I've been wanting to read
this book for a while. I read the author's first book (Mr. Penumbra's
24 hr Bookstore) and enjoyed it so when I learned he had written
another book I mentally added it to my To-Be-Read list. I walked past it a
few times, and read the cover during my regular haunts of bookstores
and libraries but never actually got down to the business of reading
it until now. I am also someone who has tried to raise/keep a
sourdough starter and cook with it but has not had good luck in that
respect, so from that point of view the book also caught my interest.
What a fun read! Need a
good escape from the seriousness of life? Read this book. This book
is hard to describe...there's a foodie focus, and having lived in the
Bay area years ago I can relate to the setting and atmosphere created
in the story. "Lois" is a software engineer leaving her
comfort zone of a small town to go work for a technology whiz
start-up company in the big city (San Francisco). She is spending all
her time at the office with the other technological geniuses, who
hardly even venture home from work and when they do they never cook.
Lois soon relies on a local take-out and delivery joint for all her
dinners and has food delivered nightly to her apartment. The place is
run by two mysterious brothers, they cook the food and deliver soup
and sourdough bread to her every night, she becomes their best
customer. One day they inform her, that they are suddenly moving away
and give her a gift of their sourdough starter since she has loved
eating their food so much. They tell her to take care of it, learn to
bake with it and to play it music to keep it happy.
And... the story gets
odder from there, but in a good way. It's fanciful, fantastical,
farcical, and a quirky mix of oddball characters, technology, and the
ancient art of baking bread for meaning and sustenance. Get your fill
of inside foodie jokes (the urban scale Panettone is one example) and
nerdy humor when you learn the story of how the mysterious Masque
people (ancient keepers of the sourdough starter) became
pirates..."For while other pirate crews were sick from moldy
rations, the Masque pirates were strong from rations made of mold".
This book has an unusual
and entertaining plot, it's a clean read, a quick read, great for
travel or the beach and many parts are laugh out loud funny. Ancient
world meet modern world, where a robot arm is programmed to stir the
dough and the bread oven and sourdough starter are characters in
their own right.
You may yearn to bake
after reading this book. You will definitely want to sink your teeth
into a butter slathered slice of fresh sourdough bread while reading
it.
