What We've been Reading: October 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.

October was a packed month - the team have been busy both reading and listening to stories on colonial expansion and resistance, Ireland in the 1970s, and some excellent non-fiction and poetry to boot, including writing on African diasporic spirituality:

Hannah

Listened to: The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir (translated/Narrated by Mary Robinette Kowal) - Another ghostly guest book (tis the season), steeped in the itchy restlessness of extreme fatigue, and frustration at the lack of understanding from others. What is happening to your body while you sleep? How can someone rack up 40,000 steps through the night. Where have all the cats gone? What happened to Iðunn’s sister…I listened to this Icelandic horror novella on my commute and certainly had the creeps walking home in the dark!

Listened to: Flamboyants by George m Johnson - not out in the UKAn impassioned whirlwind introduction to the bold, bright, and queer voices of the Harlem Renaissance (read by the author). If only history lessons had been this engaging and interesting! George's last book (All Boys Aren't Blue) made headlines and banned book lists galore. I'm sure this one will cause unwarranted furore too, accounts of talented black queer lives for a younger audience, how very dare they.

Read: The Lost Journals of SacajeweaTechnically it’s historical fiction, a retelling of the story of Sacajewea (who was famously part of Lewis & Clark’s expedition of colonial expansion after the Louisiana purchase) from her point of view. This is truly her story though - her people displaced, her parents lost, her body assaulted, her childhood removed. The style is striking and takes a little getting used to but once you’re locked in it’s so effective.

Buffalo burble and bounce, clog River bends. Men ready their poles, and as the bloated Buffalo near, they spear them. Sour Buffalo gut steams green.

Stories are not always remembered the way they happened, she says. Old Woman's mirrors begin to glitter, to twitch with stories, to shine with voices. Do not trust anyone who tells you you cannot tell your story. Do not trust anyone who tells you there is only one story. If there were only one story or one way of seeing things all stories would die.

JJ

Book of JuJu by Juju Bae - I loved this expansive guide to African and African diasporic spirituality, it’s informed by decolonial theory which is missing from a lot of other occult books and not totally African American centric. The book has really guided my practice and helped me form my own unique practice of Juju

The Rest of You by Maame Blue

Rachel

There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak - Beautiful, devastating, best thing i've read this year.

Noor

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan - an effective, extremely short novel about complicity by silence in a small town in Ireland in the 70s. The power and fear of the Church rules over the town while young women are separated from their children in Magdalen Laundries and treated horribly. Keegan's writing is to the point and direct, but compassionate. Highly recommend.

Abolition Science Fiction - engaging and interesting stories, reflections and writing prompts on the subject of prison abolition, all from workshop participants in Scotland and England.

Mohamed

Teju Cole’s Open City - a novel that expands upon and pushes back against traditional flâneur writing. Open City is largely about how cities obscure extractive and exploitative histories from people in their urban spaces. Rather than just pointing to the duplicity that exists in these environments, Open City reflects this scrutiny back onto the narrator, challenging him to acknowledge what he might be purposefully ignoring. CW for sexual assault and misogyny

Through precise lyrical explorations, Tim Tim Cheng’s poetry collection The Tattoo Collector manoeuvres through personal and historical landscapes, guiding the reader down paths of continuous tender discoveries.

Christina

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by angela y. davis - extremely timely, drawing vital links between oppression everywhere, i listened to the audiobook which was read by davis herself.

Welcome to Dorley Hall by Alyson Greaves - I had the pleasure of seeing the author read from this word-of-mouth serialised sensation at an event put on by our friends at Argonaut Books. I am about a third into the book and it is like nothing i’ve ever read before. extremely readable, extremely tense, often tender. I highly recommend reading the content warnings at the start of the book before embarking on the reading journey.

Mairi

Beauty is in the Street by Joachim C. Häberlen: Beauty is In the Streets is a hugely compelling, often very humorous, account of utopian protest movements in post-war Europe. It's quite the tome (coming in just over 500 pages) but it's cleverly structured so that if you don't have the capacity to race through it cover to cover, you can dip in on topics in whatever order piques your interest.  In the face of intractable institutions, unaccountable governments and compounding crises, it is hard to sustain creative resistance or at times, even envision what success through protest would look like. I find myself returning to the words of Ursula Le Guin for comfort: 'We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings'.  I also found comfort in Joachim's book - setting forms of protest side by side (from the violent to the peaceful), exploring the convergence of movements, where shared goals or values built new bonds, seeing the very rich and varied ways people across countries engaged with varying forms of oppression, the very dreams people attempted to live. We have so much to learn from activism beyond our own shores!

A Portable Shelter by Kirsty Logan - looping back to this older favourite for book club, quiet but fierce, such a sense of place and brilliant exploration of family making.

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera is the first crime novel I've picked up in a while, a recommendaction from friend and writer NSNuseibeh and it didn't disappoin! It's clever and snarky, a feminist crime novel that centers on a true crime podcast that worked especially well as an audio book (thanks Libro.fm!)