This is another one of my delicious Christmas 2020 gifts, they were so amazing they pretty much recouped the year. By way of disclosure, I have never read anything by Flannery O’Connor, even though her name is familiar to me. When dealing with a fiction writer it may not be best to start with their …
Another one of my 2020 Christmas gifts. It has a lovely cover and is illustrated throughout, but it is not a children’s book. Hanna Krall is a Polish writer and journalist. In her work, she often focused on Jewish-Polish history during the Holocaust. One of her most famous books is the long interview with Marek …
It is the first of my Christmas 2020 gifts I’m reviewing, even though I already read a few. And I must say 2020 has been awful in most respects, but I could not be happier about all the bookish gifts I got this year! Let’s start with the title, as always a rough translation is …
I got this book when one of my friends was going through a decluttering phase in preparation for moving to a new flat. To be honest French and Saunders never fully grabbed my heart or other body parts. I like bits and pieces but have never watched all episodes. Still, I very much have a …
This was one of my lovely birthday gifts from my mum. The title can be roughly translated as Shamanic Disease. Jacek Hugo-Bader is a Polish reporter focusing mostly on Russia and former Soviet Republics. He traveled extensively in this area, including a car journey from Moscow to Vladivostok, a canoe trip through Lake Baikal and …
It wasn’t really about the engineering of the space, the real battle was about the culture — about changing the hearts and minds of New Yorkers, of changing their minds about who their streets were for. If building roads actually resulted in less traffic, then surely after sixty years of interstate highway construction we would …
It was probably last year when I got from my mum a set of four books about modern approaches to urban design. I read them slowly because the subject matter is a serious one. It touches us every day. Since most of us live in cities, the design mistakes haunt us, making our life difficult …
Continue reading Streetfight. Handbook for an Urban Revolution – Janette Sadik-Khan, Seth Solomonow
A few days ago I published My Fiction Books of 2020, so now for New Year’s Eve let’s see what came out of the non-fiction shelf. I noticed the older I get the more non-fiction I read, and generally, I enjoy it a lot. It challenges me more than fiction. Which makes sense as it …
You know this annoying situation when you’re at the airport and still have over an hour to your flight and you finish the book you had with you? Well, this happened to me recently, so I did the only reasonable thing and went to the airport bookshop. As always the selection is pretty skewed, but …
Continue reading Łódź. Miasto po przejściach – Wojciech Górecki, Bartosz Józefiak
The weeks went by in the Village in the Valley, and I felt dark and heavy like the plums in the abandoned gardens. The sizzle of insects intensified with the fragrant decay of summer. I didn’t even have the motivation to take myself to the beach anymore. My sense of impasse was mixed with languor, …
Continue reading Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe – Kapka Kassabova – Quotes
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