Michelle - picked this on a whim because: she read a great teaser on it, it had a lot of good ratings, and it's about a bookstore, so she was all over that. She is not a computer person. She didn't understand it all, but got most of it and said she felt like someone different while reading it. Ultimately, she thought it was a tech story about relationships and love. She described Robin Sloan as a very clever nerd author with a sense of humor. Michelle loved learning about the book scanner at Google and had always wondered how so much stuff actually gets onto the Internet. She loved the idea of old and new knowledge, but prefers that of libraries and ladders. While at the Portland Art Museum exhibit on Venice she came across a manuscript by Aldus Manutius and was very excited. If she hadn't read this book, this would have meant very little to her, but now she had a connection to it, and there the book was right in front of her! Michelle loves books that have some truth in them, and she thought this one did.
Artie - Festina Lente, Artie wondered on the meaning of this, and it translates to, "Make haste slowly". He has been in a reflective mood lately and wondered if his relatively high score was related to this and it just being the right book at the right time. Penumbra means outer shadow, and he thought this was a very clever use of the name, but I forgot why. Artie saw a lot of contrasts: San Francisco represented new knowledge with all its open source everything and the focus was the Google campus, while NYC represented old knowledge and its source was literally hidden underground. The above link to Penumbra shows yet another contrast that was certainly deliberate, so perhaps that's what the author had in mind and what Artie was referencing. Artie liked how everything fit together in the epilogue and thought that the message of friendship being the key to life was a nice sentiment. He liked the bit about how you can only stretch your imagination so far when thinking about the future. The line about Mr. Penumbra casting only the faintest digital shadow was an especially nice bit of allegory. He also liked thinking of the brain as hardware and how we think being the software. This lead to a good side conversation about how our brains are wired and due to computers and Google our brains are literally wired differently than they were pre-Internet. Apologies to Sandy for mentioning Google twice. Cool nerd note, in the first sentence of this paragraph I put Festina Lente into italics. Italics were invented by Aldus Manutius.
Carolyn - Read this and then realized at the end, "Dang! No notes." This usually tells her all she needs to know about a book. If she gets to the end and nothing has piqued her interest enough to jot anything down, she knows she didn't like it much. The epilogue annoyed her with how absolutely everything worked out for everybody. In fact everything worked out all the time. She was just getting interested when Clay was caught in the Unbroken Spine's underground HQ in NYC, but then he just hides in a closet and walks out. Ho-hum. It never dawned on her that any of the tech described in the book could be real. She wondered why Clay went from one extreme to the other in that he went from not even peeking at the books at first, to stealing and copying them (More contrast?) She did appreciate how nice the characters all were to each other and thought what a different world this would be if we all treated each other this way.
Leticia - Thought the author often took the surface ideas to a deeper level. For example with digital media now being the main way ideas are exchanged that in turn is affecting our notion of what privacy means. She couldn't decide exactly what kind of book this was, it wasn't quite fantasy, but it wasn't a farce either. Ultimately she decided it wasn't meant to reflect reality, what with putting armies of people to work for you through the Internet via Grumble. She too thought it had a DaVinci Code feel to it with amusing, but flat characters. She liked being connected to the Google world, and when Clay saw the face of Aldus pop up in his Mac Book, it was beyond her imagination. Technology is moving faster than imagination these days. I can't remember if that's something she said, or a quote from the book. There were a lot of very neat coincidences that tied the book together, which she found tedious, but overall she thought it was amusing and a good book.
Sandy - There were parts where she thought, "Oh my Gawd! I can't stand this book!" Here she listed the part at the train station where they're talking about passion on page 161. Unfortunately, my page 161 doesn't have this. If I remember right, Sandy was disgusted with Clay's lack of backbone when it came to choosing a passion. He said he would just kind of mold to whatever the present situation demanded. Like, well, clay. Sorry, couldn't resist. It also drove her crazy that Google was mentioned 159 times in one way or another. She thought this would be a great book for middle school kids and described it as a kind of Harry Potter adventure for the computer crowd. She can't stand it when books date themselves with current pop-culture references and thinks it makes them less relevant for future readers. The book had a strong beginning, but the characters were flat and her interest flagged back and forth several times throughout. Ultimately, it was not her kind of book. She found the writing immature and would recommend only to middle schoolers and perhaps the tech geek IT guys at her work who nearly orgasmed when they discovered the amount of viruses she had on her work computer. The best part of the book was its glow-in-the-dark cover.
Miles - Thought this had a unique, refreshing tone that young people would enjoy. Things happened very quickly and were taken in stride, for example Clay's hot roommates falling for each other. It emanated this kind of feel throughout very well. He initially thought it would be a love affair with books, but found the story became more about tech. The storyline never developed into something he could embrace. Mystery authors often draw you in to the plot and then give you clues along the way to keep you engaged, but this never happened with Miles. He was disconnected from the tech enthusiasm, and the story just wasn't in his realm. It was never meant to have a real gravitas theme, but he thought it was a good pick.
Pat - I was in book-geek, tech-nerd heaven. I thought it described our current unique position between Old Knowledge and New Knowledge perfectly. And I disagree with everyone who says this was a book about tech. It wasn't! It's a book that celebrates being curious about stuff and liking it when you find stuff out. The medium isn't the important part, the knowledge is. Look at the subjects of the first few books he mentions: Steve Jobs, Einstein, and Richard Fenyman. Anyway, I was hooked. The romance was a bit hokey, but he had me completely until shortly after he built computer model of the library and he saw the face of Aldus Manutius. It got a little too Dan Brown for me after that. How could code written hundreds of years ago reveal a digitized face? No way. I kept waiting for a turn down the rabbit hole after this, but we stayed planted in reality which just didn't work for me. I never understood exactly what was in the books the Unbroken Spine faithful were reading. It didn't live up to the high expectations I experienced at the beginning, but it was a fun read and I would recommend. In fact, I bump it up to an 8. He layered a lot into this book.
K'Lynn - K'Lynn agreed with Carolyn. She too marked nothing down, and found the characters two-dimensional. She thought the writing was juvenile and that it had no real peril or tension. The obstacles were too easily overcome, there were too many convenient details, and there was no proper back-story. She genuinely liked the fact that there was an underground book cult in NYC and that there was tech woven into this. She too thought it was geared toward a younger audience. The story was too obvious, and it left her with an empty feeling.
Maggie - Thought this was very different from anything we've ever read. She enjoyed it until the computer stuff came in and it went over her head. She liked the mix of technology and history. Maggie has a passion for fonts, and so to be reading a book about fonts was interesting. She liked Clay and founds his asides amusing. He came across to her as immature and naive'. Maggie was surprised that no one mentioned the Unbroken Spine's ultimate purpose which was discovering the key to everlasting life! That's not for her. She's worried about today's generation and how disconnected they are to one another. Take a look at a restaurant; people aren't talking to each other, they're gazing into their phones. Technology is taking over everything, so what the future holds in this regard worries her. She thought it brought up a lot of great themes, but didn't really expand upon them. She liked the message of the key to life is friendship.
Kath
hey All --
Coincidentally, a book club at work is reading this as well and their opinions skew closely/broadly as yours.
I knew nothing about this book going in and assumed from the writing that it was YA (young adult). I found the characters a little flimsy and not super engaging(esp the narrator). 150 pages in I felt like not much was happening; it was jaunty and easy flowing but I never really got too sucked in to the "mystery" of it all.
I do agree with Pat that I didn't feel it was about the tech but more about knowledge and change. And maybe the current tension between print v. electronic. Artie, I like your musings and it actually makes me think better of the book.
My geekiness lies more on the typography end so I was more interested in finding out more about Manutius. Reading about him helped me like the book a little better because the author incorporated some clever things. For instance, according to the mighty wikipedia, Manutius used as a publishing symbol the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor (like the bar in the book, The Dolphin and Anchor); maybe this was mentioned in the book but I didn't catch it until wikipedia. :) I also use semicolons frequently (not always correctly) and Manutius started their usage.
I liked Mr. Penumbra and his openness to change (progress?) in spite of the pressure against him. I liked some of the quirky characters, just wish we got a little deeper into them all. As an aside, we've got some pretty cool book scanners here at the library (though I think they all still need the pages turned manually).
Hope you are all well! We've been having a hell of a winter which actually makes me long for the rains of the NW. love, Kath
Coincidentally, a book club at work is reading this as well and their opinions skew closely/broadly as yours.
I knew nothing about this book going in and assumed from the writing that it was YA (young adult). I found the characters a little flimsy and not super engaging(esp the narrator). 150 pages in I felt like not much was happening; it was jaunty and easy flowing but I never really got too sucked in to the "mystery" of it all.
I do agree with Pat that I didn't feel it was about the tech but more about knowledge and change. And maybe the current tension between print v. electronic. Artie, I like your musings and it actually makes me think better of the book.
My geekiness lies more on the typography end so I was more interested in finding out more about Manutius. Reading about him helped me like the book a little better because the author incorporated some clever things. For instance, according to the mighty wikipedia, Manutius used as a publishing symbol the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor (like the bar in the book, The Dolphin and Anchor); maybe this was mentioned in the book but I didn't catch it until wikipedia. :) I also use semicolons frequently (not always correctly) and Manutius started their usage.
I liked Mr. Penumbra and his openness to change (progress?) in spite of the pressure against him. I liked some of the quirky characters, just wish we got a little deeper into them all. As an aside, we've got some pretty cool book scanners here at the library (though I think they all still need the pages turned manually).
Hope you are all well! We've been having a hell of a winter which actually makes me long for the rains of the NW. love, Kath
Becky - Forward me your notes and I'll post them here, or you can just post them as a note below.
Here are some links that show that the Unbroken Spine's quest isn't just fiction. This guy at Google is working to make everlasting life a reality. Ray Kurzweil is a mad scientist straight out of a B-grade horror flick, and thinks that if he can live long enough he'll be able to upload his brain to a computer and 'live' there.
Fantastic Voyage by Ray Kurzweil
Next Book: Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry
Comments
Coincidentally, a book club at work is reading this as well and their opinions skew closely/broadly as yours.
I knew nothing about this book going in and assumed from the writing that it was YA (young adult). I found the characters a little flimsy and not super engaging(esp the narrator). 150 pages in I felt like not much was happening; it was jaunty and easy flowing but I never really got too sucked in to the "mystery" of it all.
I do agree with Pat that I didn't feel it was about the tech but more about knowledge and change. And maybe the current tension between print v. electronic. Artie, I like your musings and it actually makes me think better of the book.
My geekiness lies more on the typography end so I was more interested in finding out more about Manutius. Reading about him helped me like the book a little better because the author incorporated some clever things. For instance, according to the mighty wikipedia, Manutius used as a publishing symbol the image of a dolphin wrapped around an anchor (like the bar in the book, The Dolphin and Anchor); maybe this was mentioned in the book but I didn't catch it until wikipedia. :) I also use semicolons frequently (not always correctly) and Manutius started their usage.
I liked Mr. Penumbra and his openness to change (progress?) in spite of the pressure against him. I liked some of the quirky characters, just wish we got a little deeper into them all. As an aside, we've got some pretty cool book scanners here at the library (though I think they all still need the pages turned manually).
Hope you are all well! We've been having a hell of a winter which actually makes me long for the rains of the NW. love, Kath