Sourdough - Robin Sloan

    2017; 259 pages.  Full Title: Sourdough, or Lois and Her Adventures in the Underground Market.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Humorous Fiction; Magical Realism; Baking.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Did you ever bite into a piece of food and find yourself transported into heaven?  If so, what type of food was it?  Was it French food, or maybe Italian?

 

    For Lois Clary, it was a fast-food “combo sandwich, double spicy”, courtesy of a nearby hole-in-the-wall eatery called Clement Street Soup and Sourdough.  Delivered on motorcycle by one of the two brothers that own the shop.

 

    Frankly, it was the bun that made the sandwich such a delightful culinary experience.  The sourdough was divine.  She guessed it was some sort of ethnic cuisine.  When she asked the delivery guy about it, he said, “It is the food of the Mazg!”

 

    That sounds Asiatic.  Vietnamese food, maybe.  Oh Lois, you’re in for a mouthwatering surprise.

 

What’s To Like...

   Sourdough is the follow-up to, and is written in the same style of Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  The primary storyline is set in the San Francisco area; with occasional messages from a couple of cities in Europe.

 

    The story is told in the First-Person POV, but by two different narrators: Lois is the main one, and a guy named Beoreg is the other.  He is of Mazg extraction and does a lot of explaining to Lois.

 

    The central theme of the tale is Lois’s learning to deal with her “left-lobe/right-lobe” dichotomy.  Her primary job makes use of the analytical lobe of her brain: she’s a programmer for a tech company that builds “robotic arms” to perform repetitive tasks.  Their current project is how to get a robot to correctly crack open a raw egg.  Yeah, good luck with that one, Lois.

 

    Lois’s other brain lobe comes into play when she discovers the joy of baking sourdough bread.  What additives give it the best flavor?  What is the best texture of the bread?  And why does playing background music seem to affect the baking sourdough bread in weird ways?  Your analytical lobe won’t help you figure that out, Lois.

 

    It was fun to watch how Lois’s mental struggles impact her lifestyle.  Her newfound passion for baking sourdough loaves introduces her to new friends and moneymaking opportunities.  But it also competes with her programming time.  Ah, if only those two endeavors could be combined.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.2/5 based on 5,575 ratings and 634 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.75/5 based on 63,455 ratings and 10,158 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    It was Peter who recommended switching to the liquid meal replacement that he and many of the other programmers preferred, and that seemed easier to digest under the circumstances, which were extreme and unrelenting.

    “Slurry,” he said.  “It’s outstanding.”

    Slurry was a nutritive gel manufactured by an eponymous company even newer than General Dexterity.  Dispensed in waxy green Tetra Paks, it had the consistency of a thick milkshake.  It was nutritionally complete and rich with probiotics.  It was fully dystopian.  (pg. 17)

 

    “Come join us at Café Candide.”  It took her acolytes a moment to process what they’d just heard.  When they did, their eyes went wide, and they looked at me with bewilderment and horror.

    Clingstone continued.  “Bring the starter back to the café.  You’ll apprentice under Mona Rahut.  You met her.  There’s no better teacher.”

    I felt the disorientation of a generous offer that in no way lines up with anything you want to do: like a promotion to senior alligator wrestler, or an all-expenses-paid trip to Gary, Indiana.  (pg. 190)

 

Kindle Details…

    Sourdough currently sells for $11.99 at Amazon.  Robin Sloan’s main bestseller, Mr. Penumbras’s 24-Hour Bookstore, and his other novel, Moonbound, also cost $11.99.  He also has several novellas to offer for $2.99 apiece.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Pareidolia (n.) : the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern – most commonly a human face.

 

He looked like the kind of person who might have taken up residence in a turnip restaurant in Berkeley. (pg. 159)

    There’s almost no cussing in Sourdough; I counted just six instances in the entire book.  I don’t recall any adult situations and I didn’t spot any typos.

 

    The writing is superb, the characters are unique and fun to meet; and there’s a lighthearted tone to the story that’s entertaining without devolving into silliness.  So how come the 63,455 readers at Goodreads only give it (on the average) a 3.75 rating?

 

    The storytelling is to blame.  Things start out well – strange happenings with the baking of sourdough; strange brothers running Clement Street Soup and Sourdough; strange faces in strange places.  Alas, none of those mysteries are satisfactorily resolved.  The ending is weak, involving some overeager Lembas acting up.  And if “lembas” sounds familiar, it’s that magical elven bread in LOTR.

 

    If you enjoyed Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and/or are an avid bread baker, you’ll probably eat up Sourdough.  Pun intended.  Otherwise, don’t be surprised if the ending is a letdown.  Perhaps the intention is to deal with the unresolved plot threads in a sequel.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing. One of Lois’s new hobbies involves gaining membership in something called the “Lois Club”.  The only stipulation for joining this social club is that your first name has to be Lois.  Guess what!  Lois Clubs are real!  They’ve been around since 1979; they hold annual conventions; and they even have a Facebook group.  Google it.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

   2012; 287 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Magical Realism  (one of Amazon’s designations, and I kinda like the term).  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    For Clay Jannon, any job is better than no job at all.  And while no one working in a bookstore ever gets rich quick, it is kind of a neat place to pass the time.

    The hours suck though.  Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore is open 24 hours a day, and Clay is unfortunate enough to draw the midnight to 8:00 AM shift.  OTOH, how many customers are going to wander in at three in the morning?

    However, the few nocturnal patrons that do show up are a curious bunch.  First, they treat the bookstore like a library: they “borrow” some very obscure books, and it’s always with utmost urgency.  Second, they all seem to borrow the same few books.  It’s almost like they know each other.  And third, if you peek inside those books, they’re all in gobbledygook.  No words, just random letters.

    Hey, maybe Clay Jannon has stumbled onto a den of spies ending each other coded messages via those books!  After all, Mr. Penumbra told him not to look inside the tomes.  Or maybe they’re a bunch of nut cases, who are under the delusion they’re reading words from random letters.  In any case, it’s worth investigating further.

    But prudently, Clay.  After all, we can’t afford to lose this job now, can we?

What’s To Like...

    Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a phenomenally popular bestseller.  It's garnered more than 2,000 reviews at Amazon, and is one of their Top 10,000 sellers, despite being almost 3½ years old. The Goodreads stats are even more insane – over 19,000 reviews and more than 118,000 ratings.  That’s a lot of readers & buyers of this book.

    The settings are a bibliophile’s delight.  Most of the story takes place in two bookstores/libraries.  The plotline is heavy on the intrigue and light on the action.  This usually makes for a dull read, but Robin Sloan’s writing style is engaging, and the characters he creates are richly 3-D.  This may be an easy read, but it’s also a fun read.

     It helps if, like me, you’re a techno-geek.  There are numerous plugs for geeky things, such as XKCD, Wall.E, Google, Kindles (and other forms of e-readers), Jackson Pollock, the blue screen of death, and Visicalc.  Jeez, I haven’t thought of that last one in decades, and once upon a time it was the cat’s meow of spreadsheets.

    You’ll also learn a lot about a fascinating man named Aldus Manutius, who is real (wiki him; I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this guy), and the Gerritszoon font, which is not.  My Gnostics get a brief mention, that’s always a plus.  Other neat things : Matropolis, GrumbleGear, the Waybacklist, Singularity Singles (speed dating for nerds), and OK/TK.

    The book was shorter than I expected, and is told from a first-person POV (Clay’s).  This is a standalone novel, with ANAICT no sequel, although there is a 60-page prequel, giving Mr. Penumbra’s backstory, for $2.99, which seems steep to me, but I suppose is to be expected for a novella by a top-tier author.  This is why I don’t read Amazon singles.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Colophon (n.) :  a publisher’s emblem or imprint, especially one on the title page or spine of a book,

Others : Proscenium (n.)

Excerpts...

    “I did not know people your age still read books,” Penumbra says.  He raises an eyebrow.  “I was under the impression they read everything on their mobile phones.”

    “Not everyone.  There are plenty of people who, you know– people who still like the smell of books.”

    “The smell!” Penumbra repeats.  “You know you are finished when people start talking about the smell!”  He smiles at that – then something occurs to him, and he narrows his eyes.  “I do not suppose you have a … Kindle?”  (loc. 873)

   Kat gushes about Google’s projects, all revealed to her now.  They are making a 3-D web browser.  They are making a car that drives itself.  They are making a sushi search engine – here she pokes a chopstick down at our dinner – to help people find fish that is sustainable and mercury-free.  They are building a time machine.  They are developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.  (loc. 2898)

 Fingers of thought are raking the space behind the cushions, looking for loose ideas, finding nothing.  (pg. 43)

    The writing is superb, the character-development is top-notch, and I’m not the type that needs someone to die in a book that I’m reading.  So why not a higher rating?  Well, if you brush aside all the good stuff, you discover that the storyline itself is hit-and-miss. 

    Clay “breaks” the initial code by discovering that the patrons make a strange pattern if you plot their comings and goings in the bookstore in 3-D.  However, you subsequently find that it’s pretty …erm… meaningless.  Mr. Penumbra and his cohorts are waiting for something, and whether it’s God, Godot, or something else is a fascinating enigma.  But the ending falls flat.  

    There’s a rather nice epilogue to the story, about the various characters and what happens to them, but honestly, I thought it would’ve been more powerful if those details were fleshed out and incorporated as part of the ending itself.

    But the plusses outweigh the minuses, and I’m always partial to a story that makes you wonder through most of the book whether the cause of the oddities are natural or supernatural phenomena.

   7½ Stars.  Subtract 1 star if you find any book without at least a couple thrills and spills to be somewhat of a tedious read.