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.

Leane Hall is reading I Am China by Xiaolu Guo

It’s made me extremely happy that there seem to be more Chinese books appearing in English translations in recent years, making it much easier to keep up with contemporary Chinese voices. I’ve had my eye on Xiaolu Guo, a young Chinese-British novelist, for a while, and I Am China has finally crept to the top of my to-be-read pile.

Ironically, Guo has now shifted to writing in English, partly in response to the frustrations involved in getting her Chinese-language work translated into English. It’s fitting then, that the novel follows Scottish translator, Iona, as she grapples with a baffling pile of letters and diary entries handed to her by a publishing company. From these disordered documents, Iona gradually teases out a patchy story of separated Chinese lovers. I Am China shifts across cultures, countries and time in a beguiling way, with the reader following Iona closely on her search for the truth. Iona works in London, Mu travels from Shanghai to Beijing to America and back, and the pseudonymous Kublai Jian desperately seeks asylum in any country that will take him.

I’m right in the middle of I Am China, and the romantic in me is desperate to know what happens to performance poet Mu and exiled punk musician Kublai Jian! Apart from the love story, though, there are many reasons to read this book – the nuances of translation, the role of politics in art, the differing aims of the punk movements in Britain and China, and dislocation and alienation within families are all on the table, to name a few!

Nina Kenwood is reading Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

I recently read A Little Life, which is 700+ pages of harrowing emotional trauma and self-harm and left me with crying headaches, so I was looking for some light relief in my next read. I wanted romance, humour and adventure, and I knew exactly where to find it – in Rainbow Rowell’s new YA novel Carry On.

I am a devoted Rowell fan, and this book has given me everything I wanted and more. One of Rowell’s greatest strengths as a writer is the way she so perfectly captures the experience of falling in love for the first time. In Carry On, the major tension/romance is between Baz and Simon, two teenage boys who also happen to be magicians and roommates at the Watford School of Magicks. The world of Carry On is intentionally very Harry Potter-esque (to truly understand the book’s origins, I recommend you read Rowell’s excellent earlier book Fangirl). Rowell takes familiar elements of Harry Potter’s world and delightfully twists them into something fresh and new, which is one of the things I love about this book.

Here’s a few other things I love about it: the way Rowell writes about magic (how it feels, how it works, the language of spells), the wider world of magicians and magical creatures (and how it contrasts to Rowling’s world), the vampires (vampires are often hit or miss for me, depending on how they’re represented – I’m anti- Twilight, pro- The Vampire Diaries), the jumping between narrators (ambitious, and difficult to pull off in first person, but Rowell does it), the sense of humour (many LOLs to be had) and, of course, SIMON AND BAZ (love them both so much). Read this book – it’s like taking a happy pill.

Holly Harper is reading Eon by Alison Goodman

Now that I’ve finished Alison Goodman’s Eon, I’m a little annoyed at myself that I didn’t read it sooner – to think, I could have been waving it in people’s faces and telling them to buy it since 2008!

Eon is an enthralling tale about a girl who poses as a boy to control an ancient dragon’s power. Goodman weaves together a tapestry of Japanese and Chinese mythology into a wholly original story that plays with concepts of gender and political loyalty. This is Australian young adult at its finest, with a cast of memorable characters and extraordinary world-building that will have instant appeal to lovers of Lian Hearn and Garth Nix.

Stella Charls is reading everything Megan Abbott ever wrote

I’m losing sleep because of Megan Abbott. A few weeks ago on this blog my colleague Amy Vuleta wrote about Abbott’s novel The End of Everything, raving about ‘Abbott’s trademark slow, dark, prickling intensity’.

I’ve never really read thrillers, but once I started The End of Everything I stayed up almost through the night, physically unable to put the book down, my heart beating twice as fast as usual. I inhaled this novel, which masterfully deals with themes of sexual awakening, female friendship and family relationships, anchored around the case of a missing schoolgirl.

This intense, claustrophobic book is laced with intrigue and burgeoning sexuality. Abbott is incredibly skilled in capturing the incoherent desires and longing of adolescence. I found myself absolutely mesmerized by the voice of the protagonist, thirteen-year-old Lizzie, and deeply unsettled by her story.

As soon as I finished the final page I picked up Abbott’s next novel, Dare Me. Thematically, this novel reads like a sequel – a noir psychological thriller about suburban teenage girls wrestling with the politics of their friendship circles – but here the stakes feel higher. Dare Me is set in the present day, each teenage girl armed with a mobile phone that 'never leaves my curled palm, a live thing that… beats instead of my heart’, which makes the events that transpire feel even closer to home than the mid-80s America depicted in The End of Everything.

HBO have just confirmed that a Dare Me television series is currently in development, produced by the team responsible for Friday Night Lights with Abbott to write the pilot episode, so I highly recommend you read this utterly addictive book now to avoid any spoilers!