SLOAN, Robin - Sourdough

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION

Especially at a time when programming was taking on a sheet of dynamism and computer science departments were wooing young women aggressively. It's nice to be wooed.

Pg. 4

It helped that I was good at it.

Pg. 4

I drove west through the narrow pass in the Rockies, crossed the dusty nothing of Nevada, and crashed into the verdant, vertical shock of California.

Pg. 6

I would pay rent fully four times larger than my mortgage in Michigan. The broker dropped the keys into my hand and said, "It's not a lot of space, but you won't be spending much time there!"

Pg. 7

Greatest among us are those who can deploy "my friend" to total strangers in a way that is not hollow, but somehow real and deeply felt; those who can make you, within seconds of first contact, believe it.

Pg. 10

We possess no stock of recipes, no traditions, no ancestral affinities. There was a lot of migration and drama in our history; our line had been broken not once, but six times, like one of those gruesome accident reports, the bone shattered in six places. When they put my family back together, they left out the food.

Pg. 28

There was one exception. My grandma Lois, for whom I was named, did not deign to cook - she was my mother's mother in that regard - but she did, on special occasions, baked bread. Specifically, she baked Chicago Prison Loaf, a comically hard and dense but apparently nutritious substance that she had learned to produce working part-time at an industrial bakery that served the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Pg. 28

Armed with a dormitory plan, I consumed the equivalent of nine meals a day, all of them shaded brown,  textured crispy.

Pg. 29

I might not have been so eager to meet the Loises if I hadn't been spending all day with the cold-eyed wraiths at General Dexterity.  By comparison, hanging out with a bunch of middle-aged ladies with the same name as me sounded pretty alluring.

Pg 32

If you ever wonder about the difference between Metro Detroit and the San Francisco Bay Area: compare their Louis Clubs.

Pg. 33

I worried that I've been too quiet - too boring. The other Loises had sharp opinions. They took up space.

Pg. 34

As I walk through Golden Gate Park, it struck me: the mystery of that woman's life  I hadn't ever known her, not really.

Pg. 34

A baking stone, to absorb and emit heat in a loose simulation of Broom's brick oven (even though he counseled that there was, in fact, no substitute that, basically, he pitied us)

Pg. 38

There were detailed instructions. I love detailed instructions. My whole career was detailed instructions. Precisely specified actions, executed in order. A serene confidence settled over me.

Pg. 39

There was dough on the cupboards. Dough on the faucet. Dough on the floor. It looked like the scene of a glutenous murder committed by a careless killer.

Pg. 39

On top of the city with my Loises all around me, I felt a tremor of something. Was it possible? I had become interesting.

Pg. 78

Finally you sell your company to Starbucks for nineteen million dollars. And remember: You began with the cart at the outermost corner.  You began here, in this line.

Pg. 82

Our CEO was accessible and approachable. He ate his lunch in the cafeteria with the rest of us, sitting with a different group everyday.  You could tell where he was without looking because Andrei's table always laughed a little too loud.

Pg. 111

Andrei's knew everyone's name and role. Everyone's. It was said he used flash cards.

Pg. 112

Is it strange that a sourdough starter sings?  It didn't seem strange when I was a child.

Pg. 115

He was beaming. The book looked very old. I didn't want to take it.

"Oh, you must, you must!" he said. "It is an absolutely foundational document."

I squinted at the text below the illustration. "I can't read Latin."

 He sobered. "All right. I'll keep this one. But take the rest."

Pg. 119

I was offering sourdough made from a starter strange and potent that had come into my possession unexpectedly. I explained that I found the birth of the dishes and also mood-stabilizing. I explained that the faces for a trade secret.

Pg. 129

I rose earlier than ever before and experienced a portion of the morning that was new to me. I heard the chirping of unfamiliar bird species -negotiations that had, until now, been concluded long before I woke.

Pg. 130

Even in those hours, the depot was never empty.  There was always someone - multiple some ones - who had spent the night working.

Pg. 131

The amount was not staggering - barely a tenth of my General Dexterity paycheck for the same amount of time - but this money felt more truly or mine somehow.

Pg. 134

There were whoops and groans, smiles and nods, high fives that snagged the branches if the lemon tree.

 Across the picnic table, Jaina Mitra looked stricken.

To no one in particular, she said, "I'm not ready yet."

Pg. 183

"I'd like to study your starter."

Pg. 229

She was suddenly sweet and solicitous, and it was very strange. She should have stayed sharp and brusque.

Pg. 229