This is not an ordinary bookstore.” “Indeed. It seems more akin to a youth hostel – - Robin Sloan

Let me be candid. If I had to rank book-acquisition experiences in order of comfort, ease, and satisfaction, the list would go like this: 1. The perfect independent bookstore, like Pygmalion in Berkeley. 2. A big, bright Barnes & Noble. I know they’re corporate, but let’s face it — those stores are nice. Especially the ones with big couches. 3. The book aisle at Walmart. (It’s next to the potting soil.) 4. The lending library aboard the U.S.S. West Virginia, a nuclear submarine deep beneath the surface of the Pacific. 5. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

The shelves were packed close together, and it felt like I was standing at the border of a forest — not a friendly Californian forest, either, but an old Transylvanian forest, a forest full of wolves and witches and dagger-wielding bandits all waiting just beyond moonlight's reach.

There had to be a scale somewhere — the scale of stars, the scale of far-off cosmic super-beings — upon which we ourselves, we humans with our cities and bridges and subterranean markets, would look like the lactobacilli and the yeast.