
Sourdough
A Novel
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $14.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Thérèse Plummer
-
By:
-
Robin Sloan
About this listen
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.
Includes bonus material that provides an audiobook-only glimpse at the evolving relationship between Lois and Slurry, the company upon whose dystopian meal replacements she and her engineer friends all subsist.
"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." — The Washington Post
"Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel..." — Chicago Tribune
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Ajax Penumbra 1969
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Ajax Penumbra has not arrived in San Francisco looking for free love or a glimpse of the technological future. He is seeking a book: the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. The last record of the book locates it in the San Francisco of more than a century earlier, and on that scant bit of evidence, Penumbra's university has dispatched him west to acquire it for their library.
-
-
Penumbra Prequel Is Too Slight
- By Dubi on 03-06-14
By: Robin Sloan
-
Sourdough Culture
- A History of Bread Making from Ancient to Modern Bakers
- By: Eric Pallant
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sourdough bread fueled the labor that built the Egyptian pyramids. The Roman Empire distributed free sourdough loaves to its citizens to maintain political stability. More recently, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, sourdough bread baking became a global phenomenon as people contended with being confined to their homes and sought distractions from their fear, uncertainty, and grief. In Sourdough Culture, environmental science professor Eric Pallant shows how throughout history, sourdough bread baking has always been about survival.
-
-
What an awesome book!
- By Peter on 06-06-22
By: Eric Pallant
-
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Gabrielle Zevin
- Narrated by: Jennifer Kim, Julian Cihi
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have heard before.
-
-
This book sucked the life out of me
- By RMan on 08-08-22
By: Gabrielle Zevin
-
Remarkably Bright Creatures
- A Novel
- By: Shelby Van Pelt
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Michael Urie
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
-
-
Hidden gem, incredible narration!
- By Christine T on 05-17-22
By: Shelby Van Pelt
-
The Suitcase Clone
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.
-
-
Is it possible to smile through a whole book?
- By Maryb on 08-14-22
By: Robin Sloan
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
Ajax Penumbra 1969
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Ajax Penumbra has not arrived in San Francisco looking for free love or a glimpse of the technological future. He is seeking a book: the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. The last record of the book locates it in the San Francisco of more than a century earlier, and on that scant bit of evidence, Penumbra's university has dispatched him west to acquire it for their library.
-
-
Penumbra Prequel Is Too Slight
- By Dubi on 03-06-14
By: Robin Sloan
-
Sourdough Culture
- A History of Bread Making from Ancient to Modern Bakers
- By: Eric Pallant
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sourdough bread fueled the labor that built the Egyptian pyramids. The Roman Empire distributed free sourdough loaves to its citizens to maintain political stability. More recently, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, sourdough bread baking became a global phenomenon as people contended with being confined to their homes and sought distractions from their fear, uncertainty, and grief. In Sourdough Culture, environmental science professor Eric Pallant shows how throughout history, sourdough bread baking has always been about survival.
-
-
What an awesome book!
- By Peter on 06-06-22
By: Eric Pallant
-
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
- A Novel
- By: Gabrielle Zevin
- Narrated by: Jennifer Kim, Julian Cihi
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sam and Sadie—two college friends, often in love, but never lovers—become creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have heard before.
-
-
This book sucked the life out of me
- By RMan on 08-08-22
By: Gabrielle Zevin
-
Remarkably Bright Creatures
- A Novel
- By: Shelby Van Pelt
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Michael Urie
- Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound over thirty years ago. Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight arms for his human captors—until he forms a remarkable friendship with Tova.
-
-
Hidden gem, incredible narration!
- By Christine T on 05-17-22
By: Shelby Van Pelt
-
The Suitcase Clone
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.
-
-
Is it possible to smile through a whole book?
- By Maryb on 08-14-22
By: Robin Sloan
-
Starter Villain
- By: John Scalzi
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.
-
-
Volcanic Lairs, Death Rays & Cats… Oh My! 😼
- By C. White on 09-19-23
By: John Scalzi
-
Annabel Scheme
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Robin Sloan
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short listen, perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the Internet. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil.
-
-
It could have been better
- By Juana Peralta on 11-21-19
By: Robin Sloan
-
Lessons in Chemistry
- A Novel
- By: Bonnie Garmus
- Narrated by: Miranda Raison, Bonnie Garmus, Pandora Sykes
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel–prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with—of all things—her mind. True chemistry results.
-
-
Making my 3 adult daughters read this
- By Teresa H. on 04-07-22
By: Bonnie Garmus
-
David Dean Bottrell Makes Love: A One-Man Show
- By: David Dean Bottrell
- Narrated by: David Dean Bottrell
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the newly revised 2019 version of the show, David Dean Bottrell performed his highly-acclaimed comic storytelling show that the Los Angeles Times called "hysterical" and SoCal Public Radio deemed "profane, hilarious, and moving." Bottrell revisits how love and sex (or the lack thereof) have affected the course of his life from age five to the present. This audiobook features both live and in-studio recordings of the monologues from David Dean Bottrell Makes Love.
-
-
The Ride of a Lifetime
- By Kenneth on 06-13-21
-
Delicious!
- A Novel
- By: Ruth Reichl
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her best-selling memoirs, Ruth Reichl has long illuminated the theme of how food defines us, and never more so than in her dazzling fiction debut about sisters, family ties, and a young woman who must finally let go of guilt and grief to embrace her own true gifts.
-
-
I really enjoyed this book. Really well read.
- By Diane Cates on 04-17-18
By: Ruth Reichl
-
Sea of Tranquility
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.
-
-
An excellent listen.
- By Mark on 04-11-22
-
The Dictionary of Lost Words
- A Novel
- By: Pip Williams
- Narrated by: Pippa Bennett-Warner
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.
-
-
Enchanted
- By Lulu Can on 04-07-21
By: Pip Williams
-
What You Are Looking For Is in the Library
- A Novel
- By: Michiko Aoyama
- Narrated by: Hanako Footman, Susan Momoko Hingley, Kenichiro Thomson, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What are you looking for? So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian. For Sayuri Komachi is able to sense exactly what each visitor to her library is searching for and provide just the book recommendation to help them find it. A restless retail assistant looks to gain new skills, a mother tries to overcome demotion at work after maternity leave, a conscientious accountant yearns to open an antique store, a recently retired salaryman searches for newfound purpose. In Komachi’s unique book recommendations they will find just what they need to achieve their dreams.
-
-
The power of honesty and an open mind
- By ili pika on 09-10-23
By: Michiko Aoyama
-
We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
- Bobiverse, Book 1
- By: Dennis E. Taylor
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.
-
-
Ignore the Publisher's Summary! This is Amazing!
- By PW on 04-12-17
By: Dennis E. Taylor
-
The Fifth Season
- The Broken Earth, Book 1
- By: N. K. Jemisin
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the Earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy.
-
-
The Nay-Sayers are Wrong.
- By Steve Groves on 02-10-20
By: N. K. Jemisin
-
Sin Eater
- A Novel
- By: Megan Campisi
- Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the crime of stealing bread, 14-year-old May receives a life sentence: She must become a Sin Eater - a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands.
-
-
Lush and atmospheric
- By Ruthi on 06-29-20
By: Megan Campisi
-
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Simon Prebble
- Length: 32 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.
-
-
Hang in there!
- By D. McMillen on 05-31-05
By: Susanna Clarke
-
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
- By: Claire North
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his 11th life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August", she says. "I need to send a message". This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.
-
-
Not what I'd feared
- By Isobel on 04-29-16
By: Claire North
Editorial reviews
Editors Select, September 2017
Robin Sloan is the master of creating quirky subcultures you didn't even know that you wished existed. In his newest effort he introduces an alternate reality in which there exists a variety of oddities: a Romani-like sourdough-gifted ethnic group called the Mazg (which I'm pretty sure is fictional, but maybe it's not? Either way you can hear their music on the audiobook), an international organization of Lois chapters (which my colleague tells me may actually be a real thing!), and a farmer's market filled with tech-obsessed craftsmen located in a burnt-out missile launcher (surely..not a thing?). Having now devoured this delicious book, I can say confidently that with Robin Sloan you always know what you're going to get. Which isn't a bad thing, because that thing you're getting is something completely unexpected. —Emily, Audible Editor
Critic reviews
2018 Listen List: Outstanding Audiobook Narration for Adult Listeners
"Narrator Therese Plummer's lively performance highlights Lois's cautious curiosity and delight of discovery as she transforms from non-cooking AI geek to sought-after baker. This quirky story is well served by Plummer's enthusiasm..." -AudioFile
"Therese Plummer, veteran narrator of more than 300 audiobooks, brings a delightfully loopy creativity to the delightfully loopy novel...." (Chicago Tribune)
"Robin Sloan's second novel is an entertaining concoction of probiotic and high-tech ingredients...This is a funny, effervescent book told in the first person and given full range by Therese Plummer, whose youthful voice captures the matter-of-fact nature of Lois's unjaded, scientific temperament and the dizzying ups and downs of her spirits." (The Washington Post)
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Ajax Penumbra 1969
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Ajax Penumbra has not arrived in San Francisco looking for free love or a glimpse of the technological future. He is seeking a book: the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. The last record of the book locates it in the San Francisco of more than a century earlier, and on that scant bit of evidence, Penumbra's university has dispatched him west to acquire it for their library.
-
-
Penumbra Prequel Is Too Slight
- By Dubi on 03-06-14
By: Robin Sloan
-
The Suitcase Clone
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.
-
-
Is it possible to smile through a whole book?
- By Maryb on 08-14-22
By: Robin Sloan
-
Moonbound
- A Novel
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is eleven thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history.
-
-
Now one of my favorite books
- By Leif Hansen on 07-06-24
By: Robin Sloan
-
Annabel Scheme
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Robin Sloan
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short listen, perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the Internet. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil.
-
-
It could have been better
- By Juana Peralta on 11-21-19
By: Robin Sloan
-
The Housekeeper and the Professor
- By: Yoko Ogawa
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper - with a 10-year-old son-who is hired to care for the professor. And every morning, as the professor and the housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them.
-
-
The Wonder Of Kindness & Connection
- By Sara on 06-16-16
By: Yoko Ogawa
-
The Last Gifts of the Universe
- A Novel
- By: Riley August
- Narrated by: Robyn Holdaway, Ayesha Antoine, Chris Thompson
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals–anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.
-
-
Underwhelming
- By Geoff Calhoun on 10-18-24
By: Riley August
-
Ajax Penumbra 1969
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 1 hr and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Young Ajax Penumbra has not arrived in San Francisco looking for free love or a glimpse of the technological future. He is seeking a book: the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. The last record of the book locates it in the San Francisco of more than a century earlier, and on that scant bit of evidence, Penumbra's university has dispatched him west to acquire it for their library.
-
-
Penumbra Prequel Is Too Slight
- By Dubi on 03-06-14
By: Robin Sloan
-
The Suitcase Clone
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko
- Length: 2 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.
-
-
Is it possible to smile through a whole book?
- By Maryb on 08-14-22
By: Robin Sloan
-
Moonbound
- A Novel
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is eleven thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and challenges: unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history.
-
-
Now one of my favorite books
- By Leif Hansen on 07-06-24
By: Robin Sloan
-
Annabel Scheme
- By: Robin Sloan
- Narrated by: Robin Sloan
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short listen, perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the Internet. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil.
-
-
It could have been better
- By Juana Peralta on 11-21-19
By: Robin Sloan
-
The Housekeeper and the Professor
- By: Yoko Ogawa
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He is a brilliant math professor with a peculiar problem - ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only 80 minutes of short-term memory. She is an astute young housekeeper - with a 10-year-old son-who is hired to care for the professor. And every morning, as the professor and the housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them.
-
-
The Wonder Of Kindness & Connection
- By Sara on 06-16-16
By: Yoko Ogawa
-
The Last Gifts of the Universe
- A Novel
- By: Riley August
- Narrated by: Robyn Holdaway, Ayesha Antoine, Chris Thompson
- Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals–anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.
-
-
Underwhelming
- By Geoff Calhoun on 10-18-24
By: Riley August
-
Sourdough Culture
- A History of Bread Making from Ancient to Modern Bakers
- By: Eric Pallant
- Narrated by: Daniel Henning
- Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sourdough bread fueled the labor that built the Egyptian pyramids. The Roman Empire distributed free sourdough loaves to its citizens to maintain political stability. More recently, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, sourdough bread baking became a global phenomenon as people contended with being confined to their homes and sought distractions from their fear, uncertainty, and grief. In Sourdough Culture, environmental science professor Eric Pallant shows how throughout history, sourdough bread baking has always been about survival.
-
-
What an awesome book!
- By Peter on 06-06-22
By: Eric Pallant
-
Alien Clay
- By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Narrated by: Ben Allen
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The planet of Kiln is where the tyrannical Mandate keeps its prison colony, and for inmates, the journey there is always a one-way trip. One such prisoner is Professor Arton Daghdev, xeno-ecologist and political dissident. Soon after arrival, he discovers that Kiln has a secret. Humanity is not the first intelligent life to set foot there. In the midst of a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem are the ruins of a civilization, but who were the vanished builders and where did they go?
-
-
Super good!
- By Jessi on 11-26-24
-
A Sorceress Comes to Call
- By: T. Kingfisher
- Narrated by: Eliza Foss, Jennifer Pickens
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cordelia knows her mother is . . . unusual. Their house doesn’t have any doors between rooms—there are no secrets in this house—and her mother doesn't allow Cordelia to have a single friend. Unless you count Falada, her mother's beautiful white horse. The only time Cordelia feels truly free is on her daily rides with him. But more than simple eccentricity sets her mother apart. Other mothers don’t force their daughters to be silent and motionless for hours, sometimes days, on end. Other mothers aren’t sorcerers.
-
-
Brilliantly creepy
- By Joella Berkner on 08-14-24
By: T. Kingfisher
-
Sky Full of Elephants
- By: Cebo Campbell
- Narrated by: Leon Nixon, Erin Ruth Walker, Janina Edwards
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.
-
-
Ever wish that some folks would just disappear?
- By Alioop on 12-11-24
By: Cebo Campbell
-
Piranesi
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Chiwetel Ejiofor
- Length: 6 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.
-
-
Fascinating Social Study
- By Henry V on 02-26-21
By: Susanna Clarke
-
The Thursday Murder Club
- A Novel
- By: Richard Osman
- Narrated by: Lesley Manville
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together, they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.
-
-
Loved the book but needed better audio production
- By Anne Rivers on 10-29-20
By: Richard Osman
Charming, Quirky, and Delicious!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoyed the audiobook, although I feel as a native I do have to make one observation about the remarkable Thérèse Plummer's pronunciation of "Clement Street" which is not the same as the way San Franciscans say it. I was able to rationalize this away by concentrating on the fact that the first-person narrator is a transplant from Michigan and didn't grow up hearing it that way. Cabrillo Street I'm less sure of. One of the reasons I snatched up this Audible book is because of how much I liked her work on the audiobook of The Collected Stories by Lydia Davis.
A pleasant romp
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Would you consider the audio edition of Sourdough to be better than the print version?
No, I'm sure I would have enjoyed a print version more than this narration.What was one of the most memorable moments of Sourdough?
I'm an avid customer of my local farmers' market, but now I look at the vendors and their wares with a slightly different curiosity. It made me want to start baking sourdough bread again!How could the performance have been better?
The narrator's voice was fine, and actually went well with the whimsical/magical realism feel of the story.But...the butchered pronunciations of many terms -- especially, but not exclusively, local place names -- threw me right out the story. For one example, it's not CLEM-ent street, it's cle-MENT street.
While the author seemed to have a good knowledge of the Bay Area, the audio production team clearly did not and failed to do their homework.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Unfortunately, listening to it made me cringe because of the regular mispronounced words.Good story marred by bad narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Strong Start
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
entertaining story
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Intriguing
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story starts out with a recent graduate who takes a job at a start up company and is still kind of finding her way and happens to meet two brothers who run a start up restaurant out of their own apartment. From there the story grows in ways I wasn’t expecting and was pleasantly surprised by definitely one of my favorite reads of 2021 at a must for anybody who loves cooking and food. The narrator was fantastic and the story was awesome.
Pleasantly Surprising! A great story about food and someone trying to make their way
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Do your homework!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Worse, though, was the narration. This reader only does one female voice, sometimes without enough differentiation between them to even indicate a change in speaker. And seriously, who talks like Lois does???
Interesting story, poor narration
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Great
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.