desk notes: May
a monthly recommendation roundup: books, podcasts, and other assorted bits and bobs
Welcome to the May ‘26 edition of desk notes, a series of curated monthly recommendations spanning books, podcasts, TV/film and other assorted bits and bobs that I’ve been loving over the last few weeks.
This will be my last email for a couple of weeks, as during June and July I am stripping my newsletter back to just my end of month roundups so that I can really lock in and focus on my novel-in-progress. More on this below!
First, let’s talk about May…
Reading list 📚 everything I finished this month
The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy - I picked this up on a whim from the Oxfam a few doors down from Daunt Books in Marylebone, one of my favourite spots for hunting secondhand books. The Cost of Living (what a title!) is actually the second book in a three part ‘living autobiography’. This volume tackles the author’s 50s, a decade in which she navigates the end of her marriage. Levy writes so brilliantly about what it is to be a woman today - I adored this!
Strangers by Belle Burden - another book dealing with the author’s experience of divorce (I promise this wasn’t an intentional theme for the month). Burden’s story is, in many ways, completely unrelateable to most of us, and yet I related to her experience all the same. I wrote more about this in a dedicated Substack post which you can find here.
The Cheffe by Marie NDiaye - a recommendation from a lovely author I met at a Writers IRL meet up, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of this book before! Translated from its original French, The Cheffe spans the career of a talented female chef from her beginnings as a domestic kitchen assistant to her eventual Michelin-starred restaurant in Bordeaux. The writing style is quite dense - it has no chapters at all, which did make it challenging to pick up and put down easily, but I am so glad I stuck with it because it contains some of the most beautiful writing about the restaurant world that I have come across.
Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy - after I inhaled The Cost of Living, I tracked down the first book in the three-part series at my local library. Written as a response to Orwell’s essay Why I Write, this volume is split into four short sections, my favourite of which describes Levy’s childhood in apartheid South Africa. I can’t wait to read the third instalment next.
Open tabs 🖱️ articles & essays I’ve enjoyed this month
Nina Mingya Powles wrote about how it felt to be confronted with protestors joining the ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march in London mid-month, and how the rise in far-right views is making her reconsider whether her future lies in the capital, even with Indefinite Leave to Remain. A must-read.
I often recommend Sophie Mackintosh’s writing and this month is no different. She shared a vulnerable and heartbreaking piece about her experience of early pregnancy loss, though of course this comes with a trigger warning.
Speaking of Sophie, I loved this interview by Elvia Wilk discussing Sophie’s new novel, Permanence. It’s officially top of my TBR!
Stephanie Danler ’s New York-set novel Sweetbitter is one of my all-time favourites, and I love seeing her name pop up in my Substack feed. I spent a fun few minutes armchair-travelling to the spots in NYC that she finds herself returning to time and again. Bookmarked for the next time I am in New York!
Makayla writes my favourite reading recommendations on Substack, and her summer reading list is just as good as always!
Literary communities were (rightly) upset to discover that one of the regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize was likely written with AI. Lincoln Michel’s Substack piece on this scandal (along with a couple of others in the same arena) offers an in-depth overview of what’s been going on.
Finally, if you didn’t come across Haley Nahman’s post The Botox Psyop when it was first doing the rounds, it is more than worth a read.
Soundbites 🎧 podcasts, mainly, but sometimes music?
High on the discovery of a new favourite writer, I loved listening to this conversation between Olivia Laing and Deborah Levy at the London Review Bookshop.
This month, Everything is Content mentioned an episode of The Daily which explored the rise of religion in the USA. I hadn’t thought about The Daily in at least a couple of years, despite listening to it almost every day during the pandemic. The intro took me back to lockdown in a way I can’t say I found entirely enjoyable (Michael Barbaro, I will always associate you with a terrible time), but when I pushed past that I remembered how much I enjoy the format of the pod. After the recommended episode on religion, I listened to episodes on the rise of AI at work and the Hantavirus outbreak, and came away feeling much more informed about both topics. I’m excited to have this one back in my podcast rotation.
As always, I loved the What Page Are You On April reading round up and look forward to the May episode dropping in the next day or two!
Screen time 📺 what I’m watching
The White Lotus, Now TV - yes, I am late to the party again, but my girlfriend and I raced through the first season of The White Lotus this month and loved it. I’m excited to see what season two has to offer!
Noah Kahan: Out of Body, Netflix - I’ve been enjoying Noah’s new album since it dropped at the end of April, and thought that this Netflix documentary exploring his rise to stardom offered viewers a vulnerable look at what else is going on under the surface, including family tensions and mental health struggles.
Amandaland, BBC iPlayer - recommended by the EIC girls in the same episode as The Daily, their enthusiasm for the new series of Amandaland was so infectious that I knew I needed to give it a go. EIC was right: brilliant writing, perfect comedic performances from the cast, a ten out of ten watching experience.
You’ve Got Mail 💌 icymi, a round up of this month’s Substack newsletters
goodbye to all that
In Goodbye To All That, her celebrated essay about leaving New York, Joan Didion wrote that ‘it’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends’. That might have been how Didion saw her time in New York City, but when I think about my marriage, the opposite is true. The beginning of the relationship is what’s hazy, just out of grasp: …
Word count 📝 an update on my novel-in-progress (emphasis on the in-progress)
Unfortunately, there hasn’t been enough progress (at this point it’s more accurate to call it a novel-in-stasis), so I am taking a little summer Substack sabbatical during the months of June and July to get myself back on track. I’ll still check in for my monthly round ups, though, so I won’t disappear completely. Normal service will resume in August!
Desk drawer📎 some miscellaneous favourites for the month of May
iPad time 📱 I realise that this makes me sound like a child who needs to have their screentime restricted, but I have removed Instagram from my phone and now only allow myself to access it intentionally via the second-hand iPad that my mum kindly gifted me. It turns out that taking mindless scrolling off the menu is quite a nice thing!
taco tuesday will never be the same 🌮 after a few months struggling to flatten home made tacos by hand, I bit the bullet and ordered a cast-iron taco press. I am not exaggerating when I say it has changed my life…
good times at the garden centre 🪴 is there anything better than a sunny morning choosing a few plants?
Through my lens 📸 my month in snaps (@emjameswrites on IG if you would like to see dog pics on a more regular basis!)
Thank you for reading! I hope that June brings sunny days and warm evenings your way, wherever you are based in the world.
As always, if you think someone you know might like either this post or the newsletter more generally, it would mean a lot to me if you would share it. If you have enjoyed reading, please leave a comment or click on the little 💓 below - it really helps others to find my work!