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 This is about a soon-to-retire history teacher Artie and his gradual sense of isolation from his life-long partner Evie, his country (set in the USA with much of its politics percolating in the background towards the fore of Artie and his relationships), and finally, his profession. The shifting of perspectives, all the while centred around Artie, nudged me to reflect on every relationship in my life. I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of Strout before this but I’m glad I finally arrived!

I had a great conversation with a friend about this book, and they thought it sounded resonant with Williams' Stoner, so on their recommendation, I’ll be trying that next to see how these texts talk to each other! But my god, what a quietly devastating and, yet, strangely hopeful wee story this was.

Centrefolding by Kristy Dunlop

This was so good, I read it twice across for both May and June’s reads! This pacy debut novella PACKS A PUNCH as the perfect satire on the tech-broification of academic research, the increasing marketisation of education, the unquestioned ideological shift towards entrepreneurship, and the absurd conditions of precarity endured by young academics.

Set in an unnamed university research ‘Centre’ – of which I actually happen to have also worked in at the time of the novellas’ conception – the fictional character known as ‘the Guy’ dominates the scenes resources and culture, declaring: “the time of emotions is over”. Meanwhile our protagonist specialises in interdisciplinary kissing, one of many of the ‘Centres’ hundreds of daily appearing research programs, such as: the Innovative Centre, Trauma Centre, Interdisciplinary Precision in Fixation, Interdisciplinary Gaslighting, Interdisciplinary Hand Holding, and so on!

This is undoubtedly a future cult classic, as one reviewer has already put it before I got the chance to!

Normally Weird& Weirdly Normal by Robin Ince

Neurodivergent or not, if you’re constantly giving yourself a hard time and caught up in the constant myopia of self-criticism, read this and you will feel all the lighter! Ince has gifted us a highly informative memoir and survey of the many divergent wonders and abysses of our minds! Funny, tender and necessary work in cultivating a more compassionate and understanding world!

The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung Chul-Han

Ever wondered how neo-liberalism alters our collective sense of space and time? This is a great place to start. Chul-Han's slender flash-philosophical essays here work towards addressing the absense of ritual, and its essential character and manifestations in places you might least expect. However, he is very much a philosopher of the old guard, by which I mean the style of writing can be increadibly difficult and examples are at times sparing but it does reward. I find this style rewards its reader the most in its poetic qualities over philosophy's more contemporary, professionalised pursuit of clarity and rigour.

The richest parts of this text were, for me, in the first 5 chapters which make the whole text entirely worthwhile! If this doesn't quite convince you, then I must say that arguably his greatest, and my favourite, work of his is The Burnout Society. I mention this because I think much of his work, and this text especially, rests on The Burnout Society's central thesis: that the internalisation of neo-liberalism has lead to en-mass self-exploitative behaviours. This makes it a priority among the Byung Chul-Han inclined, and in conjunction with The Disappearance of Rituals, a potent analysis of what has been lost and what may still be gained in a de-ritualised contemporary subject of neo-liberalism.

I read this as part of the Lighthouse Philosophy & Social Hope bookclub, and it was immensly rich in discussion points. If you're philosophically inclined or just want to hang out, drop by! I'll leave a link to our next session here, where we are reading David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules!

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

This is a fantastic overview of the commensurability between the insights of contemporary neuroscience, philosophy and Buddhism. I've taken quite a few dives into these overlapping topics so it wasn't entirely unfamiliar material to me, yet it is still worth the overview regardless of your knowledge base. Rich in personal anecdotes, the shifting and multifarious practices within Buddhism, and contemporary neuro-psychological research.

Christina

The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher: a magical boarding school novel with astute class, wealth and power analysis, and kissing, and chaotic friendships, funny jokes, and a tightly plotted mystery. I loved it!

Bad Words by Rioghnach Robinson is an addictive romance novel set in the world of literature and literary criticism - out October 2026, you can pre-order it now!

The Children by Melissa Albert was atmospheric, propulsive, and beautifully crafted.

Exit Party by Emily St John Mandel - out September 2026! My first (!) every Emily St John Mandel and I loved it so much. It's the end of the world and there is a party. Also there is art theft! And everyone is morally grey.

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. I have wanted to read this book for so long. It is amazing!!! A convincing blend of art and labour movement history, ecology, and autobiographical reflections which made me want to learn everything about everything around me.

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 Chamarette - 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.

Noor

I Gave You Eyes And You Looked Towards Darkness by Irene Solà, translated by Mara Faye Letham