What We've Been Reading: May 2022

Welcome! You've reached the place where we, on a monthly basis, round up what the Lighthouse team have been reading.

You can check out round-ups from previous months amongst our Read Think Actposts!

Lindsay

Swimming in The Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski: Absolutely loved this gorgeous & bittersweet romance set against the ruination of a crumbling society. Every page feels charged with possibility and trepidation

(Other Fruit, the Lighthouse LGBTQIA+ book group will be discussing Swimming in the Dark on May 30th! More info HERE)

Mairi

I am LOVING LOVING Louise Erdrich The Sentence - it captures so much of the oddly specific loneliness of having a bookshop during the pandemic - she's always great, but there's something elegiac in this that is haunting in just the right way for this particular moment.

Also just gobbled up Our Wives Under The Sea which is deliciously weird and queer.

Christina

I deeply enjoyed reading A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik: a magic school where there are no teachers and around every corner (and in every air vent) there's a monster trying to kill you. It's about making friends and doing the right thing and its world building is SO lush and vivid and detailed, and it interrogates elitism in a very clever way, and it is SUCH a good read.

The Truth About Modern Slavery by Emily Kenway: a book which I would heartily recommend to anyone who wants to know how our capitalist systems are interlinked with exploitation, and unpick Tory government discourse around “modern slavery”, and stand up for more, better, safer routes to migration, sex workers’ rights, and hold brands to account rather than letting them get away with passing the responsibility and blame down the supply chain.

(Check out our Read Think Act episode with Emily Kenway HERE!)

Peach

I’m re reading I capture the castle by Dodie Smith - it just came out in a gorgeous new edition and honestly it’s just SUCH a beautiful classic. very escapist, lots of beautiful crumbling castle and spiral staircase imagery, loosely set in the 1930s about a weird genteel family, newly plunged into poverty, in a decaying castle lol

Below you'll find all these, along with other gems the Lighthouse team have been enjoying this month!