The Internet Personified: March 2025 books recap
Because I was in India and culture was replaced by a lot of eating and shopping
Have just returned to Berlin from India, and spring is vibrating to be let in but winter still has its hold on our wardrobes. Still I’ll take blue skies and sunny days, even if it means having to hang on to my long johns for another five weeks. The trees are just putting out little new leaves, and soon I will be able to walk around naked in my living room again because the friendly tree shading our window will be in full bloom. (Not that I DO walk around naked very often, but it’s nice to have the option.)
This was not a very organised India trip, I realise in retrospect. I didn’t do half the things on my list, or meet everyone I’d planned to. But I did get a lot of reading done, and isn’t that what a holiday is for in the end? Oh, and for stuffing your face, which I did plenty of.
It’s been a long time, therefore, since I was at my laptop and writing anything—except for a guide to Rome I did for Splainer—and I’m feeling sort of rusty and sort of not sure about what tone to take with you, am I going chatty and informal or academic? And as a result, using words like “therefore” when I really only mean “so.” (Who actually uses therefore in real life?) Anyway, I’m leaning into this discomfort, it always takes a little scrambling to find your voice again after you’ve taken a break, and you get to bear witness and also with me.
March was a lot of re-reads, I left some books in my mother’s house, I collected some more from my old apartment where I’d left a couple of shelves worth and I was delighted to be reunited with them all. We (my mum and I) also made two visits to the Daryagunj Sunday Book Bazaar, which for anyone not from Delhi, is this incredible second hand book market which used to stretch across the pavements of this section of Old Delhi for at least two kilometres and now is corralled into one compound. Still good books and good bargains though. (Ooh, I made a small video with the haul from the first visit which I’m sharing below! My first video! Should we link pinkies and make a wish?)
Okay, here’s everything I actually read:
The No-Show by Beth O’Leary: I’ve been complaining a lot about modern romance novels and how much they suck, but I saw this recommended somewhere and I needed something to read on the plane so I began it and found myself deep into the story almost despite myself. It was actually quite… sad, in a Marian Keyes kind of way, you think it’s frothy commercial chick-lit and boom! she hits you over the head with alcoholism or domestic violence. Anyway, the No-Show in this case is a man who everyone calls by a different name who misses three different dates with different women, and you’re like “oop, I see where this is going” but actually, you wind up quite sympathetic to everyone by the end, including this man, which is rare.
Missing Presumed by Susie Steiner: Which is the first of her books and the second I’ve read after mentioning her in last time’s round up. In this, a young woman goes missing and there’s all the buzz around a missing person, all the suspects rounded up etc. I thought this was a bit weaker than the one I read in February, which was her final book before she died, and clearly she was just building up steam. Still, the three books are worth reading if you’re looking for police procedurals which go a little deeper than just who dun it.
That reminds me: I asked people on Notes to give me very specific requests so I could recommend books to them, a sort of double pronged publicity move and also a way to inspire myself to write this newsletter even though I could easily be lazy for another week. Anyway, I got some fun requests that I enjoyed answering, you can see the whole thread here. Reminder: you are always totally welcome to ask me for book recs, the more specific the better, but I think I’ll go for the you-share-this-newsletter-I’ll-recommend-a-book model for a bit, just to increase those numbers.
The Mill-House Cat by Marjorie Ann-Watts: Am I really counting this and the other children’s books I have and re-read as separate reads? I guess I am! You know, I met a friend’s ten-year-old the other day and we were talking about Percy Jackson and I mentioned Rick Riordan had done this demi-god thing with other pantheons, like the Norse gods and the Egyptians and she looked at me wide-eyed and asked, “Have you read all of them?” It’s nice, impressing ten year olds with my reading chops. Anyway I told her I didn’t believe in the distinction between books for children and those for adults and the very best kid’s books are easily enjoyed by people of all ages, you don’t even have to pretend to be very young. (I didn’t tell her that last part, but I did think it to myself later.) The Mill-House Cat (which I’ve linked here to archive.org, which means with a free account you can borrow it online, I do this frequently) features one of the best talking cats in literature, slightly snarky, very superior, a little magical, everything you’d imagine a cat to be if he talked. In this case, his name is Oswald, and he lives by the mill house where a girl called Gladys makes his acquaintance one summer. I’d been trying to remember the name of the book for ages, because Oswald stayed with me, and finally scanning my old books at my mum’s, I saw it and was delighted.
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce: Another old book that I pulled out of my own shelves. I think this is the best sort of kid’s book, slightly creepy in a delicious way. If you haven’t read it, a quick plot summary: Tom has to go stay with his uncle and aunt because his brother has the measles, and every night he leaves the flat to go into a mysterious garden, where a little girl is waiting for him. It’s sort of a time travel book, but it’s also about being haunted by the past and how growing up happens too quickly and without any notice. If you’ve read my other favourite children’s book about ghosts and houses with history—The Children of Green Knowe—then this one has similar vibes.
Fashion Babylon by Imogen Edwards Jones and Anonymous: I mentioned my love for the “Babylon” series of books in last time’s round-up as well (linked above) so this was just a continuation of that read, this time set in the fashion industry. The most shocking thing I learned is that designers sometimes just buy a vintage outfit and completely copy it, just slapping their names on in the end. Hundred percent plagiarism.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood: This book made it to the Booker shortlist which means I probably should’ve given it a year or two “to breathe" since I’m not a huge fan of hype-y books. (As it turns out, there was very little buzz around this one—or come to think of it, any of the books on the list this year. Who even won the prize?) But I was intriguied by the premise: a woman joins a nunnery in Australia, there’s a plague of mice, the woman remembers her own life. It was one of those stunning quiet books that you find yourself looking up from the middle of reading and realising, “This is really good!” each sentence dense with story. I can see myself re-reading it in a few years.
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler: Anne Tyler always goes to the top of my “I have to own this” list, but alas, I have copies of almost all her books, and the ones I don’t have on paper, I have digitally, so I’d like to make her work faster, write more books about older people and their quiet domesticities in Baltimore. I don’t even know very much about her, she’s doesn’t come to people’s lips as often as say, Elizabeth Strout, who works with almost the same material, or Marilynne Robinson, but she’s won awards and everyone know who she is, so I suppose we’re all reading her, considering her our own quiet delight. This is her latest which just came out and is as good as all the rest. Shorter though, which is sad, because I always feel like I could spend years in her books.
Clover by Susan Coolidge: This will be a very niche paragraph appealing to only people who have read the What Katy Did series, where a lively and independent girl takes a fall and then has to spend all her time being good and patient and a “little mother” to all her younger siblings. Katy finally cuts loose in What Katy Did Next when she goes travelling with her neighbour and her neighbour’s kid all over Europe but Susan Coolidge just does not want to give her character any fun at all, so the kid gets sick and Katy spends her whole time in Italy nursing her, and then their trip gets cut short. Oh, and she meets a man who thinks she’s not that hot (he says as much!) but he still wants to marry her. Ufff. Anyhow, this is book four in the series and it deals with Katy’s younger sister, Clover who moves to Colarado, then very much the Wild West, to nurse her brother back to health. Most of it is an ad for Colarado, and by the end of it, the whole family has moved there, excluding Katy who is neatly cut out of the story and also never has children. (I found a really pretty hardback copy in Daryagunj which is why I read it again. Have linked to the public domain file above.)
Oh and something I didn’t log but just remembered that I read this month: A Tangled Web by LM Montgomery, which I think is one of her books I missed but picked up because Jo Walton mentioned it in one of her columns as having such a racist ending that her jaw hung down in shock. It’s a pretty racist ending—the “n” word is employed—but not that shocking. I wouldn’t have thought Lucy Maud was a feminist nor the most inclusive, look at the times she lived in. I wish I hadn’t read this—one of the weakest of her books with no charming characters to redeem it, but oh well, now I know.
Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell: Some newsletter-er mentioned this in her favourite collection of short stories ever, and I wish I could remember who so I’d stop taking reading advice from them. Very vapid and on the surface, and I LIKE Rainbow Rowell! Almost a DNF, some stories read very “Chat GPT wrote this after I gave it a quirky premise.” If you’re interested in any of her books, I’d suggest Fangirl.
I did a massive Curtis Sittenfeld re-read after reading her new collection of short stories—Show Don’t Tell, which I really enjoyed. It sent me back into the arms of Prep (still I think her finest work) and then Eligible (her Pride and Prejudice re-telling) and I realised all her characters are essentially the same, but I like reading about them all, so that’s all right then.
13 Steps Down by Ruth Rendell: This book made me aware of the British serial killer Reggie Christie who the main character of the novel is obsessed with and so I went and got Kate Summerscale’s non-fiction book on the man, which I plan to read this month.
More Maeve Binchy, my passion for her continues, and I found several copies of her books at the Sunday market. Firefly Summer is extremely good and Scarlet Feather is not, I couldn’t bring myself to care about any characters in the latter but the former had me hooked from the very first chapter.
Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffith: This was okay, a murder mystery set in Brighton in the 1950s, but really full of anachronisms which I hate.
A book I didn’t log but I have re-read so many times that I know it almost by heart is this odd self-published book called A Season For All Things by Ann Bhalla. It’s a weird book about a Delhi man who marries a French Canadian woman and then she runs off with an American and he stops her from seeing their child again and then he remarries and has two more kids with his daughter’s kindergarten teacher. Everyone is vividly real, it feels like really old gossip you’re reading about and the writing is actually pretty good. I’m not sure where you can get a copy easily and I will be very sad if I ever lose mine. (Looks like you can get a second hand copy online so I’ve linked that.)
Towards Zero by Agatha Christie: I’d gone off Christie since I gave my talk last year, too much of a good thing I guess, but I was curious about this, a stand alone volume that I hadn’t read before. My favourite non-Poirot non-Marple Christie is Endless Night which is really well done, super creepy with this really pleasant couple and shades of malice underneath. Towards Zero is not at that level of excellence, but it is a good summer book, set as it is in a large mansion by the sea with lots of sporty people everywhere. I read it because there’s a BBC adaptation out which I wanted to see.
I also re-read all the Paddington Bear books because I found a lovely omnibus in the second hand market. I love Paddington, the books I mean, though the movies are sweet too. I feel they’re the perfect example of how immigrants can both adapt to your culture as well as provide enrichment, and everyone treats him with love. Fun fact: Michael Bond is also the author of Olga da Polga, a very smart calico guinea pig, who our own Olga da Polga is named after. Now she needs a movie.
And that’s my March! Phew. Reminder: if you liked this or any of my other issues, buy me a coffee, keep the lights on!
Have a good week,
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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