What we've been reading: June 2025

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 Read Think Act posts!

This month you can tell we've all been recommending books to each other pretty ferociously as several, including Laura Bates and Henry Hoke, make repeat appearances! We've also got a fulsome line up (longer days mean more reading?) so strap in, lots of brilliant books coming at you...

Noor

Love Languages by James Albon - the newest book by Edinburgh graphic novelist James Albon. A beautifully illustrated and heartwarming story about two women falling in love in Paris while trying to learn each other's languages.

Underland by Robert MacFarlane - The ground beneath our feet is where we hide secrets, bury the things we cannot face, and place the things we cherish. From catacombs, to mountains, to icy cliffs and glaciers, MacFarlane's Underland is an exploration of things buried and forgotten, both as a history of human relationships with the earth and as a warning of the dangers of misusing the environment we depend on.

Perfect Victims by Mohammed el-Kurd - A genre-bending, righteous manifesto against the politics of appeal - where victims must prove their humanity and value to the very people complicity in their oppression. El-Kurd calls on Palestinian media reporting, political thinkers, poets and more to show how almost a century of Palestinian voices have been ignored and dismissed in favour of settler colonial violence.

Extractive Capitalism - Laleh Khalili - A short punchy book about the plundering of oil, sand and labour in favour of unchecked riches, at the cost of human lives, dignity and the health of the planet. It's also one of the few books I've ready that really looks at the precarity of labour and life in the shipping industry and how exploitative it is. The chapter on yachts made my jaw hit. the. floor.

The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates - A gripping and frightening look at the ways that unregulated AI, in the hands of silicon valley and social media companies, simply re-manufactures the worst misogynies and inequalities that already rule the real world.

Peach

The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates - I have never felt so terrified at how the digital landscape is being formed. By whom, and for who - this is a shocking inside look at digital worlds hidden from the vast majority of adults. This isn’t, however, simply an unfounded fear of the unknown. This book charts how online spaces are already being used to cause great harm, and how this harm maps onto already existing lines of marginalisation. We all need to be paying attention to what is happening online, and how we can protect each other from old harms committed in new ways.

Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green - A deeply sincere book from the YA author, who charts the life of Harry, a young patient he met in Sierra Leone, against the cultural and scientific history of the most significant and deadly disease. This is a passionate and heartbreaking account of a devastating history, and a terrible present. I was incensed, and I should be; it is human choices now that determine for how long this disease will remain so devastating. I listened to this on Libro.fm and would recommend you do the same.

It’s Probably Nothing by Naga Munchetty - A clear, and compassionate guide on women’s health and how to advocate for yourself (or, how to ask someone to advocate for you). Interwoven are real stories that illuminate the many ways that medical misogyny worsens health outcomes. If you, or someone you know, has been struggling to be heard by medical professionals, this might just help.

Faerie Wars by Herbie Brennan - This is a series I read as a teen and, although it is out of print now, I have been loving returning to something I enjoyed so much in those formative years. I don’t do it often - but this is a reminder to find new ways of comforting yourself where you can.

JJ

Open Throat by Henry Hoke - the life of a tiger living in the hollywood canyons, told from the tiger's perspective! it's an uncanny, funny and at times heartbreaking evaluation of how we treat each other with love, malice and emotional distance, in order to survive

Art on My Mind by bell hooks - Who knew bell hooks painted for fun?! As well as being a curious interviewer, she's a fantastic reviewer of black artist - and how they contribute or retract from black radical imagination. I've never really read art critique before but found this really accessible and loved being introduced to black artists I had no idea about!

Mairi

Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave - This is a novel I fell for hard - gulped down over two evenings which then left me weeping at 3 in the morning, utterly bereft. 40 years of a love story, Paris in the 80s,90s, 00s, a heady mix of yearning and loss and love forged on the margins of society. Friendships that last a lifetime, a sense of time and place that bores into your over almost 500 pages. The dialogue unexpected, the story both familiar and utterly original. It's not out til march 2026 so I have almost a year to stew over all its ideas, the art and the books and the sex - it's a beauty I cannot wait to put in new readers hands (if only so I can finally have someone to talk to about it). If you like your novels to shatter you completely... this is the one.

Others Like Me by Nicole Louie - A warm hearted, sensitive, expansive look at the lives of women without children, deftly blended with memoir. Louie makes space for myriad kinds of womanhood, for womanhood without motherhood, for conversations of (in)fertility, abortion and chosen family stripped of shame. She is witty and curious and she maps for the reader lives without children both past and future to bring to life the richness and variety of such experiences (with some sexy stats and a resource list to boot)

The Original by Nell Stevens - A wickedly plotted historical novel about art forgery and family secrets with queer storylines woven in - a page turning exploration of art, authenticity and wealth. What's in a copy? What's in the original?

Jeanne by Arielle Burgdorf - This is a novel as much about a young translator gallivanting around Europe in a haze of sex and cigarette smoke with a mysterious Russian poet as it is a book about language. Through a narrator alternately named Jean, Jeanne, Jean, John, Burgdorf challenges us to interrogate what is in a name, what is naming and claiming and what lives in the liminal untranslatable spaces between languages and cultures. It's a whirlwind piece of fiction, short and punchy, sexy and cerebral - it's a beautiful exploration of the ways people and words build us up, or break us down.

Christina

Dancing at the Pity Party by Tyler Feder (out of print but i did read and really enjoy it)

ask me again by clare sestanovich (just started)

the hidden story of estie noor by nadine aisha jassat

A line you have traced by Rosin Dunnet