"This week I lost a testicle" and Summer Reading
- Lisa Burke
- Jul 24
- 5 min read
Tom Weber, Luxembourg City Library and Between the Lines: reading, resilience, community and five books for summer.
Tom Weber is such an open book. Previously on my RTL show, he spoke about his diagnosis as an adult with autism. Recently he posted on his wonderful Bookstagram "This week I lost a testicle..." and of course I wanted to find out more!
Tom believes that through sharing tough experiences, other people can feel less alone. His passion for books helps connect him to the emotional landscape that is the mental underlay of our lives.
Great writers, and great conversations weave in and out of story-making.
In this show we cover health, autism, loneliness, childhood, language, friendship and the strange power of a library to hand you the right book at the right moment.
My guests:
Tom Weber, translator, award-winning author, RTL Today contributor and indefatigable bookworm. You can also find his reading and writing life on Instagram.
Mariana Mendes, founder of the English-language book club Between the Lines, which brings readers together through monthly discussions, author events, book sales and swaps.
Hendrik Dennemeyer, leading the children’s projects team at the Luxembourg City Library, where he helps introduce young readers to books, comics, manga and multilingual storytelling.
Maïté Ademes, social pedagogue and member of the Luxembourg City Library’s Tuffi team, working to make reading inviting, social and gloriously alive for children and families.
Five highlights from our conversation
Tom’s candour about testicular cancer could save someone. At 29, he spoke publicly about his recent testicular cancer diagnosis and urged people to pay attention to unusual changes and seek medical advice. It is most prevalent in younger men.
Reading helped Tom find his way back to himself. Following a late autism diagnosis, he returned to the passion he had loved before years of masking and social adaptation began to obscure it.
Libraries are living pieces of civic infrastructure. D’Stad liest grew from a pandemic-era solution into a summer tradition that places books, people and conversation in the middle of the city.
There is no inferior doorway into reading. Comics, graphic novels, manga, audiobooks and children’s books can all ignite curiosity, build language and create lifelong readers.
A book club can become a small social universe. Between the Lines began with Mariana and her friends on Instagram. Four years later, its monthly discussions can attract groups of around 30 readers.
The diagnosis
“Earlier this month, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. And that came a bit out of nowhere.”
Pain led to a GP appointment, blood tests, a urologist, emergency hospital care and surgery. Two tumours had fused together, which Tom described, with remarkably intact humour, as “probably the worst two-for-one deal you could possibly get offered”.
His composure comes from a focussed practice of where to place one's attention.
“I choose to focus on the situation at hand. I have this now. My doctors tell me what we need to do to deal with this. So let’s get on with it.”
As a child, Tom read voraciously, often beneath tables, happily absorbed in books and at a useful distance from baffling human interaction.
During a difficult period in his early twenties, reading almost disappeared from his life. Following his autism diagnosis, a therapist encouraged him to think about what he had loved before he began camouflaging parts of himself to fit more comfortably into social expectations.
“For me, the answer was obvious. It was reading.”
He began with the modest aim of one book a month. Soon, books were everywhere again. Reading reconnected him with the child he had been, helped him understand his autism and gave his mind somewhere generous to travel.
Stories allow us to try on another consciousness for a few hours. They can stretch empathy, interrupt loneliness and give shape to feelings that arrive before we have found the language for them.
Luxembourg’s library steps into the sunlight
D’Stad liest means “the city reads”. The open-air library began in 2021, when Luxembourg City was finding safe ways to restore public cultural life during the pandemic.
The open city library has moved through several city locations, including the courtyard of the former Athénée and the Gëlle Fra. For its 2026 edition, it is settled in the Grund, at Place St Ulric, close to the Pétrusse.
People can browse books and magazines, sit for a while, colour, play games, attend readings or simply remember that public space can be gentle.
Children still love books
Hendrik and Maïté work within the library’s Tuffi team, named after its cheerful fox mascot. Their mission is to foster a love of reading among children.
Luxembourg adds its own linguistic puzzle. Many children arrive at school speaking a language other than Luxembourgish. Books, storytelling sessions and library workshops can strengthen vocabulary while allowing children to learn without feeling examined.
“Most kids still love books.”
They may be reading manga, comics or graphic novels. Splendid. The important thing is that they have crossed the threshold into storytelling, another world.
Adults learning Luxembourgish can also start with illustrated children’s books, especially those matching everyday objects with words in several languages. No literary snobbery present.
Between the Lines, and between people
Mariana created Between the Lines by opening an Instagram account and sharing what she was reading. Friends joined. Then strangers joined. Monthly discussions grew, alongside author readings, book sales and swaps.
Social media often receives a well-earned scolding. Here, it acted as the path towards something physical and human: people sitting together, discussing books.
Book swaps have a particular intimacy. A person arrives carrying a story they have loved and places it into another pair of hands.
“I think it gives you a piece of someone else,” Mariana said.
Summer reading:
Tom’s five recommendations travel across politics, displacement, abuse, imagination and the quiet magic of librarians.
The Jakarta Method by Vincent BevinsA deeply researched examination of political violence, anti-communism and the global consequences of Indonesia’s mass killings.
Salt Houses by Hala Alyan A multigenerational Palestinian family story exploring home, memory, exile and the inheritance of displacement.
What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama Visitors enter a Japanese community library carrying questions about work, purpose and life. The librarian gives each of them one unexpected recommendation. Tom described the book as “receiving a warm hug from a very dear friend”.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado An inventive and unsettling memoir examining psychological abuse, memory and the language available to survivors.
From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins A case for rescuing the human imagination and using it to conceive better communities, systems and futures.
A book cannot remove every difficulty but it can sit beside us while we endure one. It can reveal a route we had overlooked, give us words for the unknown emotion, or place a fragment of another person’s life inside our own.
Libraries understand this. Book clubs understand it. Children understand it instinctively.
What will you be reading this summer? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
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