What We've Been Reading: June 2026

Welcome to our monthly reading-round-up for June 2026! This is the place where we gather highlights from what the Lighthouse team have been reading each month.

This month’s instalment brings queer, experimental and speculative fiction, essays, Buddhism and romance, all in no small part thanks to Teddy who’s been on a glorious reading binge lately!

You can check out round-ups from previous months and years amongst our book lists.

Pao

Bad Words by Rioghnach Robinson - a literary romance about literary criticism. Was totally hooked!

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame - another literary romance (there's a trend here...) but this time about polyamory! I loved this one.

Teddy

Missed Connections with Tall Girls by Gwen Aube - a gorgeous poetry collection about transfemininism and trans femininity in the techno-capitalist hellscape!

A Book Knot Book by Sara Kaaman - an exploration of the book form through a series of essays, graphic design and artistic ingenuity, Kaaman examines systems and materials of meaning, and creates something entirely new.

Gertrude Stein’s Transmasculinity by Chris Coffman - how can we read both Gertrude Stein and her texts through not just a lens of sexuality but also gender - and more specifically transmasculinity?

Son of Oscar Wilde by Vyvyan Holland - Oscar Wilde’s youngest son, Vyvyan, explores not only the fracturing impact of his father’s court case on his family life, but also how it reverberated for decades, causing scars that only reuniting with Oscar Wilde’s closest friends a decade after his death could heal. A beautiful autobiography written with grace, warmth and humour.

Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter - a soft and gentle novel on queer forms of counter living, and how we navigate them after crisis. Focusing on Johnny both during and after his partner Jerry dies from aids-related infection, this book made me laugh, cry and hope.

Where I End by Sophie White - in a small Irish town, our narrator looks after her immobile mother who nurses a mystery illness, and even more mysterious secrets. Creepy, claustrophobic, and filled with body horror - not for the faint of heart!

We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner - on the cutting edge of queer and experimental fiction, no one is doing it like Waidner. Working class gender queers unite with polar bears and rival with a lypard to defeat their landlord. Read it!

Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs - a sister’s juvenile betrayal of her brother changes her family forever. Tender, queer and intimate.

Pyre House: a memoir in verse by Lev St Valentine - for fans of Richard Siken, this poetry is a salve for the soul, a deeply healing ode to a brother and to the future.

At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren J Joseph - on the surface, this is a story of heartbreak and never letting go. Under the surface simmers the story of gender transition, found family, and running towards yourself.

Greasepaint by Hannah Levene - 1950s butches flirt, fuck and break one another’s hearts, all while performing in gigs, learning the piano and holding up New York’s anarchist scene. community, gay bars and leather jackets.

Pearls From Their Mouth by Pear Nuallack - essays and speculative fiction merge in this collection on transgender magic, queer diaspora, and south east asians in Britain.

I, City by Pavel Brycz - we hear from a Czech city itself as it watches lovers and fighters and reflects on modernity and tradition, considering the impact that nazi and soviet occupation had on the material and humanist architecture of the Bohemian city of Most.

Nic

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright

The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung Chul-Han

Weirdly Normal, Normally Weird by Robin Ince

Centrefolding by Kristy Dunlop

Christina

The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher

The Children by Melissa Albert

Exit Party by Emily St John Mandel

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Mairi

Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor - sweaty, sultry, challenging lit fic reflrcting on faith, art, creativity and connections in the hyper capitalist metropolis of New York.

Q is for Garden by Jenny Chamerette - a fascinating look at all the ways nature's boundlessness shows us how manufactured our big ideas are on issues as broad as borders & gender. Earthy and warm and vulnerable blend of nature writing and memoir.