The Internet Personified: May 2025 Books & Culture Recap
My library card saw some action last month
I’m slightly late this month but in my defence, I just got back from Switzerland last week after a junket which I’m writing about AND I had a late night last night. It was finally dry after days of drizzle so when my friend texted and said let’s go sit outside and get a drink somewhere I was completely primed for it. We made our way to the Prater biergarten, the city’s oldest continuously running beer garden, I think, and sat around on the benches drinking rose (self) (the gents had beer) and I looked up the history of Prater and read it to them (K and our friend ie) and they listened with immense patience and interest, which is always nice. Later we wound up at a Burgermeister, which is this chain of burger restaurants around the city, extremely popular and open late which is important, and all in, we didn’t get home till 1.20. But summer is here and the Youth are walking down the streets, even on a Tuesday and it does make you feel youthful, even if the next morning you feel every second of your 43 and a half years on this planet.
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The most exciting thing to happen to me in May was that I bought a bicycle shortly after my last newsletter where I told you I would! Never say I don’t follow through on my ambitions. I went to the second hand bike shop near K’s office with a specific plan: I wanted one that was as comfortable as riding a sofa. If I have to get around town on my own steam, speed be damned, I’m going to be the most relaxed person there. Turns out you still have to do a leetle work when you’re riding a bike, but I did get a gorgeous Dutch model and the shop owner threw in a basket so now I run my little errands, I move through the bike lanes at a stately pace and mostly, I’m comfortable, except it’s rather large so if I’m off balance, I find myself off the bicycle but because of the low “female rider” frame, I’m off in a genteel way, both feet on the ground like a lady.
What am I saying? The bicycle was only the SECOND most exciting thing to happen. The first is that I FINISHED MY FIRST DRAFT YOU GUYS!!! A new novel is in this world (well, in my documents but still IT EXISTS. PHYSICALLY! NOT JUST IN MY HEAD.) It’s a really good feeling. Now of course I must edit it, which means a lot of procrastination. Luckily I also have an unrelated deadline this month which means I can focus on that and…. oh wait, I’m procrastinating by writing this newsletter.
May was a good reading month made better by the fact that I did a little travel at the end of the month and so had plenty of commute time where I could read. I’ve realised to my great joy that if the roads are smooth and straight, it is possible for me to read on a bus and Switzerland is nothing if not smooth roads. (Some windy ones up mountains, but somehow those didn’t feel too terrible either.)
The Books
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald: I was under two delusions before I picked up this book: a) Penelope Fitzgerald and Penelope Lively were somehow the same person & b) that this was a book called 84 Charing Cross Road (written by Helene Hanff, not a Penelope at all). The second misunderstanding is easy to understand, 84 Charing Cross is about an English bookshop after all, and so is The Bookshop, but there are literally HUNDREDS of books set in bookstores, so really, maybe not such an INTELLIGENT misunderstanding. Anyway, somehow I had decided that this book, Penelope Fitzgerald’s book was 84 Charing Cross Road by Penelope Lively, whose books I love. I don’t know. Sometimes I do this. It took me many years to figure out that Sinead O’Connor and Sigourney Weaver were different people, I kept thinking, oh she’s so talented, she sings and she acts! I liked The Bookshop though. It’s slim and sad, like a has-been actress with a Past. I didn’t expect it to be so weighty for what it was—I mean, guys, I was expecting a cheerful story about a bookshop in a small town, so really, a pleasant surprise.
Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell: I liked this fast moving book about a woman moving herself and her daughters away from her abusive husband. She makes mistakes. She makes friends. She moves into a hotel for unhoused people. She goes back to him once. It’s frustrating to watch the character be so SLOW about all of it, but realistic, I guess. In real life we are never so rapid and certain about our decisions. Just me though: I’m a little tired about reading about the Pains and Joys of Motherhood. I feel every woman writer of a certain age is bringing small children into their stories and yes yes write what you know, but it’s getting a little boring. Both Penelopes had children and neither made such a fetish out of children in their writing. I’m trying to avoid books that feature kids! kids! kids! especially books that feature the main character, a woman, thinking about her children for pages on end but it’s hard to avoid in a certain kind of millennial woman novel.
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym: A re-read, and no fear of children intruding here. I love Barbara Pym and when I saw this at my small local library (it’s a large building but the English section is just a few shelves) I felt I had to read her again. It’s about a thirty something “excellent” woman, who lives a small life, does good works, is active at her church blah blah and how her life is thrown into upheaval with the arrival of her new sexy neighbours. Very Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont which is another book you should read asap if you haven’t already.
The Distant Echo by Val McDermid: Did I actually finish this? Have no memory of how it ended. I think I actually ditched this halfway because I was bored, and mistakenly added it to my read pile. I also did not finish Playworld by Adam Ross, annoying because I paid one euro to place a hold on it at the library, a trendy book for 2025, but not for me, and Bournville by Jonathan Coe which started out nicely and then just deflated.
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney: This was a kinda campy feminist horror/thriller which would be great fun if I could be sure that’s what the author intended? But I’m pretty sure she wanted me to take her plot seriously, which is really some revenge saga set on an island populated primarily by women. Like, it was kind of ridiculous but fun, and you’re hoping the author is in on the joke with you. Laughing with her not at her etc.
She’s Not There by Joy Fielding: Ages ago I watched a TV show called Finding Carter about a little girl who was kidnapped and then brought back to her birth parents. That was a nice—if outlandish—show. This book has a similar plotline. except it’s sort of weak.
The Gathering and The Burning Girls by CJ Tudor: I liked The Gathering a lot, I picked it up on a whim at my library. True crime meets vampires, I’m going through a vampire phase right now (currently reading Salem’s Lot by Stephen King) and as monsters they are so satisfying. They LOOK like humans but they actually EAT us. I hadn’t read much by CJ Tudor before and because I liked this so much, I got some of her backlist including The Burning Girls which was also supernatural adjacent and set in a small town but not quite so atmospheric.
The Last One At The Wedding by Jason Rekulak: Another pacey thriller about a man who is estranged from his adult daughter until he finally hears from her when she invites him to her wedding. Lots of dark twisty secrets but it also features a really annoying child, who I wanted to swat several times, and so didn’t buy the motivation of the lead character to protect her. (They’re not related.) Also the lead character was quite irritating and to do the book from his point of view meant that this was a bit of a slog.
September and Wild Mountain Thyme by Rosamunde Pilcher: A nice palate cleanser with one of my favourite “comfort” authors, Rosamunde Pilcher. You either know her or you don’t, and if you DO know her, perhaps you’ll be surprised (or not) to learn that she has a HUGE fan base in Germany. They used to show made-for-TV movies of her books set in England but with the dialogue and everything in German, so she was a big deal in these parts. (If you’ve never read Pilcher before and are wondering where to begin, start with my favourite: Coming Home. It’s this huge wrist breaker of a book, which my mum gave me when I was fourteen because I was always searching for “fat books that didn’t finish fast.” I’m thinking of buying a second copy for my Berlin shelves because to bring the one from India, I’d have to sacrifice some of my precious 23 kg luggage allowance.)
Homecoming by Kate Morton: Speaking of “fat books that don’t finish fast” I came across this one because after I read Pilcher, I started hunting around on Reddit for dupes. Many people mentioned Elizabeth Jane Howard, who I already own a number of books by, but Homecoming kept coming up. Eh. Not so much though. It’s a sort of historical mystery mixed with present day Writer Is Lost and Investigating Family Secrets. Nice, but it lost steam about halfway through.
The Party by Elizabeth Day: Found this on a Substack I consistently enjoy. I really liked this book for the weird narrator and the world he enters. I also enjoyed Saltburn so ymmv depending on how you feel about low stakes high energy books.
We Used To Live Here by Marcus Kliewer: I was interested in this because apparently it emerged from a post on the creepy stories subreddit r/nosleep. I see how it would have been a popular post, it was extremely scary, BUT I felt that it should have stayed short. Expanding it into a novel length manuscript just made the plot bloated and not very good. The ending was super lazy and not satisfying. I like my horror stories to wrap up well, leaving a bit of the scare still vivid at the back of your retina or when you wake up from a nightmare and are still feeling a bit jumpy. This wasn’t that.
The Girls by Emma Cline: A re-read because I remember liking this the first time I read it. I wasn’t disappointed. About the Charles Manson girls, who I guess have entered American folklore and one teen who is lost one summer and joins up with them. I think Cline is very talented and writes awkward women well.
Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell: This has become one of my favourite books of 2025. A gorgeous middle grade book, which actually you could read as an adult because its themes are not childish at all. Think His Dark Materials meets Avatar: The Last Airbender. I adored it and—huge for me—couldn’t read anything else for the rest of the day after I finished it. I believe it’s the first in a series, but so satisfying and complete was the book that I can’t think of how she’ll do a sequel.
Woodworking by Emily St James: I think in years to come we’re going to start talking about the Trans Literary Novel and how it evolved in the 2020s. Think Detransition Baby which was huge and now this book about a new trans woman who befriends the only other trans woman she knows, her high school student. I thought it was nicely done, very “found family” very flipping of the power dynamic. Did I find the characters a little self absorbed to the extent that they didn’t seem to be very good friends? Yes. But still wholesome.
What Does It Feel Like by Sophie Kinsella: This little “novella” based on Sophie Kinsella’s own brain cancer diagnoses was terrible. It had no plot beyond “writer gets brain cancer.” I’d rather have read an essay. It has super high ratings online because it’s autobiographical but ehhhh. (If you want a really good cancer book that is both moving and revealing for the reader who isn’t sick but would still like to know “what it’s like”, I’d suggest Between Two Kingdoms which is incredible.)
Ahhhh and we’re not even at the culture stuff yet! If you liked this post or any of my others (I have a hefty archive you can poke around in all day!) would you buy me a coffee? THANK YOU.
Other stuff I did besides read
Pottered around Mitte and Kreuzberg for Gallery Weekend’s fringe offshoot called Sellerie Weekend (I don’t know why it’s called that either.) This was a walking tour organised by an outfit called Berlin Art Tours, and an artist led us round all these cool underground galleries. We met some artists, we looked at things. It wasn’t a very explain-y walk, it was more like discovery. We went to places, we looked at things and then we went to the next. Very peaceful and zen.
Went for a strange play called Donation at the Maxim Gorki theatre. English language productions here are few and far between so I take what I can get. The play was a two-person show about an Armenian Canadian actor donating the costumes from her late husband’s historical movie about the Armenian genocide. She’s being interviewed by a curator about her donation but he’s oddly antagonistic. It meant well, the play, and I think I enjoyed it because it was in English, but plays are so hit and miss here that I think I’m going to take a break for a bit unless something wonderful comes up.
Watched Sinners, called Blood & Sinners here in Germany which was AMAZING and which is where, probably, my recent thing for vampires has sprouted out of.
Went for a psychedelic rock gig by a group called Mien. I like psych rock. The audience skewed older, but it was fun.
The best thing we did last month was an event called Labyrinth which is in this old brewery. You walk through the (extremely cold and damp) basement and there are different classical musicians in each room. It came about as a way to make classical music fun, and as we already like classical, it’s a beautiful experience.
Imagine, I spent all day writing this and Substack tells me it’s only going to take 12 minutes to read. Oh well. Talk back to me, leave me a comment and let’s discuss YOUR May.
Have a great 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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Heya Meenakshi!
Just discovered you, your books, and this newsletter. Lovely. I absolutely like the way you are so upfront and right in the face. A style we really need today. Thank you for sharing.
And I know how it feels. Writing a Substack all day and then one can read it within minutes. It took me more than two years to write my first book, a travel memoir, and some readers tell me the day after they bought it that they are done. I wonder should I complain or not? Connected with your Instagram book account too. Keep writing and cycling :)
I thought I was the only one who mixed them. I read The Bookshop and was so floored by it I kept picking whatever book I saw by her or so I thought until I looked at the complete name !
Oh no, I love detective Karen Pirie and sidekick Jason. She barely makes an appearance in The Distant Echo, the subsequent books are much stronger IMHO. I have read them all and waiting for the newest installment. I loved the Emer Kenny adaptation too where Lauren Lyle plays Karen.