The rise and fall of great powers

The rise and fall of great powers / Tom Rachman 384 pgs.

Rachman's first book was genius and I never wanted it to end.  Can't say the same for this one.  I did enjoy this book but it was a little too long and ended up depressing me.  Tooly is a small book shop owner who is looking back on her odd childhood.  An email from an old boyfriend takes her back into the orbit of several people from her past. Until age 10 or so, she lived with her father, moving around the world while he completed IT work at US embassies.  Around age 10, her mother showed up and gave her an alternative that seemed attractive.  She went with her mother and led a very bohemian life with her main care giver, a man named Humphrey, who surrounded by an ever changing group led by the charismatic Venn.  Tooly feels like Venn is the only person who ever really cared for her, in the way of an older sibling or father figure.  As an adult, she seeks him out and discovers nothing more than a sociopath con man. So often things are not what they seem but this is the depressing part...although, I admit, seemingly only for me. Tooly is past is all and perhaps glad to know the truth.

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Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan, 288 pages.

Clay needs a job after the bagel company that employed him goes belly-up. He had done web-work for them and hopes to find similar work elsewhere, but the economy is in the tank. Lots of his friends are tech people; his best friend from childhood has a hugely successful tech start-up, and the girl he loves works at Google. But Clay ends up at the bookstore found in the title. He loves the store and the mystery he finds there, and Mr. Penumbra himself, is a wise old man from whom Clay learns much. Its all very positive and no one is ever really in any danger. The book is fun, the plot is nimble, and the characters are all likable. The audiobook is well-read. All-in-all, a good, but not great book.

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Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore by Robin Sloan 288 pgs.

This book is so much fun.  Clay Jannon loses his less than satisfying day job as a web designer and ends up the night clerk at this odd bookstore where there is rarely ever a sale but several people come in to borrow from a special collection.  Wonder why this appeals to a librarian so much?  This fast-paced fable entertains and gets you thinking about the value of books and knowledge and also gives you a view of the digital divide.  You know some people aren't Internet addicts by choice.

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Prisoner of Heaven

Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón  278 pp.

Ruiz Zafón returns to his characters, Daniel Sempere and Fermin Romero de Torres from Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game in this sequel/prequel. It is now 1957 in Barcelona. Daniel is happily married and Fermin is about to be when the appearance of a strange, old, one-armed man causes Fermin to relate the tale of his time in a horrific prison during days following the Spanish Civil War where he meets the author David Martin, whose story was told in The Angel's Game. Daniel and Fermin must return Fermin's true identity and find a way to punish the evil prison governor, Mauricio Valls.

This is the third in Ruiz Zafón's "Cemetery of Forgotten Books" series (although the Cemetery itself is only mentioned briefly). It is the weakest of the three, lacking the depth of the others, but serves to provide some missing parts of the stories of the main characters. I do wonder where a fourth installment would go with the story and I will certainly read it if and when it comes out.