The Internet Personified: June 2025 Books & Culture Recap
We're on a summer schedule (late and sleepy)
Having returned last week from a whirlwind trip to the Netherlands for K’s birthday (highlights include the best french fries I’ve ever had IN MY LIFE and someone stealing both our (used, wet) bathing suits from the shared bathroom in the fancy hotel we were staying at (how fancy? our bathing suits were wet because we had been using the sauna and hot tub facilities on the roof which were free for hotel guests), which makes me v sad because I loved that bikini and it was a few seasons old so they don’t make it anymore) I’m still slightly tired from it. It wasn’t a great reading month for me, I’ve only managed TEN books instead of my usual mid-to-late teens, but I had a heavy deadline all of this month, and y’know the usual: people to meet, things to see. Plus Friend Pragya was in town for literally one day and we had to walk through the streets of Mitte and Kreuzberg and Neukölln all in a single afternoon/evening. Then we had other friends having a combined housewarming/wedding celebration so all in all, I have not had a MOMENT, you guys, not a single MOMENT. (well, except all of yesterday, but that was Recovery Day.)
Related: any of you have a rec for a good swimwear brand in Europe? Needs to be a physical shop, because my sizing is weird and I can’t order online. I bought my previous one from Calzedonia, which I will probably return to (they make tops for the larger breasted lady and you can mix and match with the bottoms) but it’s nice to have options. Price point: up to about 50 euro.
Books I read
This month I’m doing my reading recap slightly differently, instead of going in chronological order, I’ll arrange it based on how much I liked it. Because while I hope you’re reading every one of my carefully chosen (eh, okay) words, I assume you’re most likely skimming through this and seeing if any recommendations pop up. So ordered from ones I liked most to the ones I liked least. (K to me incredulously, “You’re not already doing that?”)
YES BOOKS
Stephen King’s The Outsider and The Shining. I’m going through another King phase which might be familiar to those of you who have been reading these newsletters for a while. I can’t read his entire body of work in one go (who can?) so I’m portioning myself little dribs and drabs. The Outsider is a re-read with a terrific premise: everyone saw you do the murder but you didn’t, how is that possible? Murder mystery meets supernatural spookiness. Then, you’ve probably seen The Shining which I was too scared to watch after the first half an hour (don’t you love the first part of horror movies where everyone is happy and having the best time of their lives?). King famously didn’t like the Kubrick adaptation, and so I went into his novel spoiler free. I bought a copy second hand, and while I’m a big supporter of e-readers, I have to say, reading a horror novel in paperback is a far more scary experience. Something about the way the pages turn, slooooowly, and you never know what else is lurking inside the book waiting to be released. I’ve always been the most terrified by haunted house stories and this one is a haunted HOTEL so you can imagine. (This is also the book, Friends-lovers will remember, that Joey puts in the freezer because it’s too scary.)
Homeseeking by Karissa Chen: Enjoyed this much more than I thought I would, because I thought I was over sentimental intergenerational sagas. (JK, I could NEVER). But Homeseeking is done beautifully, it follows the story of two people, Haiwen and Suchi who were childhood sweethearts once, in Shanghai, then separated by the war, and then meet again, decades later, in the US. Haiwen’s story moves present to past and Suchi’s story unloops the other way. You’re invested in the characters almost from the beginning and though there is heavy sentiment almost like a raincloud throughout this book, it’s never sentimentAL, which is an important distinction I think. RIYL, Past Lives or The Kitchen God’s Wife.
Run by Ann Patchett: Okay, I’m ONLY recommending this book to people who have read other Patchetts before. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT, make this your entry point into a writer I love so much, because while it is an Ann Patchett (and therefore has “luminous” prose) it’s not her best story. It’s a good story but it lacks the macro epic strokes of Bel Canto, it’s about siblings but is missing a little of the humanity of Dutch House. So why is it in the “yes books” section? Because it’s still very good and very human relationshippy.
In A German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: I picked this up at a second hand shop in Barcelona earlier this year, because it was Mansfield’s short pieces written when she’d been in Germany. An introduction says she never wanted them to be published as a book, actively cringed whenever it was mentioned, because it was clearly juvenalia. And this would be my introduction to her because I’d never read one of her short stories before. Well, Katherine. Clearly your juvenalia worked better than you thought, because I am sold. Quiet observations about staying in a German “pension” a little guest house in one of those “Bad” towns, where “bad” means bath not.. well.. bad, that Americans kept going to for their health. A slim book too, so I could slip it into my bag and read on the U Bahn for which it was perfect.
COMFORTING BOOKS THAT WILL GET YOU OUT OF A SLUMP BUT AREN’T GREAT LITERATURE. OTOH WHO NEEDS GREAT LITERATURE ALL THE TIME. OTOH READING TIME IS DYING BECAUSE OF OUR VAMPIRIC PHONES AND ENDLESS HOURS OF ENTERTAINMENT ON OUR SCREENS SO DO YOU WANT TO SPEND WHAT LITTLE READING TIME YOU HAVE ON A BOOK THAT I’M NOT EVEN SAYING IS FANTASTIC JUST COMFORTING? THAT’S BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR THERAPIST, I’M JUST TELLING YOU WHAT I LIKE
The Perfect Couple by Elin Hildebrand: This was made into a startling looks-like-it-was-written-by-AI series for Netflix, which who knows? Perhaps it was. I was seduced into watching the first thirty minutes of it because Nicole Kidman is in it, but wow, she’s just taking on any old project these days, huh? Look, either you know Hildebrand already, in which case you know what sort of story this is, or you don’t: sandy beaches, amazing evocative descriptions of food (seriously, the woman got me thinking about a tomato sandwich, a thing I have not attempted to eat since the soggy versions served at birthday parties when I was six), extremely low stakes Bad Things, including murder and rich people problems. There’s some Searing Passion, the whole thing is easily readable—and digestible—between your post lunch nap and your late dinner.
The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher: Same as above, except England, some rain, definitely some Cornish beaches. Take the tomato sandwich and substitute with a beautifully done roast on a Sunday, a pink gin in the evening. More Searing Passion. She sent me looking for (and purchasing) a poet I hadn’t before heard of, called Louis MacNeice, whose poem I read on the pages of this book and made me want more.
What is my season? What is yours?
All The Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman: A rompy mystery about a quite frankly terrible single mother, a former pop star, who is always out partying and leaving her ten year old alone at home, which is not great parenting. But then a child in her son’s class vanishes and she has to find him because otherwise her son is implicated. Did I say “rompy” already? Add “rollicky”? You probably won’t enjoy this if you’re the type of person who feels real empathy with other people’s parenting decisions, it might stress you out, so in that case avoid. My fellow judgy mcjudgersons however will be super into this.
I DIDN’T ENJOY THESE BOOKS AT ALL. IT’S NOT ENTIRELY THE BOOKS’ FAULT (but let’s be honest, it mostly is), SOMETIMES YOU COME TO THEM AT A WEIRD POINT IN YOUR LIFE AND YOU’RE NOT MEANT TO BE. MAYBE YOU ENJOYED THEM. I’M NOT JUDGING YOU.
The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chen: Read this for my book club where we’re reading different books from different countries (this was Malaysia). Terrible things happen to all the characters and you feel nothing about them because they’re so badly drawn. However it’s an “international bestseller” and “published in 20 languages” so clearly people like this kind of trauma porn.
A Flaw In the Design by Nathan Oates: Such a slog. It’s supposed to be an edge-of-your-seat thriller about an uncle who has to take in his nephew who may or may not be a psychopath but my god, the uncle whines all the time, and it’s all just boring with no pay off. Surprised I made it to the end, to be honest.
The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton: Vague feeling that I read this before for my Delhi book club, but maybe I skipped it, because I don’t remember anything about it? Probably because this book, once again, was one where a lot of things happen to people, like a plot twist a minute but honestly, you don’t care about any of them. I was interested because I was in Amsterdam where the book is set, and I had just been to the Rijksmuseum where there is a large doll’s house which the book takes its plot from, but SNORE. What a wasted opportunity.
okay, I’ve placed a hold on a book at the library so I’m off to collect it. More when I return. (This one.)
Of course, as soon as I wrote that, it began bucketing down with two weeks worth of rain—so now I wait and hope it stops in the next thirty minutes before the library closes because of course I have left things till the very last minute.
and also some culture I saw
A play which might have been an ad for a certain kind of Bavarian beer? It was called Oktoberfest: A Mostly True Story and it was in English, which is the main reason I saw it. A large musical, reminiscent of Cabaret, but which featured the brewery’s logo prominently and the members of the cast handing out free beer every now and then and the song: Beer, beer, Bavarian beer. I mean, even I wanted beer after this show and I don’t drink it, so I wasn’t surprised to see the bar at the theatre completely clogged in the intermission.
A concert by a rock-pop group called Horsegirl. Here is one of their songs:
I didn’t know very much about them before I went, but I enjoyed their music.
A documentary film at the planetarium as part of this documentary film festival called Dokumentale. This one was about jobs, specifically about people who have jobs and people who don’t, but the person who didn’t was an heiress, which seems an unusual choice for a documentary about work, where so much of work is making a living. The idea being if you had fuck-off money, what would you spend your time doing instead? Many people couldn’t answer that.
A walking tour of the historical prisons in the Moabit area, run by this terrific company called Beyond and Beneath Tours which really get into history, if that’s what you’re into, which I am. This is our second tour with them, and once more I discovered a cool hidden secret part of the city in which I live, which is probably full of secrets just lying there in plain sight.
As I mentioned, we went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam—our only museum stop in the city—and had many favourites, including the miniature houses, the life sized models of ships (K’s favourite part), an ancient condom and this portrait of a son of a mayor we were both very taken with.
OOH, the rain’s stopped! I must grab my umbrella and away before the library closes! See you all next time, kisses!
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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