Sourdough

I loved this book!! It was a super fast read—and I actually think I liked it better than Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Here’s why:

1. The plot is not so entwined with a real-life company (like Google in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore). Instead, Sloan uses phrases like “expedient video-sharing website.” Which is obviously YouTube, but comes across as both funny and less of a brand advertisement.

2. Less technical computer programming language. For someone who’s not a programmer, there were parts of Penumbra that I definitely glazed over. Sloan finds a great balance of speaking technically without losing the less technology inclined.

3. Baking MAGIC. Isn’t bread a little bit magical anyway? I love how Sloan infused show more technology, biology, and some good old magic and mystery into this story. Weirdly satisfying combination.

4. Crossover characters!!!! Just wait, you might find yourself meeting Clay, NewBagel, and a certain anatomically inclined CGI company in Sourdough.

5. Perfect humor. I swear, Sloan totally gets my dry sense of humor. Both of his books have had main characters that I would love to hang out with in real life. I laughed out loud several times.

Overall, Sourdough was a lot of fun in an interesting setting (San Francisco). Definitely worth the wait for this one to rise after Penumbra (see what I did there?).

Very eager to see what’s next from this author. Off to bake some bread! show less

Robin Sloan won my heart with his Penumbra stories, a pair of gently humorous fantasies about books, and readers, and mysterious doings. When Sourdough popped up in my Book of the Month Club queue I really didn't know what to think or expect, but I trusted him enough to take the chance, and he didn't let me down. I was hooked by the end of the first chapter.

Sourdough explores the idea of food as a spiritual and intellectual pursuit. Food rescues Lois from the hellish sterility of her high tech job, soothing her rebellious stomach, and providing warmth and a touch of humanity to her day. But when the restaurant which arguably saved her sanity, has to close, Lois is given a precious crock of sourdough culture to care for.

We watch as she show more moves from caretaker to active user of the starter, and from there to professional baker, all the while coming to know the starter as a mysterious, moody partner in this process. She learns who she is and begins to understand her niche in the world. Along the way we meet the Lois club of San Francisco (and Sloan assures us that there are Lois clubs all over the world) filled with wise Loises who enjoy our Lois' bread, and give her good advice. And for a brief, wondrous stretch of the novel, Sloan gives us a deliciously funny horror story about out-of-control bread, and heroic goats.

Yes, it's kind of crazy, but in the same delightful way Penumbra was. And I found myself looking at food differently after reading it. Today I went shopping and spent a lot of time just staring at the produce, thinking about how remarkable it all was. My concentration apparently provoked a gentleman to come up to me as I stared at a mountain of fat, shining, deeply green jalapenos, and say, "Yes, this is the good stuff."

It made me want to cook. It made me want to start baking bread again. It made me happy that bread and cheese exist, that crickets sing and goats love to eat, that Robin Sloan is a nerd (Lembas bread!) and microbes work tirelessly to give our world flavor and scent. There's a love story, too. You won't catch it immediately, but it's there, hidden beneath talk of cooking, spicy soup, and the history of a completely mythical people called the Mazg who sing to their sourdough culture.

Sourdough is the sort of book that should make your heart happy. This one goes on my Keep Forever shelf. show less

It’s inevitable that I compare adjacently-read books, regardless of their apparent lack of similarities. The novel I read before ‘Sourdough’ was [b:The Word for Woman is Wilderness|36279988|The Word for Woman is Wilderness|Abi Andrews|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517823602s/36279988.jpg|57940191]. Both of them are female first person narratives. [b:The Word for Woman is Wilderness|36279988|The Word for Woman is Wilderness|Abi Andrews|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517823602s/36279988.jpg|57940191] evokes a sympathetic, cerebral, complicated young woman; the narrator of ‘Sourdough’ seems almost entirely lacking an internal life. There is a verging-on-uncanny flatness to the point of view character, Lois. She is show more entirely reactive and spends a lot of the novel having things explained to her. While correlation does not imply causation, it seems more than coincidence that [b:The Word for Woman is Wilderness|36279988|The Word for Woman is Wilderness|Abi Andrews|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517823602s/36279988.jpg|57940191] was written by a woman and ‘Sourdough’ by a man. The latter reminded me strongly of [a:Cory Doctorow|12581|Cory Doctorow|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1361468756p2/12581.jpg]’s oeuvre, although none of the five of his novels I've read had a female protagonist. Like Doctorow, Sloan seems more interested in explaining technologies than developing characters. That would be fine if the social impact of these technologies was explored through the story, but it wasn’t.

Wait, I’ve just noticed a quote from Doctorow himself on the back cover! ‘A plot that makes the book a page-turner and a laugh-out-louder, with a sweetness and romance and tartness and irony in perfect balance.’ I can’t say I agree with any of that really. I noticed no romance (that’s not a complaint!) and didn’t find it funny (in stark contrast to [b:MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors|82472|MASH A Novel About Three Army Doctors (M*A*S*H, #1)|Richard Hooker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388325310s/82472.jpg|457099], which I read immediately afterwards). Admittedly ‘Sourdough’ is very easy to read and the concept is an appealingly offbeat one, if a bit silly. A coder who can’t cook is given a sourdough starter by magical immigrants who she ordered a lot of takeaway food from. She learns to bake bread and starts to like it more than coding. Then there’s some stuff about the future of food which was intriguing yet presented in this maddeningly simplistic, technical fashion. What are the implications of robots that can cook? Is it necessary to automate a task that humans find rewarding and creative? Does reducing food to units of energy remove integrally important elements of eating? Could technology restore some of what was destroyed when food production was industrialised? All these questions and more occurred to me while reading; none of them were addressed other than in passing.

I’m being so critical of ‘Sourdough’ because the skeleton of it is really promising and it could have been much more interesting. I was mildly diverted, then left thinking ‘Was that it?’ Maybe I just don’t share the San Franciscan sense of humour. The part that came closest to making me laugh was an incredibly reductive interpretation of [b:Candide|19380|Candide|Voltaire|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1345060082s/19380.jpg|2833018] and I'm not sure that was meant to be funny. show less

Sourdough is an odd book - full of futuristic ideas, but stays firmly on the ground. Its also a love story, to food, to San Fransisco, and to Technology, but its also a cautionary tale, of messing with nature, but also assuming it can be tamed.

Robin Sloan writes books that border on dystopian, but also on the border of the best of what humanity can offer, and without being overly saccharine. In Sourdough, we have a computer programmer working for a company that aims to free humanity of dull repetitive work, while herself becoming similar to a robot drone in the process. A chance encounter with the food of the Mazg, brings her to a love of sourdough, and a deeper understanding of flow of action and flow of thought.

There aren't really show more any villains in this book, and its a rather gentle proto-dystopian, in that technology is needed, but nature can go wild when humans try to tame it. As a cautionary tale, it hits that sweet spot of optimistic, but be careful. show less

The plot in the first two-thirds of this novel was great fun and an original spin on the tech world and foodism. The Magz concept was brilliant. However, misrepresented microbial community organization and DNA sequence data ruined the last third of the story for me. In fact, at this point, I set the book aside for a couple weeks and nearly didn't bother finishing it.

I can suspend belief and accept the fantasy-realism of the sourdough aspect. Unfortunately, the fungal development in the Marrow Market and behaviour of the Magz starter was too implausible for the realistic SF setting. Yes, SF is a weird trip, but Deb115 described this transition beautifully in her review where she wrote, "... it went total fantasy land, One Flew Over The show more Cuckoo's Nest strange..." Ultimately disappointing, the final chapters came across as rather contrived and hurried. PS. The glow-in-the-dark cover was awesome! show less

What a weird and wonderful book! Not everything is explained, but it leaves a certain mystery that is common to love, baking, science and life, so I can't really fault that.
I recommend giving it a read, follow Lois on her foray into the unknown world of sourdough, and the tech world's uncertainty of her sideline. I do love that our protagonist is a female programmer, that seems to be a rarity in fiction.

When a telephone acquaintance hands you a crock of fungus and bacteria, you never quite know where things will go from there, but if you're willing to feed it, you might earn 19 million dollars and meet the love of your life and your life's work. So, respect the bacteria and play nice music!