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.

Amy Vuleta is reading Autumn by Ali Smith

I’ve just picked up this latest novel from Ali Smith. I read and loved How to be Both last year, and had a number of full, very rich discussions about the book with two of the book club groups I host at our St Kilda shop. Smith is a masterful, beautiful writer. Her stories are tender, smart and brimming with postmodern word-play that manages to cut right to the heart. Autumn is the first in a ‘seasonal quartet’ and examines our time, how we are divided and how we connect, love, hope, and the passage of time.

I’m about half-way through, and this book is winding its way around my heart, pumping blood to my cheeks, and punching me in the guts, again and again. This is a familiar and welcome sensation when reading Smith: ‘Probably nobody knows who she is any more. Probably what was history then is nothing but footnote now, and on that note, he notes she’s barefoot, alone in the summer night light of the hall of the great stately house… She is standing next to a tapestried wall and she is slipping out of her summer dress.’

Jan Lockwood is reading The Good People by Hannah Kent

How eloquent, imaginative and downright brilliant is Hannah Kent? I’ve just put down The Good People, her brand-new historical tale of real and imagined characters in early nineteenth-century rural Ireland. Historical fiction isn’t my usual choice – the book starts with the lyrics to a traditional ballad from 1600, followed by some quotes and the news that the year is 1825. But, having really enjoyed Burial Rites (Kent’s gripping debut set in Iceland, 1829), I was interested to see where she took me this time. I’m totally won over.

Kent is a master at expanding a snippet of factual historical information into a totally believable world. From the very start of this story I was sucked into the landscape and way of life of this small community. There’s conflict between the Catholic church and the old superstitions, and the increasing pressure adds to the tough living conditions that the locals already endure, with tragic consequences. The Good People is a slow build with plenty of scene setting, which ensured I was truly empathetic by the time the crux of the story arrived. While this may be a historical tale of fiction, it’s given me a lot to think about in the context of today’s fear and intolerance of the unknown.

Lian Hingee is reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

I read my first Rainbow Rowell earlier this year in preparation for her visit to Melbourne Writers Festival. I picked Eleanor and Park, because everyone told me not to read Rowell’s most recent book, Carry On, unless I’d read Fangirl, and I didn’t really want to read a book called ‘Fangirl’.

It turns out my prejudice was totally unfounded because Fangirl is as delightful and complex as Eleanor and Park was.

The ‘fangirl’ in question is Cath – daughter, twin, virgin, and Simon Snow devotee. She writes a hugely successful fanfiction series called ‘Carry On’, based around the magical Harry Potter-esque adventures of an adolescent wizard, and is so caught up in that world that she’s only half living in the real one. She’s a wonderfully authentic character and one that’s close to my heart. I too avoided parties and wrote fanfiction (don’t bother looking, you’ll never find it). Fangirl is a deftly written YA novel that shows that love and life are two things you have to experience for yourself.