Notes & Quotes on Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Hey Happy Bookworms!

So I never highlight books or find quotes in them – I don’t know why because I find it really interesting to look at quotes others have highlighted (you know that kindle feature?) but I just never find anything meaningful enough to note down but for some reason right from the start I just wanted to highlight this book! So now I’m gonna share some of those (we’ll see how many, there are a lot!) and my comments on them. Before you run a mile – don’t worry this book was HILARIOUS so these aren’t philosophical quotes or anything, more funny parts I had to share.

“There aren’t any pirates in this one, but it does feature a great rocky island, along with some very heroic goats.”

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• “We are the children of Hogwarts, and more than anything, we just want to be sorted” I mean yes! But this is also a little joke since our main character works in tech (specifically robots, I know, how cool)
• “We were on a quest to end work. And it would involve: a ton of work” Aforementioned robot work is, in more detail, giant robot hands that can be programmed to do all sorts of things.
• “The grey slime inside looked distinctly not alive. It looked like an enemy of aliveness. Like something alive things crossed the street to avoid” Meet our main character’s (who I should probably name – Lois) sidekick – SOURDOUGH! Don’t worry, the sourdough doesn’t come alive, well I guess it is but it doesn’t talk or anything (well it sings a bit)
• Ah! Now let’s meet Lois a bit more: “a wild eyed woman in sweatpants alive to the miracles of the universe, cradling a mysterious bundle, with traces of dough drying on the front of her tech company T-shirt.” I mean, what a look
• “If there was a spectrum of spaces defined at one end by my barren apartment, this marked the other extreme. Every single surface told a story. A long one. With digressions.” I love this! Lois goes to a ‘Lois group’ where she meets a bunch of older women all named Lois & you can just imagine this woman’s house filled to the brim with photos of her life and all she’s done.
• Because obviously everyone in Lois club is called Lois, they all have nicknames for each other & a reason for said nicknames like “Old Lois was still alive” but of course we can’t tell poor old Lois this so “You’re most respected Elder Lois”
• “Jesus Christ in an English muffin.” You already know this is my new catchphrase
• “The power outlet looked like a little dude, but power outlets always look like little dudes.” I had to google american power outlets but I mean look at these guys:

• “(I did once coax Kubrick back to life with a spray bottle. You have to work pretty hard to push a cactus to the brink of death.)” I can testify that it is not that hard as a still grieving plant mum *excuse me while I cry* but I guess it would be quite hard to underwater a cactus.
• When your sourdough starter does weird things: “It would have been tidy to believe that it was a ghost speaking to me through the malleable medium of goopy dough. There’s a whole story there: I could have organised a seance, hired a specialised kitchen exorcist, et cetera. But of course, I do not believe in kitchen ghosts, or sourdough angels, or 500-degree devils”
• Ok so Lois figures her dough out & she’s offered a job by Lily (“Maybe she was the token goddess of death, and also of street fashion.”) in this incredible underworld food market where the greeting is “STILL- TOO- SKINNY.”
• A couple stuck up people from Lois’ old job after she totally roasted them (pun 100% intended) “The wraiths pulled knives from their waistbands and committed ritual suicide. Actually, they backed slowly away, and I never saw them again.” I mean we all imagine the death of incredibly annoying people
• Now let’s meet Agrippa (“the master of microbes”) & his alpaca “I try to discourage them [from calling me that] but then they ask me what I am, and I can never quite say it right. So then I just shut up.” he’s super reclusive & normally just hangs out with his goats or in “the cheese cave. [Which] used to hold nukes” (past tense 😂)
• He explains to Lois the magnificence of bacteria “In that cave, empires are rising and falling. There are battles under way. Wars. More soldiers on both sides than in all the wars of human history combined. And they are struggling. They are taking territory, making it safe. Building fortresses…There is a saga in here to put our whole history to shame…In every wheel of cheese, there’s revolution, alliance, betrayal…Can you feel it?” I mean that’s just fascinating.
• Lois on bacteria: “but was it really small? There had to be a scale somewhere – the scale of stars, the scale of far-off cosmic super-beings – upon which we ourselves, we humans with our cities and bridges and subterranean markets, would look like the lactobacilli and the yeast.” puts it into perspective, doesn’t it? Wow I said this wouldn’t get deep
• “It never occurs to people that maybe I’d like to be the reckless one. The disrupter!…I wanted a place to break things” I mean yes, yes, yes & yes.

Quick fire!

• “Food is the history of the deepest kind”
• “It’s always new and astonishing when it’s yours.”
• “Culinary mafia”
• “As a rule, you do not enter an empty spaceship without first knowing the fate of the crew.” (this made me think of Illuminae & then the doctor who episode with the dinosaurs)

• “Feeding people is really freakin’ great. There’s nothing better.”
• “Goats only ever give side-eye.”
• “The organisms that won the war might not be the organisms that began it.” Bacteria? Humans? This is applicable everywhere
• THERE’S A LIBRARY “we passed through a tunnel of memory in a bubble of light” *swoons at how beautiful that was* “That…is the first identifiable published illustration of a carrot.”
• “There were aeons packed into those hours.”
• “Baking, by contrast, was solving the same problem over and over again, because every time, the solution was consumed. I mean, really: chewed and digested.
  Thus, the problem was ongoing.
  Thus, the problem was perhaps the point.”

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Honestly go read this book – it’s incredible & I recommend it to everyone.

“I could start with the starter.”

Do you like to make notes on books? What’s the funniest book you’ve read? ARE YOU GOING TO READ THIS BOOK?!?!