What We've Been Reading: August 2026

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

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

Christina

After enjoying Evie Dunmore's Portrait of a Scotsman years ago, I finally read parts 1 and 2 of the series (Bringing Down the Duke and A Rogue of One's Own) - she is SO GOOD. She is so great at plotting! I learned a lot about the suffragist movement of the late 19th century! These books are sexy! I look forward to completing the series by reading The Gentleman's Gambit next

Jess

How to Mend: Motherhood and its Ghosts by Iman Mercal - Dear pal (and extraordinary writer/ceramicist and former Lighthouse bookseller) Mohamed Tonsy gifted me this physically small but hefty and resonant book after a trip to Egypt, about half-way through my child’s first year of life. I’ve been reading it during toddler naps and I think it might help me explain what I actually need from writing about motherhood. Rather than indulging in soft bodily descriptions, or equally soft metaphors, it reflects on the erasures and exiles of motherhood with a directness that feels solid and very thought-through. It’s such a treasure, but sadly out of print right now. The Buried Giant by Kashuo Ishiguro - I picked this up pulled in by the promise of a quiet story set against complete societal upheaval (post-Roman Britain) and a kind of collective amnesia coming from cataclysmic changes. The way it gently teases out difficult questions about trauma, justice and memory was really moving.

Hannah

Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest - First loves, later in life revelations, returning to old haunts with new perspectives, and reckoning with rough relationships (with the self and others). I was sucked in, rather than blown away. It’s not a joyful read but there’s gorgeous glimmers of hope among the grime.

Bonus tip: Listening to the audiobook read by Kae (via Libro.fm) meant the spoken word sections got their true hypnotic delivery.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jumpa Lahiri - Deftly wrought depictions of extraordinarily ordinary lives; after loss, in new countries, and missing previous lives. The final line of the final story applies to the feel of the whole book, which gives the important things in life their deserved weightiness… “As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Pao

Loca by Alejandro Heredia - This was like a balm - a slice of life debut novel looking at two Dominican friends in New York and how they got there. Full of gorgeous language, difficult topics and incredible queer lives.