Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.

Stella Charls is reading The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

When I was a teenager I precociously decided that fantasy and science fiction were for children and I was only going to read “the real stuff” from now on. I didn’t exactly know what “the real stuff” was - Love! Death! Humanity! – but this ridiculous aversion to genre fiction hit me somewhere in between the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books and has sadly stuck with me for over a decade.

This year I’m keen to be braver, and read more broadly, which is what I told Michel Faber when he came into the Carlton shop to sign copies of his latest novel, The Book of Strange New Things. The book itself is a stunningly beautiful object, and my colleagues had raved about it since its release a few months ago (Deb calls it “nothing short of luminous” in her review). It seems like a story of humanity, only set in an alien world – for believers and non-believers alike. So I’m going to dive straight in. Michel Faber is known for his personalised inscriptions, so here’s what he wrote inside my copy: “Preare to be taken out of your comfort zone, trust me, and exhale when you get to the other end. I promise this is “the real stuff” as you put it…”.

Mark Rubbo is reading Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris

Mary Norris has been working as a copy editor at The New Yorker for over 30 years; her first real job was as a ‘milklady’ in Cleveland but somehow that didn’t pan out and somehow she ended up as the comma queen at The New Yorker. I bet she was tempted to sub title it ‘comma Nazi’. Anyway, I’ve only read the introduction as you can see from my terrible grammar and use of commas, but I’m getting into the serious bit and, (is that comma right?) it’s looking really good.

I think we should all read this book, it’s coming out in May from Text. My friend Garrison Keillor really likes it too; actually I’ve never met him but I have met Mary and I want her grammar.

Chris Somerville is reading the work of Alejandro Zambra

In anticipation for My Documents, published this month by McSweeneys, and which has already been called his best work to date, I’ve been making my way through the earlier work of Alejandro Zambra. So far I’ve read Zambra’s novella, Bonsai, and now I’m about halfway through his novel Ways Of Going Home, which is about a young boy growing up in Chile and also a writer working on a novel about growing up in Chile. The pleasure of reading books features heavily.

Zambra’s work is equally sad and funny and it feels, in the best way, nostalgic. I’m only about halfway through Ways Of Going Home and already there’s been more ideas contained in it than novels twice its size.

Amy Vuleta is reading Big Bad Love by Larry Brown

A fellow bookseller recently gifted me a book (expertly chosen to suit me, in classic bookseller style!) which is unfortunately now out of print – a collection of stories by Southern American writer Larry Brown called Big Bad Love. Brown’s voice is unique and distinct. His characters are good-for-nothing romantics, misfits, deadbeats, and dreamers. His narrators are brutally honest and wear their hearts and egos on their sleeves.

My favourite so far has been the story of a guy whose old dog dies. Before he buries the dog, he just wants to go get a drink and thinks he can probably manage to do that before his wife gets home and finds the dog in the yard. He stalls and drinks and drives around a while, and when he finally comes home he finds a note from his wife saying she’s left him for another man.

Larry Brown was the captain of the Mississippi fire department for forty years while he wrote hundreds of stories and tried tirelessly to get some published. I’m glad he did.

The other book I’m reading is also unavailable BUT it is due to be published later this year. Where All Light Tends to Go by David Joy is, again, a novel set in America’s south and has all the raw brutality of Katherine Faw Morris and the poetic realism of Daniel Woodrell.