What We've Been Reading: April 2025

Welcome to our monthly reading-round-up for April 2025!

This is the place where we gather highlights from what the Lighthouse team have been reading each month. You can check out round-ups from previous months and years amongst our book lists.

Spring has brought with it a mix of jaw-dropping exposes (of cults as well as certain social media companies), a 1969 experimental novel about a character who’s lost their sex in an airport, the new Rebecca Solnit and more:

Noor

Love in Exile by Shon Faye - With characteristic honesty, wit and sharp observation, Faye blends memoir and political commentary to look at why love and lovelessness have as much to do with wider society as personal feelings. Having been reading so much about incels and the manosphere recently, Faye's book was a bit of a balm for its more compassionate and thoughtful look on society and how our ideals of love are out of touch with much of reality.

JJ

Deliverywoman by Eva Wyles - understated, slice-of-life short stories that explore absurdity in the mundane and look honestly at human desire. Each one is absolutely captivating.

Listened to Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams on Libro.fm - the exposé on Meta Zuckerberg doesn’t want you to see! Dive into the chaotic behind the scenes of Facebook’s influence in Myanmar and US elections, as well as so many other scandals. It’s an eye-bulging, head-in-hands wild ride.

Hannah

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak - Once you get your head around a fig tree being a central character, this is such a beautiful, but sad and informative, read about Cyprus' divided land, people, and generations.

Mother Animal by Helen Jukes - From the cover and title you might think this is a comparative study of animal and human parenting (which it is in part, and very interesting to my zoologically inclined brain). More importantly, it is a strong reminder that humans are not separated from the Anthropocene impact on the natural world, but so porously part of it that every stage of our lives (and the generations to come) will be impacted, from the molecular level up. Did it give me a panic dream about all the forever chemicals in our bodies that are transferred to babies by breastfeeding? Yes. As Jukes argues though, this information should not be missing from the avalanche of information about having children, and was a good balance to the pure natural motherhood content that can be oh so pervasive.

Christina

In Transit by Brigid Brophy - a postmodern novel from 1969 about a person called Pat who is stuck at the airport and who has lost their sex! It is very playful and quick-witted, fizzy with invention, it has diagrams and stage directions!

Jess

No Straight Road Takes You There by Rebecca Solnit - Solnit has always had a real knack for speaking boldly and to the point about the things we know, but which often get muddled in discourse. In this new essay collection, gathering pieces from the last decade or so, such truths include the centre never being unbiased, the difference between despair as a feeling and as a forecast, the fallacy of compromising with the far-right and much more. One to go to when in need of clarity.

Join us to celebrate the arrival of this new collection with a Solnit discussion group in the shop on 13th May - including a wee video recorded for us by Rebecca Solnit herself.

Mohamed

Cultish by Amanda Montell - Cultish is an addictive, mind-blowing experience of a book that will leave you transformed, but without the extra costs, or the demands of the cults featured in the book. Featuring analyses of everything from crossfit, to Scientology, from Trump's followers to the Jonestown massacre, Cultish analyses the mechanisms, language and power hierarchies that cultish groups create and propagate. You might not get an answer on whether or not your spin cycle group has the makings of a cult, but you will come out with a deeper understanding of the appeal and traps found in cultish groups.

Dispersals by Jessica J Lee - This is the nature-writing book I've been waiting for. Dispersals has gifted us new ways of exploring when borders, governments and institutions try to limit access and connections to the natural world, especially for marginalised communities. Tracing historical trade routes, colonial legacies that have been etched into the natural environment and her own Taiwanese-Welsh heritage, Jessica shares intimate and ever-expansive meditations on ways of being and finding belonging, opening the door for a new language that takes exploration beyond a limiting language of classification.