Author Archives: Kasia Bartoszynska

First book of 2026. I actually read it twice, because I got to the end and thought, wait, what? And it was so short that hey, why not? Bellatin’s Beauty Salon is maybe in my all-time top 10 favorites (it’s amazing) and Perpetual Law has that same mesmerizing, eerie quality, but it’s more opaque inContinueContinue reading “Perpetual Law, Mario Bellatin, tr. Stephen Beachy”

These aren’t necessarily the BEST things I read, but rather, the top 12 (because it makes for a better photo collage) books I read in 2025 that stuck with me. There are other excellent books that I read, like Ulysses, or Emma, that just stay with me always, are so much in the fabric ofContinueContinue reading “Best of 2025”

It’s hard for me to evaluate this book, because it was articulating an argument that I already agreed with before I read it. I would love to know how persuasive it is to someone who didn’t share those views. But what I think is so vital and important is that it is a critique ofContinueContinue reading “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, Peter Beinart”

This took me a long time to get through because it’s so incredibly grim. It’s also one of those graphic novels where I’m like, wait, you’ve tricked me into reading dense overviews of factual information by putting them in speech bubbles next to a drawing of a guy talking!! But it is also more generallyContinueContinue reading “Climate Changed, Philippe Squarzoni, tr. Ivanka Hahnenberger”

This is a great book to read on your own if you’re a literary studies person experiencing some existential angst, but it’s a really great book to read and discuss with a bunch of your colleagues in the humanities. I asked our Center for Faculty Excellence if we could have a reading group for itContinueContinue reading “Reasons & Feelings, Sarah Mesle”

I really love The Book of Margery Kempe, so I had to go through a bit of a process to recognize that this wasn’t that book, and wasn’t meant to be. It’s tricky, though, because part of the project here IS retelling Margery’s story, and so part of me bristled, and just wanted to goContinueContinue reading “Margery Kempe, Robert Glück”

I had a 10 hour drive yesterday, so I launched into this audiobook that a friend recommended — and I was absolutely enraptured. It’s so great. First, very important, it’s funny. Funny books are weirdly rare! But second, it’s that magical combination of being very easy to read, like, feels like guilty pleasure kind ofContinueContinue reading “The Husbands, Holly Gramazio”

It feels churlish to say so, but this was so exactly what I expected it to be that it felt borderline satirical. A bleak, austere story of a woman coming to a community of nuns and reckoning with horrors of the past both personal and collective. Punctuated with startlingly grotesque stuff about mice (that, IContinueContinue reading “Stone Yard Devotional, Charlotte Wood”

I wasn’t going to see it even though I adore Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal because I really hated the book and I knew what the movie was going to be. But then I saw a clip of an interview with Chloe Zhao where she was talking about how she and the (Polish) director ofContinueContinue reading “Hamnet”

I’m an obnoxious pedant about my Best of the Year list (I do so much more reading and watching at the end of December! Some of it is really good stuff! You just have to WAIT) but I am also a merciful god (ha ha) who understands that people like to use Best Of listsContinueContinue reading “Holiday Gift recommendations”