Sarah N.

I've become that person. It's not a bad thing, but it's a frustrating thing, sometimes, when there seem to be so many gluten-free books and recipes out there and not as many without the dairy, either. This book, and my mom who gifted it to me, is fantastic. The fact that I'll be making and EATING bread pudding again is delightful. Add to that the fact that the bread tastes like bread, has the consistency of bread (meaning, of course, gluten-packed delicious bread), and I'm even more thrilled. I made a date paste from here that was an experience and also yielded a swell sugar alternative, and the richly spiced lentils were as advertised, and easy to throw together. There are so many things left to discover here: nut milk by my own making, nut cheese the same way, some salmon patties, some drop biscuits, and so on and on. I'm a pretty happy clam, indefinitely.

As a kid, fairy tales weren’t my favorites. These have changed me. Each voice is distinct. Stories from around the world are re-explored by Aimee Bender, Joy Williams, and Corvallis’ own Marjorie Sandor, among others. "The Color Master" delves into the creation of color in cloth, something Bender loved in the fairy tale "Donkeyskin" that she read as a girl. John Updike and Joyce Carol-Oates both rework Bluebeard. Williams addresses John James Audubon's ethics through a story of Baba Iaga and her pelican child. At the close of each, writers note what fuels their obsession and retelling. I’m far from finished, and not about to stop.

"In that long ago somewhere very near this place he'd watched a falcon fall down the long blue wall of the mountain and break with the keel of its breastbone the midmost from a flight of cranes and take it to the river below all gangly and wrecked and trailing its loose and blowsy plumage in the still autumn air." I will never be not awed by this section, and am stunned each read by its skeletal beauty and the beauty of what memory McCarthy shows us. The book, in all its grit, is built by moments so quiet and rich as this.

Anthony Doerr writes huge short stories, and I love it. They're rich and wide and thick, novelesque, developing and exploring worlds into which the reader easily, willingly slips. Each one in this collection addresses memory – its failings, fibers, what a life memory is itself – and each takes us to a new place: China, South Africa, the Midwest, Lithuania, Germany. It is obvious the care and time Doerr puts into his work and research. He gives us such color, smell, shape, feel, taste, memory and its happinesses and heartbreaks. He gives me hope - for people in their plights, for writing itself.

For me, these short short short short short stories turn feelings into worlds: trepidation, confusion, disinterest, desire, curiosity. Take this one, by Barry Napier, titled Through Tiny Windows: "When they opened the cadaver, they found a house. A couple argued inside. There was rhythm to their words, like the beating of a heart." Much happens in little time, rules and parameters are set, and then the reader is dismissed. The end. Each story in this collection showcases its writer's ability to create rich, believable space in a reader's head with few, but perfect, words.

I’m a sucker for stories with horses. Forgiveness peels away layers of the Skala family – its workings, structures and sabotages – through the bodies and gestures of horses. Horse descriptions can easily turn repetitive and saccharine; so far, I haven’t felt bored or ill. If I can’t ride a horse of my own, I’m satisfied to watch them in Machart’s world.

I have tried for weeks now to write this review. It's felt a bit like readying for a date with someone I like and want to be liked back by. As in, I want to write this right, so Katniss, say, might like it, might think I really get her, and might want, when she stops being just imagined, to hang out. Because she's pretty incredible and cool. Tough with one of those hearts that'll destroy anything to keep the people it holds safe. What's more, she's a wiz with bow and arrow. It thrills me Ms. Collins has built this at once impossible and imaginable world – terrifying, but as humans we impart terror by the second – and to see it developed so well is both a best and worst: I don't want this to happen, but I won't be the most shocked if it does, and I'll hope to be either a Katniss or someone betting only on her and her power to set change in motion.

I have a thing for books about siblings, especially those who grow like twins and inevitably separate. In The Mountain Lion, Stafford takes Ralph and Molly and raises them from children to teenagers, from worlds revolving around and for each other to individuals with very distinct personalities and critical eyes —for each other, for those they encounter, for their family and the land. When a death brings a half-uncle to see them, they each feel they've found someone who might understand them —first as a pair, later as a Molly or a Ralph, only —better than anyone ever has. Stafford's place descriptions are like perfect dioramas, and her capture of what it is to grow apart while yearning to remain together is stunning and heartbreaking.

I love a slim, rich book, and this here's one, its language tight, sizzling, thick with great sound and rhythm that poetically develops a tough and satisfying story about brothers, relationships, and emotional and physical survival. I read an interview with Torres where he spoke about having only brief bursts of time in which he could write, needing to get the story down and stripped to essence quickly. This comes through in each hot little vignette, and the overall impulse that drives you from one scene to the next as the boys and their parents navigate each other, themselves, and their choices.

I haven't read much nonfiction lately, but Birkerts' book I really enjoy and find incredibly soothing. Comprised of many short explorations of place, piece, past and present, he begins each essay focused on an object, a memory, a word, and then meanders through what associations come. I appreciate his eye for detail and his candid revelations of who he was then and how his then shaped his now — as a writer, a person, an observer. To "watch" him watch is fascinating, and makes me think about the ways I see currently, and what paths in me that sight might make.

I. Love. Aimee. Bender. And have for some time. I love Rose Edelstein, who tastes people in the food they make, their emotions and lives, allegiances and dalliances; she tastes how meats and veggies have been raised, and whether the food was assembled by a machine or not. And despite all her abilities, she's a normal girl. Her mother is obsessed with her brother. Her brother is obsessed with solitude. Her father is driven to long-distance running. It feels good to surrender my ideas of world and reality and enter Bender's books, and why not? Strangeness makes headlines and eyebrows every day. Lemon Cake's world is wild, and magical, and, above all, honest. Last Friday, during the store's birthday party, one of our presents was Aimee Bender's appearance. She's lovely. Funny. Kind. Generous. She signed books and we still have some left and you should get your hands on all you can and ready yourself to be thrilled.

Here’s the thing: I love Alaska. Not because I’ve been there, but thanks to evocatively written accounts: it’s tough, I’ve read, and worth it. What I enjoyed most about Lentfer’s book wasn’t watching him learn that love and joy instilled in his daughter would reach further in the world than all the anger he had for the destruction and disregard of the precious wild land he loved, though that, of course, was insightful, compassionate, and moving. But what I truly loved was his adored place: picturing the stark, volatile beauty of sea in winter; the persistence of a garden in inclement weather; a doe and fawn in sights and snow; cranes returning year after year after year. Of course he wants to save this place, as should we all. It’s stunning, and fruitful, and addictive.

This book makes me laugh and drops my blood pressure. Sometimes, I like a little direction, and Meg Keene gives it to me, describing what weddings once were and what aspects of them have morphed and how to navigate an ever-sprawling industry that's been built to sell "love." And remember? She makes me laugh! People getting married already have the love. They just need to make the party, or the ceremony, or whatever they hope to do to mark the occasion of them marrying, in whatever way feels true and right to them, and this book does a fine job suggesting approaches while affirming all along the way that love, and its celebration with loved ones, is what matters. Which I love, so much.

Friends, don’t judge this book by its cover; it wasn’t born this way. Quite possibly, you’ve seen the movie with Mr. Pitt. Perhaps you find him lovely; cheers. But now, if you haven’t yet, you need to read what Harrison wrote. It is so utterly gorgeous, so poetic and spare and restrained, yet creates, in its novella pages, one immense, rich world. And! Bonus! You get two other Harrison novellas in the book. All three built by the author’s careful sentences and his layering of details – skin by skin by skin – into these wonderful, library- and heart-altering beasts.