Ep 068 - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan

Overdue

Headgum

Craig Getting, Arts, Books, Podcasts, Literature, Comedy, Andrew Cunningham

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2014

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robin Sloan's debut novel, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, tackles the literary world's imminent digital future with an adventure tale that Andrew describes as "like a Dan Brown book but good."

Through the eyes of a recently unemployed college graduate, Sloan shows us a world where Googlers and ancient cryptographers race to discover a centuries-old secret. It's a world where data visualization is sexy, search engines are evil all-powerful, and Aldus Manutius is on the tip of everyone's tongue.

Join us for a show brimming with puns, Andrew's misgivings about Google, and more nerdy sleuthing than you can shake a ruler at.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well-told tale,
0:05.1	they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.
0:10.4	Plus, these are books you should have read by now.
0:30.4	So my fourth was pretty good. We watched a lot of fireworks.
0:41.2	I'm a big fan of fireworks. Are you a big fan of fireworks? I like fireworks.
0:47.4	I don't really have a lot else to say. Do you ever notice with fireworks,
0:51.3	I'm gonna save them off for the end? They do leave them off for the end. I wish I could just watch
0:58.8	fireworks fanalities instead of having to wait through all those other fireworks. Yeah,
1:02.3	like let's have everybody who does a fireworks show. Like all put all their fireworks in one big
1:07.8	super flammable basket. And then we just have one like hour-long finale and that's all the
1:13.8	fireworks that happen. I think I'd be pretty good. Welcome to Overdo. This is a podcast about the
1:18.6	books you've been meaning to read in the fireworks. You've been meaning to watch. My name is Craig.
1:22.5	My name is Andrew. And so when we were watching fireworks, me and my friends on July 5th,
1:27.5	because we had a better view of some great fireworks on July 5th than we did on the
1:31.2	live fourth. Yeah, the fourth got rained out. Not here, but we were farther away than I would have liked.
1:38.4	We got to talking, we don't know how fireworks shows work. I imagine a hundred years ago,
1:44.8	fireworks shows were like three dudes running around frantically lighting off uses to time them
1:50.0	with like a ragtime band. Yeah, I bet it's all robots now. It's probably all robots now.
1:55.8	Firework robots. It hit the go button on the fireworks, embrace patriotism.
2:01.9	Yeah, but they like program it on their little, their, their MacBooks and then they let the fireworks
2:07.6	all go. Do you have the firework app that you use to sink all your fireworks between your drop
2:13.4	box and your fireworks? It's on my iPad. Oh, there you have it. My Bluetooth's on my fireworks.
	...

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