At first glance, a 24-hour bookstore makes no sense. At second glance also, and third, and really all glances because despite my valiant one-woman effort to visit all of them, bookstores are struggling. One need only look at the American Booksellers Association’s website (or the husk of a shuttered Borders) to know that bookstores are going the way of record stores: quaint, beloved, rare. It’s not so much a matter of if at this point, but when.
Fortunately, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, a San Francisco outfit at which the hapless Clay Jannon is a newbie night clerk, isn’t your ordinary bookstore. The vast majority of MP24HB’s customers—who are few and far between—don’t bother with the popular fiction or latest fantasy titles at the front of the store; they’re concerned only with the back, where a collection of teetering multi-story shelves house what Clay calls the “Waybacklist,” nondescript hardcovers whose contents he is not allowed to explore.
Continue reading “Things that don’t need to be open 24/7: liquor stores, gun stores, bookstores”
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