Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films and TV shows we’re watching, and the music we’re listening to.

Gabrielle Williams is reading The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Sigrid Nunez won the National Book Award for fiction last year for this story about a woman whose friend commits suicide and leaves her to care for his ageing harlequin Great Dane. The book is written almost like the narrator is composing a series of letters to her deceased friend, or maybe like she’s talking to him inside her own head. She reflects on things that have happened in her day, why he took his own life, and on life in general. And circling throughout the book is the dog – How do dogs grieve? How does a physically imposing dog affect the world they live in? Who is cleverer: the dog or the owner?

Reading this book felt like I was sitting down with one of my most interesting buddies, hearing the way their brain works, and being drawn into discussions on what it means to be a human, and a dog owner, and maybe even a dog. Lovely.

Lian Hingee is reading The First Six Weeks by Cathryn Curtin

I’m currently expecting my first baby, and feeling wildly unprepared for the whole thing. Over the course of my pregnancy I’ve discovered that my usual source of All The Information – the internet, of course – is a terrifying slurry of militant mamas, contradictory research papers, and dubious medical advice from people who spell pregnant ‘pregent’ or ‘pregnat’ or ‘pragnant’. I’ve been relying a little bit too heavily on my partner (who’s been steadily working his way through a stack of books on pregnancy and fatherhood since week one), so when he gently suggested that it ‘might not be a bad idea’ when I asked whether I too should be reading some books on babies, I went out and bought a copy of The First Six Weeks by Melbourne midwife Cath Curtin.

The First Six Weeks covers exactly that – the six weeks after you bring your bundle into the world and are sent home to try and figure the rest out by yourself. Midwife Cath’s book is chatty and friendly, but has a down-to-earth and straightforward voice that makes even the scary, painful, exhausting parts of very early parenthood feel like they might just be manageable after all.

Jackie Tang is reading The Place on Dalhousie by Melina Marchetta (available April)

Forgive me for being that annoying person who breathlessly goes around saying you must read something even though it’s several months out from being actually available to buy, BUT if you like Melina Marchetta, you really do have to get your hands on The Place on Dalhousie when it’s released in April. Marchetta has returned to the friendship group from Saving Francesca and The Piper’s Son, this time taking as her focus the good-hearted but slightly lost Jimmy Hailler, as well as two new point-of-view characters: young mum Rosie, and Rosie’s grieving stepmother Martha.

Slipping back into these familiar characters’ lives is like that hypnotic feeling of immersing yourself in a warm bath. It’s the same kind of pleasure you get from the Before Sunset and Before Sunrise films, where every couple of years you’re offered an all-too-brief glimpse into how this interesting, flawed individuals are going. This is a book about grief, families, and the potential for rebirth and second chances. Strangely, what the book’s warmth and heart most brings to mind is a famous Ursula K Le Guin quote: ‘Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.’