Author Archives: Kasia Bartoszynska

NOTE: Forgive me if I’m repeating myself — I could have sworn that I posted about this book when I read it in SEPTEMBER, but it seems like I didn’t? But I’m feeling such deja vu as I’m typing, I feel like I *must* have said this before? It’s that point of the semester, friends.ContinueContinue reading “TOAF, Renee Gladman”

I think it is almost 2 years ago now that I signed up for a ceramics class with my dear child, and gradually realized that I was far more interested in making pottery than he was, and that I could in fact just sign up for a class on my own. I quickly became kindContinueContinue reading “Old in Art School, Nell Painter”

This is an absolute stunner. Enthralling, complex, surprising at every turn. I actually don’t want to say too much about it because the gradual unfolding is such a pleasure, but the rough sketch is that it’s a novel about a South African family designated by law as Coloured, fighting Apartheid while being internally riven byContinueContinue reading “My Son’s Story, Nadine Gordimer”

This is a long poem, told in mostly rhyming couplets, about a woman who blows her life up by leaving her (seemingly very kind and understanding) boyfriend to pursue an intense love affair with another woman. I couldn’t help chuckling to myself, at times, about how it’s such a quintessentially “cool New Yorker” kind ofContinueContinue reading “Couplets, Maggie Millner”

I’m translating an essay on free indirect discourse in Polish literature that focuses heavily on Żeromski, whom I haven’t read since graduate school, so I thought the time was ripe to revisit his work and got the audiobook of this one for a recent road trip. The opening is incredible — it’s a really remarkableContinueContinue reading “Wierna Rzeka, Stefan Żeromski”

I admittedly haven’t read most of the books that did make the Booker Shortlist, so I’m prepared to be corrected, but for now at least I think it’s a travesty that Endling didn’t make the cut. But I suspect I know why — I imagine that the postmodern meta flourishes make the book seem unseriousContinueContinue reading “Endling, Maria Reva”

“Moja książka jest właśnie propozycja bardziej świadomego bzykania w lesie; połączenie erotycznej energii z miłością do natury i piękna.” Czarujący ale i też czasem wzruszający, nawet filozoficzny przewodnik — raczej zbiór esejów — o seksie na plein airze. Fajnie się czyta.

My friend Annashay recommended this as an audiobook — Neko Case reads it herself — and I was pleasantly surprised by how different it was from what I expected. What I ultimately came to really appreciate (though it threw me at first) was how the book as only very loosely bound to an overarching narrative.ContinueContinue reading “The Harder I Fight, the More I Love You, Neko Case”

This is a cool, strange book — a story of three women and their friendship over the years, but also, unexpectedly, a work of sci-fi that sketches a vision of the future that awaits us. Each section is so distinct — different narrator, different span of time, different focus — but they also connect inContinueContinue reading “Memory Piece, Lisa Ko”

This is a really interesting novel about ambition and marriage. Also writing, and especially writing for tv, though the Hollywood industry part was more stressful than appealing for me. But this core problem of being in a marriage that has its problems but also its joys and comforts, where you and your partner seem toContinueContinue reading “Colored Television, Danzy Senna”