WHAT THE SNAIL READS

life, death, gender, time: queer trails through books that unravel the world’s stories and invite us to slow down, get curious and dream differently.

Well hello there, folks.

As the days draw in and the weather cools, I find myself wanting to do nothing more than stay in and read a good book. 

I’ve been curating a selection in my head that I’ve wanted to share with you with all for ages, so here some of them are…

- I realised after I pulled this set together that, on first glance, these look like a selection of books on vastly different topics, but I think the theme here is that all of these texts destabilise and queer dominant narratives, be that ideas about the capitalist clock, rigid gender binaries, linear history, or the boundary between the material and the spiritual. -

Here’s hoping you enjoy a little window into my world and the uncertain trails that I’ve been following…

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Saving Time: Discovering Life Beyond the Clock, Jenny Odell 

Perhaps appropriately for a book about how to resist our obsession with clock time and the Western drive for getting things done as quickly as possible, I read this super slowly over a number of months; dipping in and out as I pleased. 

Odell manages to weave together a powerful history of how our lives became shaped by the corporate clock and the world of work and profit, whilst offering a variety of different temporal landscapes to explore as alternatives. 

I loved Odell’s first book, How to Do Nothing, but ​​it was this 2 star review on Amazon that sealed the deal for me on this one:

2 STARS! NOT REALLY ABOUT TIME… Seems the author chose this topic as a platform for her political views, Vs actually giving practical advice. She spends most of the book bemoaning capitalism and The West, with little practical guidance. Chris SomethingorOther.

Well, thanks Chris!

Bemoaning capitalism? That did it for me.

Yeah, so not much practical advice here so don’t read this if you, like Chris above, want a how-to on the protocols of time management.

But if you want a curious socio-polical inquiry into our experience of time with some gentle invitations to reconsider our relationship to it then this is for you.  (I was personally hoping Odell would talk about the menstrual cycle as another alternative temporal landscape, but it gets only about a sentence of mention in the entire book. And a slightly disparaging one at that.) 

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Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira 

Machado de Oliveira unpacks the historic and systemic processes that created and maintain modernity, revealing how deeply entangled they are with colonialism, capitalism, and environmental degradation. Honestly, this is a tough read, but I think if you’re concerned about the state of the things right now it’s essential. 

This is definitely not a book with solutions or a handy ten step process for how to decolonise, but an invitation to sit with the stories of modernity and coloniality and ask ourselves how they have become woven into our own being. It’s a stark invitation to examine our own complicity with these systems. 

The text asks for patience, humility, and a willingness to let go of certainty. I think I’ll be coming back to this book over and over again. Its insights feel increasingly urgent in the face of the global challenges we face. 

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Ashes and Stones: A Scottish Journey in Search of Witches and Witness, Allyson Shaw 

I really enjoy Allyson’s Substack, so I knew I was going to be in for a treat when I read this, but I had no idea how much this book would affect me.

In fact, I thought I had a fair grasp of what happened during the witch trials that erupted across Europe, but Allyson’s vivid re-telling of these women’s stories put me in touch with a much deeper understanding of the terrible injustice and cruelty that was inflicted upon the accused. These were mostly just ordinary women, often living in poverty, who were terrorised by the state into confessing ‘crimes’ they didn’t commit and then decimated for them. 

On visiting the monuments left to these women, Allyson highlights the ways in which we continue to trivialise these mass deaths to this day: ghost tours featuring spooky, sensational tales of witches, inaccurate memorials or sad, forgotten spaces that only serve to remind us how these histories are all too easily strewn to the wayside.

Reading these tales, woven in with windows into Allyson’s own life, I came away with a renewed sense of anger for the ways in which this world continues to harm, persecute and erase women and femmes.

I could feel the tender care and reverence that went into this book. It’s a true labour of love. Go read it! 

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Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars, Finn Mackay 

Bit of an academic one, this…

But this is a powerful book that explores the roots of the political backlash waged against the Trans rights movement and the emergence of gender critical feminism.

Mackay brings nuance and complexity to this debate primarily through centring the experiences of those within the butch and transmasculine lesbian communities who very rarely get a voice within these discussions.

As someone who has written about queer and trans experiences of menstruation and argued for inclusive language within menstrual and reproductive health, I’ve occasionally been subject to harsh words from the gender critical crew. (In fact, if you follow me on Instagram you might have seen me ask for support when Red School re-posted a carousel of mine  - without asking, I might add - and the comment section got pretty wild.)

I read this book because I’m constantly trying to understand how we can move beyond this polarisation and find common ground. Whilst I didn’t discover any easy fixes within these pages, I found Mackay’s perspectives fascinating and I definitely gained a better understanding of the multiplicity of ideas that were happening within Radical Feminism during Feminism's second wave. 

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Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, Perdita Finn 

Basically, this is a book about speaking with the Dead. Not in a spooky, seance-y, ouija board way (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) but in a really practical, matter of fact - yet also magical - way. 

Perdita Finn weaves her personal story of healing her relationship with her emotionally absent and callous father after he died; detailing the odd synchronicities and uncanny things that happened to her when she decided to rekindle her relationship with him even though he was technically no longer around. Finn tangles with ancestry, deep time, love, loss, grief and the spiritual dimensions of death and dying. 

As a funeral celebrant, I get the privilege of hearing lots of different people’s thoughts on what happens after death. And, honestly, I’ve had some uncanny things happen to me in that liminal zone between someone’s death and their funeral. Whilst I’m not as certain as Finn seems about what happens after life, I loved how her words gave me permission to sink deeper into the mystery of it all. 

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Lastly… some fiction! 

English Magic, Uschi Gatward

This is a collection of unnerving short stories about ordinary people that feel both curiously intimate and alienating at the same time. 

A couple heads to a local fayre during Beltane: a mother takes her child to a birthday party; some holiday-makers come home to find a bird trapped in their chimney; two students visit the shell grotto in Margate. Each vignette feels quite mundane, to a point, but Gatward’s prose leaves enough unsaid to coax my imagination to run wild.

Occasionally ominous, but always fascinating, I wanted every one of these short stories to be longer. Big recommendation. 

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I hope you enjoyed this queer trail into my reading habits and potentially found yourself the next thing that you might curl up with.

I’d love to hear from you if you do pick up any of these (especially Hospicing Modernity. If you get round to reading this I wanna chat with you about it!) And if you’re reading something you reckon I might like, please stick it in the comments.

I LOVE a good recommendation.

Bye then, folks. Have a very sweet weekend whatever you might be up to.

Love Lottie X