay was left to online reading and halfhearted searching for job opportunities in his apartment shared by a movie set designer and an android-like PR professional. One night, Clay walks into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, a building that, in the front, appears to be an ordinary bookstore. But if you walk into the back room, you discover the towering shelves of books, three stories high, each book with a strange title... Mr. Penumbra, the establishment's elderly, sharp-witted owner, offers Clay a job as a night clerk. Clay soon discovers that the bookstore is even stranger than he was expecting--not many people come to the 24-hour bookstore, and when they do, they belong to a small group of eccentrics who check out the mysterious books on the back shelf. Further investigation and help from his friends and acquaintances, including his middle school best friend Neel Shah (who is now, conveniently, the rich founder of a middleware company) and his new Googler girlfriend Kat Potente, Clay begins to get an idea of what's really going on at the bookstore--or so he thinks.
Wow. Wow. I finished Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore a month ago, and I'm still amazed.
Clay Jannon used to design the website of NewBagel, a San Francisco startup that made the perfect bagel, based on an algorithm. Shape. Texture. Taste. All perfected with NewBagel's recipe. But then the Recession arrived, taking NewBagel with it. Clay was left to online reading and halfhearted searching for job opportunities in his apartment shared by a movie set designer and an android-like PR professional. One night, Clay walks into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, a building that, in the front, appears to be an ordinary bookstore. But if you walk into the back room, you discover the towering shelves of books, three stories high, each book with a strange title... Mr. Penumbra, the establishment's elderly, sharp-witted owner, offers Clay a job as a night clerk. Clay soon discovers that the bookstore is even stranger than he was expecting--not many people come to the 24-hour bookstore, and when they do, they belong to a small group of eccentrics who check out the mysterious books on the back shelf. Further investigation and help from his friends and acquaintances, including his middle school best friend Neel Shah (who is now, conveniently, the rich founder of a middleware company) and his new Googler girlfriend Kat Potente, Clay begins to get an idea of what's really going on at the bookstore--or so he thinks.
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It's got a rather horrible title and the texture of the cover is shudder-inducing (it's got some weird soft coating on it). Despite these drawbacks, If You Could Be Mine is a wonderful little book, and it was about time that I read it (been sitting around since June).
Sahar and Nasrin have been in love since they were children. They're complete opposites--Sahar is quiet, studious, and steadfast, while Nasrin is popular, dramatic, and spoiled--but their love has lasted in secret for eleven years. The girls both know what the Iranian government thinks of people like them, and so they say nothing of their relationship. But when the string of Nasrin's suitors that they think of as no more than an annoyance suddenly turns into one man--one fiancee--they cannot go on as they always have. Sahar needs a way to take back her girlfriend. She finds a solution that sounds perfect--in Iran, sex reassignment surgery is encouraged for those who feel born in the wrong body. Sahar will do anything for Nasrin, even this. |
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August 2017
AuthorI am Fiona, a 16-year-old person. I write reviews of books that I read. I love reading, writing, spoonerisms, word jokes, accents, In Which chapters, parentheses, long dashes, et ceteras, and acronyms. Categories
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