259 pages
English language
Published Nov. 2, 2017 by MCD.
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens …
Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.
Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.
When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?
About a woman working at a tech company in San Francisco who, after being gifted a sourdough starter, becomes enamoured then obsessed with baking bread and what happens. It started out fine, a bit odd but fine, and then gradually devolved into a silliness of a type I abhor. I really did not enjoy this at all. I don't mind satire when biting and funny, but I found this pointless, boring and a waste of my time. Not for me.
As I've become a sourdough enthusiast myself, I found the existence of this book intriguing; a story about a woman robotics worker living in Silicon Valley, who starts experimenting with sourdough, obtains a 'mother' from an exotic ex-boyfriend, becomes involved with privately-funded underground project based in an abandoned military base, where various 'mad scientist' types research their bleeding-edge food technology, working towards the opening day of the ultimate exotic food market - sourdough, but also crickets, slurry grown from fungus, etc.
I enjoyed it, but on reflection, the fact that the plot could be encapsulated as "woman programmer discovers that actually she prefers baking" left a sour taste. And that was before I discovered that the author, Robin Sloan, isn't a woman as I had assumed.
4.5 stars?
I want to bake bread.
I want the Lois Club to be real for my daughter's sake.
All you need are programmers and Loises <3
I just absolutely love this book so much.
fresh, but very short and not all that entertaining. also a bit annoying becuse of that food theme.
I found this novel intriguing and a just a little bit 'peculiar'. I never thought of yeast in the way this author (Robin Sloan) describes it... nor was I familiar with the Mazg, even though I'm a genealogist. Now that I am enlightened, I understand the inter-relatedness of existence in a much broader way. Truly this is a fun and entertaining read...
I adored reading this book. The story was like an old friend from the moment I began and Sloans talent for finding the magic (and hilarity) right under our noses in everyday life absolutely shone.
Someday someone will dig through the carbon nanotube graveyard of Silicon Valley and wonder, was there ever any humanity here? And someone else will hand them this book, gray and dusty from age, and say, "Yes. Many of the people here felt the yearning of creating something by hand, for no other reason than the pleasure of mastering a craft, and sharing it with their friends. Those people all left, and the ones that remained turned into robots, and died." The first person nods solemnly. It is a shame. Had more people read this book, perhaps this land might have been saved.
Gobbled this up like the eponymous bread. A delightful story from beginning to end.
I rather enjoyed this book, though I found myself thinking of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore a bit more than I'd expected to. I know it's a shared universe and all, but Lois Clary (the protagonist from this book) felt a little too much like Clay Jannon (the protagonist from Mr. Penumbra) to suit me; maybe R.S. just has a taste for that type of hero, I dunno.
That said, it was a fun little romp, with just enough fantasy to make the mundane feel a little bit magical.
