I discover the Interesting Coffee and Book Shop

I've still not had much time for exploring the neighbourhood around the Temporary Apartment although I've worked out how most of the area links together and that includes the discovery of the nearby bookstore zone, which comprises quite a few bookstore cafes. T

The above pictured Interesting Coffee and Book Shop is my favourite and in addition to good coffee, cakes and wifi, there's a bustle of people visiting and quite often loitering for conversation.

My book of choice for such moments has been Popco by Scarlett Thomas, who wrote The End of Mr Y, which I reviewed here some time ago.

Popco was an earlier novel and there's some themes which I think were developed further in Mr Y, including virtual worlds, homeopathic remedies and some clever bits of science.

The book has also had a makeover so that it looks similar is style to Mr Y, complete with blue edged pages (Mr Y had black edges).

I noticed this with a wry smile when I realised quite a lot of the content of the earlier book is about how corporations market to consumers.

I like the personal narrative style of the book, on incidentals as well as the main storyline and the twists into cryptography and the chance references to William Gibson, who is another author whose books I enjoy.

There's also some sections about the people who divine lifestyle trends, which flipped me straight back into Pattern Recognition (also reviewed here at some time in the past).

I thoroughly enjoyed the first 4/5 of the book and the way the intertwined stories unfolded. I'll admit to a little disappointment around the last pivot in the story, although I think there needed to be some device to bring it all together. I'll admit I'd also worked out what the necklace was using before it popped out of the story.

I won't say more about that though, and the general narration, lines of thinking and main premises were all good fun and it was one of those books that I was sorry to have finished.

Maybe I should re-read Mr Y.

But for now, here's me crossing the road on the way to the Interesting Coffee and Book Shop.