Bread and Bookstores

 Dear Mr. Robin Sloan,

I've been binging your books. I started out of order and read Moonbound first. Then Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore made it off my holds. After that one I ripped through Sourdough.

I have several things to say:

Number One:

You can't reel us in with sentient sourdough bread and spirit-cleansing spicy soup and NOT LEAVE US A RECIPE FOR THE SOUP!!! I understand that sourdough is an artisanal craft, and I'm perfectly content to get a loaf from Safeway rather than build a brick oven in my backyard. But after finishing the book, man, I was craving that soup, and Safeway only carries chicken noodle and chili--neither of which come close to the shadow-sensations left in my brain of the double spicy combo searing down Lois Clary's throat.

I looked it up to see if any chefs had caught the vision of the Mazg, and I did find a Reddit thread suggesting Thai tomyum soup, or Burmese khow suey. The "Cook the Books" book club read Sourdough and several of their bloggers thankfully gave us inroads into a recreation of the Chaiman brothers' secret recipe.

I tried my own hand at a spicy soup to go with my Safeway sourdough loaf. I'm a home cook, emphasis on the home--and in our home cooking means throwing some pasta on the stove to make a quick dinner between my kids' martial arts and musical theater practice. So a spicy soup recipe for me had to be quick, with ingredients that were already in my pantry. (I did send my husband out for the bread and the kale.)

I'm sure it didn't come close to the cleansing power of the Mazg soup with the Fresno chilis and the addictive properties that allow Lois to eat it practically every day for a month. But I'm the kind of musician who hears what a song could sound like, not exactly what it does sound like with these instruments and those slightly off-pitch notes. Maybe the same thing was happening with my taste buds. But I did like the soup + sourdough combo enough to eat it for lunch and dinner...and make it again the next day.

Recipe is below if anyone wants to try!

Number Two:

I enjoyed reading Penumbra, but I have a fundamental quarrel with its treatment of bookstores and books. I couldn't completely get into the fun of the quest to decode the books and solve the puzzles...because to me puzzling and reading are completely different activities. Penumbra asked his novice readers to "read deeply." But when you solve a puzzle, you are not, by my definition, reading deeply. You're parsing information. There is the relevant information and the irrelevant information, and so part of the process of a good puzzler is to discard all the unnecessary data.

Deep reading, to me, is not to discard, not to scan, not to search for clues, but to sink into the ideas. The first read absorbs everything with an open mind. The second read pushes to understand even more of what the author was hinting at but not saying explicitly, to grasp the big picture they were painting from beginning to end. The third read understands through distinction, evaluating the ideas and seeing which ones will stand, which ones will help build the castle through which I see the world. 

There is a quest in reading books, and I can completely understand a secret society of people spending lifetimes and hundreds of years on the search. But the search is a search for truth--not so narrow as the question of how to beat death, but wider, the truth that will let us see all questions, including the search for immortality, in their proper perspective. 

So I felt that the whole premise of the puzzle was a little off the mark for me. But the theme of the book, of friendship and the ability to help one another on the search--that's something I can get onboard with.

Number Three:

Thank you for the books. They are a delight. I love seeing the 21st century and all of its powers and oddities through the eyes of wonder that, growing up, I only used for looking at castles and dragons. You take the entire computing power of Google and harness it to solve a puzzle for three seconds. You supersize a fungus to the point where it's large enough to swallow buildings. You help us appreciate side by side the swerve of the robotic arm and the crunch of brick-oven-baked bread. You leave me wanting to taste the soup. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Elanor Lin

Spicy Soup with Sourdough Bread

Serves 2, alongside 4 thick slices of sourdough bread

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 can tomato soup
2 ribs celery, sliced
Chicken stock
Salt
Ground pepper
2 bay leaves
Turmeric
Chili powder
Paprika
Cayenne pepper
Red pepper flakes
Ground turkey
Kale

Instructions:

1. In a medium pot, saute olive oil, onions, and garlic on medium heat until the oil is fragrant and onions are clear.

2. Add the tomato soup, celery, and all spices--add amounts to taste. (Don't put in too much turmeric--it's stronger than it looks.)

3. In a separate pan, brown the ground turkey, seasoning a little with some more salt, chili powder, and paprika

4. Add chicken stock to the soup pot--not too much, because you don't want to water down the flavor. 

5. Add the ground turkey and kale to the soup pot. Add a lot of kale. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Keep tasting and adjusting with chicken stock and seasonings until the soup has some body.

6. Enjoy while hot, with sourdough bread for dipping.