OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living 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 quickly close up shop. 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 to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer's market—and a whole new world opens up. Includes bonus material that provides an audiobook-only glimpse at the evolving relationship between Lois and Slurry, the company upon whose dystopian meal replacements she and her engineer friends all subsist.
"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." — The Washington Post "Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel..." — Chicago Tribune
From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker. Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living 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 quickly close up shop. 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 to the General Dexterity cafeteria every day. Then the company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer's market—and a whole new world opens up. Includes bonus material that provides an audiobook-only glimpse at the evolving relationship between Lois and Slurry, the company upon whose dystopian meal replacements she and her engineer friends all subsist.
"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." — The Washington Post "Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel..." — Chicago Tribune
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
About the Author-
Robin Sloan grew up in Michigan and now splits his time between San Francisco and the internet. He is the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough.
Reviews-
July 10, 2017 San Francisco’s technology and food cultures collide and collude in Sloan’s latest novel, following Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. Robotics programmer Lois Clary subsists on an unappetizing diet that includes frequent servings of Tetra Pak–wrapped nutritional gel until she discovers the delicious, restorative comfort food sold at Clement Street Soup and Sourdough, a makeshift take-out enterprise operated by two immigrant brothers. Visa issues force the brothers to leave the country, but before they go they give Lois a crock of sourdough starter along with a CD of the music of their people, the mysterious Mazg. Lois’s first attempt at baking bread produces an imperfect loaf with cracks in the crust that form the lines of a human face. Improving with practice, she earns a coveted place at Marrow Fair—an innovative farmer’s market offering Chernobyl honey, microbiotic lembas, and algorithmically optimized bagels—but there’s one condition. Marrow Fair’s manager wants “robot bread.” Lois must figure out how to program a robotic arm to perform kitchen tasks that require a delicate touch. Lois also faces another, more worrisome problem: the starter has become temperamental and demanding: underfed it looks depressed; overfed it spreads, grows tendrils, and forms faces with disturbing expressions. Through narrative and email correspondence, Sloan captures contemporary work environments, current reality, and future trends. It’s a busy novel, crammed with some excellent bits (how robotics work, how farmers markets work) and some bits that are just creative hyperactivity (like the biogeneration of lembas). The book offers much to savor, but like the starter it proves rich and buoyant at first, then overreaches.
Please update to the latest version of the OverDrive app to stream videos.
Device Compatibility Notice
The OverDrive app is required for this format on your current device.
Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen
You've reached your library's checkout limit for digital titles.
To make room for more checkouts, you may be able to return titles from your Checkouts page.
Excessive Checkout Limit Reached.
There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time.
Try again in several days. If you are still not able to check out titles after 7 days, please contact Support.
You have already checked out this title. To access it, return to your Checkouts page.
This title is not available for your card type. If you think this is an error contact support.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.