33 Place Brugmann

By Alice Austen

A 4-story apartment building in Brussels, 1939-43. Two apartments per floor, with a seamstress in the cramped 5th floor attic. Nazis on the move, eventually capturing the town. Everyone who lives there (but one, a color-blind painter of great merit) is confronted with the lines we cross and don’t cross when confronted with a fear of all-encompassing magnitude. This is a masterpiece, written by someone who grew up in Eugene. Alice’s debut novel is reminiscent (to me) of Genleman in Moscow, only iwht more space between the moments. It is mean to be read with thoughtfulness and love, and re-read for the magic of its language. Highly recommended by both Ann Patchett and Abraham Verghese

The Passenger

By Cormac McCarthy

Be it Nuclear Science, Cosmology, or whole chapters of single line dialogue, all some how autobiographical, McCarthy’s last masterpiece

Liberation Day

By George Saunders

The thing about George Saunders, when I’m reading one of his stories, and it is a great one, I feel like I’m reading the greatest story I’ve ever read, and am afterward excited and creative for days to come. That’s Liberation Day, really a novella, the opening story in Saunder’s latest collection. Like Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders takes on a historical figure like no one has, this time General Custer. Mary Mary Karr says of George: “…not one of, not arguably, but the best” (short story writer in English). Generally I take a book home, read it, then bring it back to the Bookstore. This one I’m keeping, because I’m going to wear it out.