Sourdough
- 272
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Sourdough” is a light, odd and good-natured comedy about an overworked software engineer who inherits a sourdough starter and begins to bake. Some readers relish its strangeness, from a starter that needs music to a robot arm enlisted for the bread, along with its relaxed prose. Others find the characters uncomplicated. A short, hopeful book that gives a good deal of cheer.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Leavened by the same infectious intelligence and lovable nerdiness that made Robin Sloan's Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore such a sensation, Sourdough marks the triumphant return of a unique and beloved young writer. 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 neighbourhood 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?
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.8 across 238 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 62% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Fantasy average of 8.0. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.8 | 238 | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Sourdough?
It has 272 pages — shorter than 95% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Fantasy — and a score of 7.9, the closest to this book.
