Why a Booktrail?
1969: The prequel of Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore
Ajax Penumbra: 1969
What you need to know before your trail
San Francisco, 1969. The summer of drugs, music and a new age dawning. A young, earnest Ajax Penumbra has been given his first assignment as a Junior Acquisitions Officer – to find the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. After a few weeks of rigorous hunting, Penumbra feels no closer to his goal than when he started. But late one night, after another day of dispiriting dead ends, he stumbles upon a 24-hour bookstore and the possibilities before him expand exponentially. With the help of his friend’s homemade computer, an ancient map, a sunken ship and the vast shelves of the 24-hour bookstore, Ajax Penumbra might just find what he’s seeking…
Travel Guide
San Francisco
A visitor walks the city, searching. He has a list: libraries and bookstores, museums and archives. He descends into the bowels of the San Francisco Chronicle, follows a sullen clerk to the morgues’s oldest files.
Chinatown
The visitor canvasses Chinatown, and learns to say Bookstore? in Cantonese: Shu dian? He braves the haze of Haight Street, speaks to a long-haired man selling books on a blanket in Golden Gate Park. He crosses the bay to Cody’s and Cal, ventures south to Kepler’s and Stanford. He inquires at City Lights, but the man behind the register, whose name is Shig….”
Market Street
The city is under construction and the central artery which is Market Street looks like a trench
Yerba Buena Gardens
In the process of being built when the book opened
City Lights Bookstore
The visitor goes here at the start of the novel
Golden Gate bridge
The visitor only goes here as he know his parents will ask him about it.
The 24 hour Bookstore
Between North Beach and Chinatown he finds a bookstore. It’s small and very narrow and there are fewer customers here than at City Lights. It appears to be open 24 hours….
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Ajax Penumbra: 1969
Destination: San Francisco Author/Guide: Robin Sloan Departure Time: 1969
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