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.

Jackie Tang is reading The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements & Onjuli Datta

Never mind the view, this whole misbegotten year has been exhausting. I don’t know about you but lockdown after lockdown has scrambled my hidden wiring into a truly cursed tangle of nerves, anxiety and emotions, so I was relieved and grateful when this clever, delicious modern romance came my way.

Whitman ‘Win’ Tagore and Leo Milanowski are your classic on-again-off-again celebrity couple: the paps scramble to cover their every outing causing social media to froth with speculation – their most ardent fans even have a catchphrase: ‘true love wins’. (Wins what exactly, no one knows.) Of course, it’s all a very carefully and deliberately planned charade, a way for Win to control and cultivate her star persona.

I absolutely loved this compulsively addictive friends-to-enemies-to-lovers story. Clements and Datta know their rom-com tropes and beats inside out and they fondly play with those expectations without ever losing sight of that almost physically painful yearning every good romance should evoke. If you’re the kind of person who listens to the Who Weekly podcast or are invested in the saga of Ben and Jennifer, then you will delight in the knowing winks the authors gleefully throw your way. And if you want something to buoy you through the bleak Melbourne midwinter, you can’t go wrong with this effervescent, sparkling cocktail of a book.

Lucie Dess is reading Feelings by Manjit Thapp

I fell in love with Manjit Thapp’s artwork when she designed the cover for The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya and knew I had to pick up Feelings: A Story in Seasons as soon as it was published.

This is such a special graphic novel. The artwork throughout is just beautiful, I adore Thapp’s style, and it is a hardcover too, which always brings me extra joy! The story is about a young woman’s life over the course of a year. We follow her through the seasons as she experiences the sparks of possibility and creativity through Summer, the anxiety and pressure during Monsoon and the numbness and depression of Winter. Thapp perfectly encapsulates an experience of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) through her words and illustrations and I felt every moment of it. This is a book I will read over and over again.

Manjit Thapp currently has an exhibition happening in London and I am cursing Covid for stopping me flying over to experience it! I’ll have to make do with Feelings and perhaps treat myself to one of the prints in her online shop!

Joe Murray is reading Switch by A. S. King.

I’ve found myself feeling very sick of ‘timely’ books, specifically books that deliberately address the insanity of 2020. After living through it, (and reliving it), for a year I simply don’t want to think about staying inside and avoiding people. Thankfully, even though A.S. King’s new novel Switch is ostensibly a pandemic novel, going so far as to be dedicated to the class of 2020, its hypnotic storytelling and an almost poetic use of language allows it to feel timeless, or perhaps more appropriately to the plot, out-of-time.

The premise of Switch is simultaneously complicated/simple. It’s a story about a world that has quite literally stopped in time / a house enveloped in plywood boxes / record breaking javelin throws / a Switch at the centre of it all that must not be flipped. It’s also a story about a shattered family pulling its pieces back together and the bomb that tore them apart. Switch is a masterclass in seamlessly blurring the line between reality and magic/experimental voice/young adult drama and I devoured it in a day and a half.