What we’re reading: Geoff Dyer, Andrew Michael Hurley, Marcia Hutchinson and Guardian readers on the books they enjoyed in November | books

Jeff Dyer, author

Finally got round to Thoreau Magazine. It is realistic and sober, lyrical and aggressive, humane and feisty. Walt Whitman believed that Thoreau suffered from “a severe case of pride,” but as Walt also said (about himself) the diaries of this reclusive and secretive character are great; It “contains multitudes.”

I have also been reading Xiaolou Guo’s book My fight at Hastings. After moving to Britain and turning to writing in English, the Chinese writer-director makes an impulsive decision to buy a seaside apartment in Hastings. It’s very funny, as always, but it also takes a serious look at Britain and Brexit. It may also be a study of how the historical roots of this decision extend back to 1066.

And Megan Daum Hour of disaster: All credit to UK-based Notting Hill Editions for publishing this latest batch of essays by one of America’s best, brightest, and most trenchant essayists.

• Geoff Dyer’s Homework is published by Canongate (£20). To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply.

Sarah, Guardian reader

I absolutely devoured Lily King’s new novel Lover’s heart. It’s a classic girl-boy love story but it feels completely new and the story is told in an interesting way. It’s intelligent, romantic, and literary—three things that are difficult to do well at the same time, but King absolutely nails it, and this is among my best reads of the year.

My enjoyment of A Lover’s Heart prompted me to seek out more literary novels set on a college campus in which romance is central to the plot, so I also read (and loved) My last innocent year Written by Daisy Albert Florin, a story centered around an affair between a senior student and a married professor at a New England college in the late 1990s.

My final recommendation of this kind is Marriage plot By Jeffrey Eugenides. I’m still reading this but it’s excellent: clever, brilliantly drawn characters and witty dialogue. I’m convinced that Eugenides can do no wrong, because his novel Middlesex is one of my favorite novels of all time, too.

Marcia Hutchinson, author

Act normally It’s not so much a memoir as it is the Butterfly Meditations by the genius Peter Callow. Chronology be damned, Peter writes as if possessed by the ghosts of his past. The reader will encounter an almost Dickensian appeal to the characters for which the word “eccentric” barely scratches the surface.

Best of everything This is Kate de Waal’s third wonderful novel about the existing family, not the inherited one. I was practically queued to purchase this book on publication day as I adored her debut, My Name is Leon. In Best of Everything, love comes from an unexpected direction for middle-aged hospital worker Paulette: the unsung heroine and tough Windrush woman who has been all but forgotten.

Jamaica Road is a wonderful debut novel by Lisa Smith. Daphne, the only black girl in her class in south London, is content enough to try to fit in when her new classmate Connie Small arrives “fresh off the boat” from Jamaica. His refusal to bow to the dominance of white children awakens something inside her and ultimately turns their lives around. The racism of the 1980s, especially the Deptford Fire, forms a poignant backdrop that is now all too familiar.

It’s been a long time since I’ve finished a book in one sitting, but Kate Griffin’s dark and twisted gothic tale Finchadiabout the nanny gone bad, really affected me. An attractive page turner, perfect for cold winter evenings.

• Step of Mercy by Marcia Hutchinson is published by Cassava Republic. To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery fees may apply

Jim, Guardian reader

I’ve been reading The art of losing By Alice Zeniter. A young woman of Algerian origin tries to piece together her family history. As she recalls the memory of her grandfather Ali and her father Hamid, she traces the outbreak of the Algerian War of Independence.

It is a story told simply, elegantly and with great humanity, because it highlights the struggles and compromises people have to make to survive. At the same time, he is harsh in his criticism of colonialism and racism. Writing is hypnotic and I find myself rationing chapters to prolong the pleasure.

I noticed that many of the books I loved had a recurring theme: how to survive in a changing world and simply find your own place. Maybe it has something to do with my background as a gay man, originally from Northern Ireland, who grew up at the height of the Troubles.

Andrew Michael Hurley, author

Perfect for winter evenings After midnighta new Virago anthology of Daphne du Maurier’s novella. Another After Hours book I’ve enjoyed recently is Bora Chung’s Midnight schedule: A novel made up of different stories connected to the strange and sinister Institute – a maze-like place where cursed objects are kept for research. South Korean folklore, urban horror stories and surrealism merge into something truly terrifying.

One old novel I often return to is John McGahern’s vacation, In it A Catholic teacher thinks about his life after being fired from his job because he married a divorced woman. Here, the past is half remembered, half imagined – as the past always is – and McGahern’s exquisite sentences capture every nuance of elegy, regret, longing and hope.

Finally, helmet, Written by Sarah Hall, it tells the story of our relationship with the elements and the elementals. The novel, narrated by the titular Winds of Benin, moves along the timeline of humanity, documenting all our wonder, creativity, ignorance, and foolishness. It’s a pleasure to read something so profound and interesting. In each line there is a new insight or a wonderful surprise.

• Saltwash by Andrew Michael Hurley is published by John Murray. To support The Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com

Tim, Guardian reader

This month I read three very different books, which somehow spoke to each other: Lost horizon By James Hilton, Lot’s crying 49 By Thomas Pynchon, W Machine feeding By James Muldoon, Mark Graham, and Callum Cant.

Lost Horizon is a century old, but it feels startlingly new – a perfectly paced novel that balances adventure and quiet philosophy. Hilton’s prose is comic but bright, and his idea of ​​Shangri-La still seems like a metaphor for the human desire to withdraw from chaos without escaping it entirely.

Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 offered the opposite experience: a dizzying, paranoid web of symbols and coincidences that reflects our algorithmic age. It’s silly, funny, and somewhat comforting in its refusal to make sense.

Feeding the Machine established both worlds—a sharp, clear analysis of how digital work and AI infrastructure shape our daily lives. Reading it after Hilton and Pynchon, I felt like he was closing the loop between the dream of utopia, the collapse of meaning, and the real mechanism behind both.