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Sourdough: Or, Lois and Her Adventures in the Underground Market: A Novel

by Robin Sloan

A software engineer finds a new calling in sourdough

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A software engineer finds a new calling in sourdough

Lois Clary’s work at a San Francisco robotics company leaves little room for life beyond her desk. When the neighborhood food shop she relies on closes, its owners leave her with their sourdough starter—and instructions to care for it. Learning to bake brings bread into her daily routine and, eventually, into her company cafeteria. An invitation to try selling at a farmers’ market opens a path beyond the workplace. Robin Sloan’s novel connects the care of a living starter with questions of work, community, and making things by hand, setting Lois’s change of direction against the ambitions of a technology company.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • For readers interested in fiction about work and changing direction.
  • For readers drawn to stories involving baking, food, and local markets.
  • For readers curious about the contrast between technology work and hands-on craft.

Themes

Work and vocationCommunityBaking and foodTechnology and craft

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

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.

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