The Internet Personified: January books and culture recap

This month has lasted about ten years and yet I haven't gotten all my reading done

This is a new thing I’m doing with my newsletter where I send you a reading recap every month (and some bonus things I also watched/read etc that weren’t books.) Weirdly, I find it easier to post here than do a whole round-up on Instagram? Anyway, let me know what you think.

Not a great month for me, guys, all in all. I didn’t get a grant I really wanted. I started an intensive German language course (only a week left!) which is good for my general knowledge but very ugh in terms of both commute and teaching styles (not to mention it leaves me with not much energy to write). I fell sick with what felt like the flu, even though pedants around me delight in telling me it was not, in fact, the actual flu, but whatever, I had a low grade fever and couldn’t get out of bed for five days and couldn’t leave the house for seven. The only good thing as a result of this flu was that I a) read a lot and b) finally achieved my dream of becoming an “only when I’m drinking” smoker. I always envied social smokers, moving through life without a care in the world, someone always around to bum a ciggie off of, and if there aren’t any, well then, you just manage without. I, on the other hand, had a small but regular habit, five ciggies a day, and I really miss smoking, especially now that I’m writing to you (not that I would’ve smoked WITH my writing, I’m not Carrie Bradshaw, but I would’ve had a quick one in the morning to gather my thoughts) but I’m also curious how long I can go on like this. See, I’m very lazy and breaking a habit feels like the opposite of laziness, but I feel like it would be fun to try? So I’m trying anyhow. Cravings are not so bad, even if I socially smoked the day before, not painful headache-y cravings like I used to get in the past. So I guess I recommend getting sick if you’re trying to get healthier in your habits. We’ve also been trying a dry-ish January, where we no longer default to drinking and I had a lovely hangout with friends the other day where we just drank tea and ate chaat and samosas (friends made, I just sat with my peppermint tea. I do not like regular chai, which makes it hard to travel across India, I can tell you, producing my little silicon pour-over with my filters and my fancy coffee like some asshole, but what to do?). Socialising, I realise, does not have to be lubricated by wine, so when you do meet friends for drinks, it’s twice as fun and not all ho-hum, this again. Anyway, I’m just healthy and boring this month. I wish I had the urge to go to a club and snort cocaine in a dirty bathroom with people pounding on the stall door behind me to get me to hurry up, but it is not in me these days. (Actually, it was never. My indulgence of choice is lots of full-to-the-brim glasses of red wine, a super smokey bar, getting progressively drunker while you argue about some nonsense.)

But next week, K and I are whisking off to SPAIN, finally exercising that Schengen residence permit. We start, like all good Germans, in Mallorca and then wend our way southwards, stopping off in Valencia, Alicante, Granada and Sevilla. I have a new travel column (!) starting next month, which I will tell you about as soon as it’s up, so please send tips and tricks for that part of the world if you’re familiar. Then in March, I go to India so at least the next two months look like a distinct improvement on this one.

Anyway, that’s my news. What follows is what you opened this newsletter for: all the things I consumed (culturally) this month.

Books

• The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling): A re-read that I borrowed from the library. I have complicated feelings about JKR, actually not even that complicated, I just think she kinda sucks as a person. I’m not feeling BETRAYED that the creator of Harry Potter has all these vile beliefs or anything. After all, CS Lewis was a Christian fundu, and I still enjoy the Narnia books (we will not discuss The Last Battle). (Never was a Neil Gaiman stan so am indifferent about his books although quite shocked at his behaviour.) I have always enjoyed Strike/Ellacot, although I think her writing is getting worse. She’s never met a word she didn’t like, and all those words are in this book. However, trying to put my finger on what I enjoy about these books, I came up with the theory that each Strike book is like Harry searching for the horcruxes. So there’s a lot of dense backstory and looking into the killer’s childhood or whatever that has nothing to do with anything. And all the filler chapters which reconstruct each scene from a different point of view is a way for making us feel like we know the characters. Like, she leans in very hard to a particular character description: Harry, has scar, dead parents. So every time we meet Harry, we read about his scar and his dead parents, and by the end of it we’re like, oh that Harry with his scar and his dead parents. You see? It makes them feel known to you, but in a somewhat lazy way. Cormoran: grumpy, leg gone, smoker who no longer smokes so is always puffing on an e-cigarette. Heyyy, you think, I know that guy! Anyway, the Strike novels would probably not appeal to anyone who was just looking for a detective story and had never heard of Robert Galbraith or Harry Potter, but I don’t think that reader exists so they will probably endure.

• Babel by RF Kuang (did not finish): My Berlin book club did books set in Berlin all of last year which was a wonderful reading project and this year we have moved to books set around the world. Babel, set in Oxford, was our first pick, but it was not the kind of book I could finish in three days and I had been reading all sorts of other things so I rocked up to the meeting (in Soho House because our regular venue was full! That was a thrill for me) having read only 50% of the book and enjoyed it so far. It’s all about etymology and using that to make spells, which is the good part of the book. The bad part is the author using that insufferable US MFA style of writing where she lectures us about things and makes her characters do all sorts of performative wokeness despite them being in the 19th century. Anyway, apparently the second half of the book is not great so when I asked, “Should I finish this?” the verdict was no don’t bother.

• All Adults Here by Emma Straub: I like Straub’s writing generally! I loved This Time, Tomorrow! I have a copy of The Vacationers to be read in Mallorca! But this one I couldn’t get behind. It just… irritated me. It’s about a family, adult siblings, one grandchild narrator, one grandmother narrator, but I don’t know. It felt meandering and all over the place. I normally love meandering stories, but this one felt both overstuffed and also left me with zero investment in anyone.

• Circle of Friends, The Copper Beech & Tara Road by Maeve Binchy: Ultimate comfort reading, you guys. Uff. I’m on a Maeve Binchy kick these days and when I tell you these books have everything you need for a good story: family drama, romance, a little mystery, a little history, gosh, in a long boring month, she was a life-saver to kick me out of a reading rut. These may seem like romances, but they’re really not. More: Irish small town life, family entanglements, sibling rivalries and poverty. They’re the epitome of a fist of steel in a velvet glove, if you ask me. Everyone’s read Circle of Friends which is great but I really loved The Copper Beech which is a series of interlinked stories set—where else?—in a small Irish town.

• Death At The Sign of the Rook and Normal Rules Don’t Apply by Kate Atkinson: I really like Jackson Brodie, Atkinson’s detective anti-hero and the star of her literary murder mysteries, but Sign of the Rook just didn’t land for me. Then in my most recent issue of the LRB, I read this devastating article about the Giselle Pellicot case in France which the author tied in with the Jackson Brodie books, which now I can’t stop connecting. (I have been reading a lot of magazines which means my fiction reading is moving a little more slowly.) Normal Rules is a collection of short stories and it’s fine, I guess. I don’t have very much to say about it.

• All The Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker: Started out strong and then devolved into that “let’s all take care of this broken man” genre that I really don’t like. (I’ve seen it before in A Little Life and Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful.) Let me explain: there’s a main character who is a guy. Something terrible happens to him when he is young that fundamentally changes who he is. He can no longer form lasting relationships (often, he abandons his wife and child) or even really take care of himself. There are people who care deeply about this man and are always trying to protect him. But WHY? We’re literally never told why they all love him so much. The character frequently thinks of himself as unloveable, to which we, the readers, are supposed to jump in with this caretaker best friend of his and say nooo don’t say that you are SO loved. But if you never tell me why I’m supposed to like this guy then how will I love him? Instead I read these stories feeling both irritated and guilty, like am I just a bad person? No, friend, it’s just not great writing. (And it’s always a man! If a woman acted like this there’d be much less sympathy and a lot more finger pointing if you ask me.)

• Lie With Me by Sabine Durrant: This was, in contrast, really good. The cover is very “airport psychological thriller” but don’t let that put you off. It’s a very slow and subtle book about both social climbing and social justice all told from the point of view of this extreeeeemely unlikable man, a forty something failed writer. It reminded me in some parts of Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (another fantastic book) because of the narrator but really, this book is its own beast and stands by itself.

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (re-read): I mentioned this on a reading list I did for Splainer and influenced myself into reading it again. Still so good.

And right now, I’m re-reading Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra for like the fifth time and still completely enjoying myself. (I began the Netflix show but it gave me only mild enjoyment—”mid” as the kids say—so I ditched it.)

What did you read this month that you loved or (even better) hated? Let’s bitch together.

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Shows

Albert Guillaume, Au théâtre

Saw a couple of plays this month (courtesy of my Abundo app) which were kind of hit and miss.

A definite miss was The Lab: Anne Welec which we saw at the English Theatre Berlin. Now you should know this theatre does not have a great reputation for amazing shows, my impression has always been of something a little amateur. (Disclaimer: I’ve only ever been to this one terrible show so I might be completely wrong.) But it is the only pure English-language theatre in the whole city so that’s something. It was basically the result of these two people workshopping something for a week (hence why it was called “the lab” I guess.) I was almost outraged by the end of it, like how dare they charge money for this absolute piece of hot garbage? “They must have balls the size of pumpkins,” K whispered to me. I couldn’t even tell you what it was “about” because there was no coherent story, but at one point the very camp man on stage sang a German accented version of Sunset Boulevard and then in the only part that made me feel something (laughter?) he got the woman on stage with him to glue shopping receipts to his bald head. There was a break and then a “Feedback Session” which I made K leave, but he really wanted to ask “like wtf.” (They never answer.)

A nice one was Klasse Klasse which was at this youth theatre in our neighbourhood. This was quite nicely done, the actors all wore giant expressive papier mache masks and mimed action to the beatboxer who was live on stage. My only moment of hate came when the mic came to me, and it was all in German so I COMPLETELY panicked and looked like I was constipated and also dying. I hate interactive theatre, just let me relaxxxxx, yo. Otherwise it was very charming and broke the fourth wall nicely when the actors had a fight and ripped off their masks and “refused to play.” You didn’t need German to watch, because it was mostly music and mime so that made it enjoyable as well.

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Movies:

I saw All We Imagine As Light which was hard to do because it’s in Malayalam and you have to find someplace that shows it with English subs not German but Abundo (making up for the bad plays) had a theatre with a screening so off we went. How did I like it? Wellllll. It’s hard for me to separate my general Mumbai/India nostalgia from my thoughts about the movie so I’m not sure. I mean it was fine? Beautifully shot, nice bits of loneliness. But some of it felt forced. In contrast, I enjoyed Girls Will Be Girls which I watched at home (VPN, baby) featuring one of the leads from All We Imagine a little more. We also watched all the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and the third one is terrible, I don’t know why everyone gave it such good ratings.

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German words of the month

I want to point out that I learned neither of these (or any of my favourite German words) from my class which focuses on such delights as “how to go to a post office!” and “how to interview for a part time job!” I don’t know why adult learning textbooks are so condescending, it just assumes that we’re completely devoid of both personality and common sense.

Never mind, at least it gives me the confidence to make small talk with the Turkish grandmother who sold me a bowl of manti the other day (delicious Turkish ravioli in this super spicy yogurt sauce.) Her slow immigrant German met my slow immigrant German and we had a nice small chat about spice levels and how come I wasn’t hungry (I had packed up half to take home, which is what I’m going to warm up for my lunch today.) I also said “Kein Problem!” to a man in the grocery store yesterday, my first time using that phrase, so am generally pleased. (He did not hear me properly so I wound up saying, “It’s really fine, go ahead” in English because I only had one item and he wanted to know if I wanted to skip ahead of him.)

• Sitzfleisch which literally translates to sitting flesh, ie, your bottom, but it is also: “To have sitzfleisch means the ability to sit still for the long periods of time required to be truly productive; it means the stamina to work through a difficult situation and see a project through to the end.” (BBC) I came across this in Babel, the book I didn’t finish, and it seemed fitting to me, since I was reading it during the 15 minute break we get during class. I need a lot of sitzfleisch to get fluent at German.

• Kopfkino which is “head movie” and happens to me ALL THE TIME. Basically the word for an imaginative daydream, a what-if scenario that you play out, beat by beat, scene for scene until it’s so real to you that it might’ve actually happened.

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Have a beautiful weekend and I’ll be back in your inbox soon!

xx

m

Who are you? Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, writer of internet words (and other things) author of eight books (support me by buying a book!) and general city-potter-er.

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