What We've Been Reading: August 2024

Welcome! You've reached the place where we, on a monthly basis, gather up what the Lighthouse team are currently reading. You can check out round-ups from previous months amongst our Book Lists.

We've just come out of a month of Book Fringing and the whirlwind that is August in this city. Against all odds, it does look like the team managed to sneak away some time for reading. Here are the results of those pursuits:

Rachel

I have been on a T. Kingfisher reading spree, and her new fantasy novel A Sorceress Comes to Call did not disappoint. Magical horses, sorcery, and an exploration into finding the strength to fight back and stand up for yourself and the ones you love.

Jess

After Noor recommended it over a year ago, I finally read Still Life with Bones by Alexa Hagerty and it felt like descending into a place of silence, where truth will hurt but must be unearthed for life to continue. Patiently, it goes where many of us would rather not, to mass graves in Guatemala and Argentina, in search of people who were disappeared during the counties' genocides. It asks questions without answers, about identity, grief, closure and human rights, and holds you while doing it.

Strangely, the other book I finished this month is full of things being covered, rather than unearthed. Carmen Pellegrino's novel The Earth is Falling moves with the quality of the landslide threatening a village and its inhabitants. Time and characters are porous and there's very little solid ground. I really liked that.

Peach

Poor Things by Alasdair Gray - I enjoyed the dry satirical humour but didn't like that i liked it so much because that means I have to read more Alasdair Gray and that goes against my Big Book Embargo.

Noor

A Sunny Place for Shady People - forthcoming by Mariana Enriquez - Mariana Enriquez has done it again, consider me thoroughly disturbed and absolutely unable to stop reading.

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver - An incredible book of short stories written by a very young African American woman who passed away far too young. The stories are set in the Jim Crow era and show snippets of ordinary life with extraordinary effect. My favourite so far also broke my heart, it is about the family of a little boy who is to be the first child to desegregate schools.

Mairi

Above Us The Sea by Ania Card is a gorgeous, devastating, affirming immigrant love story / queer coming of age. Toni has left Poland and is laying new roots for herself in Cardiff when she falls in love with a flamboyant Welsh boxer and moves in with him and his boyfriend. The next 200 pages explore love, chosen family, grief and connection in the most beautiful ways.

Christina

I read Sally Rooney's new book Intermezzo which I think you should pre-order immediately if you haven't already. It's easily my new favourite of Rooney's books. I struggle to think of what to say about it - I really think it benefits from not knowing anything about it before you go into it. I've rarely texted my friends so much about a book, rarely felt so much while reading, rarely taken so many photos of quotes I wanted to remember. I finished it weeks ago and am still thinking about it, its characters alive in my mind.

I also read Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly, a cooking-competition-based love story between a queer woman and a non-binary person. It was sweet and sexy and cute! Content note for themes of transphobia. (Caden from Edinburgh's brand-new Book Lovers Bookshop recommended it to me!)