What we've been reading: July 2026

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

This past month’s team reading is such a sumptuously mixed bag. We have an anthology about writing under neoliberalism. We have heartbreaking poetry. We’ve been learning about family courts and minority languages. We’ve been enjoying toxic characters under a summer sun.

Enjoy! You’ll find previous rounds-up in the booklist section of the website.

Noor

Enshittification by Cory Doctorow - I always appreciate Doctorow's non-fiction for how to the point and yet entertaining he is when explaining all things tech and politics. In this one he talks about tech-corporations and monopolies, and why this is making our tech experiences so much worse when we thought they could get better - from worse Google searches to worse tech worker rights and much worse regulation. Highly recommend!

Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn - picked this one up because it was a runner up for the Orwell Prize for fiction and I can see why! Each one of these short stories packs a massive punch to the gut, and deftly weaves every day life in Northern Ireland with intimate reflections on grief, colonialism, belonging and moral dilemma. Kind of incredible that this is the writer's first book!

Too Little Too Hard - This is an anthology of amazing writers in the UK talking about what it means to write under neoliberalism right now. Incredible names like Rachael Allen, Sanah Ahsan, Anthony Anaxagorou, Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Omar Robert Hamilton (to name too few) discuss everything from funding to boycotts, book sales to the monetary value of poetry. Along the way they discuss class, being pigeonholed as "types" of writer, university systems and more. I picked the book up because it's our new SMOL subscription book, but it's given me a lot to think about.

The Language of Languages by Ngugi wa Thiong'o - What if European languages were not the "bridge" languages for other "minority" languages? Does it really make sense that a country can have over a hundred languages in it, but that people there may not speak more than one or two, but are encouraged to speak and read a European language instead as an intermediary? Ngugi wa Thiong'o pushed in this series of speeches for what we call "minority" languages to skip the European translations and instead be translated into one another so that they were no longer treated as "secondary", and to do away with the colonial hangover of European literary hegemony. Makes sense to me!

Some Things I Do Not Know by Arthur Allen - A heartbreakingly earnest and intimate poetry book about the grief of losing a best friend to suicide and all the love and mourning left in the aftermath. The first poem had me in tears

Pao

Summer Hours by Alessandra Thom - Read this for our SMOL subscription service and it was perfect for those hot, long summer days. If you love books where the characters are toxic and make terrible decisions...this one's for you.

The Light of Day by Christopher Stephens & Louise Radnofsky - A beautiful biography/memoir of Roger Butler, one of the first men to come out publicly in the UK. This was super gentle and very interesting, and I loved the way Christopher was a central part of the story.

He Said, She Said by Charlotte Proudman - I didn't know much about family court and now I feel like I've learned all the things that need changing. Harrowing at points, I'm grateful to Dr Proudman for opening my eyes to the legal system's failures

No Land to Stand On by Mahmoud Khalil - A beautiful and timely read about Palestinian identity, unchecked governments and the enduring strength of those stuck in the US's immigration system. Highly recommended, definitely one of my most anticipated reads!

Christina

Lahea by Lisa-Viktoria Niederberger (no translation (yet))

Middlemarch part 8 by George Elliot - My Middlemarch journey is over (for now)! I read this book with a book club, and I enjoyed it so much. It's such a wonderful novel, absolutely stuffed to the rafters with characters, gossip, yearning, politics, the railway arriving, political reform, bad horse investments, and distinctive voices. If you've been considering reading it, I think you should! My book club read it over the course of 8 months and it was such a great way to engage with this intimidatingly lengthy work. Thanks for the memories George Eliot!!!

Contrapposto by Dave Eggers

Nic

The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber

Zen and Ghibli by Toshio Suzuki

Pedagogy and Theories of Resistance by Henry Giroux

Mairi

Lean Cat Savage Cat by Lauren J. Joseph was filthy and glamorous and messy and Berlin debauched queer lit fic with a beguiling trans femme protagonist and her liability of a love interest bursting onto the music scene. Artsy and hedonistic a wild ride of a read with a dark seam to it.

Venus Vanishing by Rebecca Birrell

Hannah

But I won't Miss Me by Tiffany Tsao - A creepy concept novel (especially when you've just become a parent!). Pregnancy leads to birth and rebirth in this alternate reality - rebirth sounds great until you realise it means being eaten alive by a replacement version of yourself that you just birthed alongside your baby. But hey, it's all good, you get superhuman strength, resilience and motherly intuition in exchange so society has come to accept it as the norm. We follow Vivi as she struggles with her defective delivery and early parenthood without said powers before a plot twist comes to redirect the whole narrative.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin - Le Guin had been on my tbr for far too long! So glad I finally dived into the tales of Earthsea. Exquisite atmosphere and world building. It reminded me of that unique feeling when discovering your own tastes and fantasy worlds as a young reader, akin to how I felt reading the Tales of Narnia and His Dark Materials for the first time.