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.

Bronte Coates is reading How to Make a Movie in Twelve Days by Fiona Hardy

This is exactly the kind of book I would have loved as a nerdy and creatively-fired-up child. After a year of planning and a bittersweet financial boon, Hayley is set to film her first ever professional horror film. The only problem is that someone seems to be sabotaging her efforts… But who? And why? Hayley is such a terrific heroine – determined, hard-working, innovative, passionate – and it’s impossible not to love her. How to Make a Movie in Twelve Days is a sweet, action-packed and chunky story that will appeal to all budding filmmakers of ages 10 and up.

Leanne Hall is reading A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti

I ran a lot of track and cross-country when I was a teenager, so I’m always lamenting the lack of YA books that feature the sport of running. In Deb Caletti’s wonderful A Heart in a Body in the World , high school student Annabelle starts a spontaneous ultra-distance run from her hometown of Seattle, across the entire breadth of the country, to Washington. Annabelle’s a much more serious runner than I ever was – she’s in her teens and has already run marathons – but she hasn’t planned the first thing about completing over two thousand miles on foot. Annabelle’s grandfather drops everything and becomes her support crew in his motorhome, and together they experience the highs and lows of the road, battling injuries, making new friends and getting on each other’s nerves.

This is a heartbreaking and powerful book, that ends with hard-won healing and hope. Annabelle is running to cope with her grief and PTSD, and the events that led her to this point emerge in slow playback as the countryside trickles by. The reasons behind Annabelle’s run touch on the all-too relevant issues of male entitlement and violence, making this book a must-read for teens and adults alike.

Chris Somerville is reading Matilda by Roald Dahl

Recently I read a book that everyone seemed to like but I felt less jazzed about, which I won’t really go into here, suffice to say that it had the biggest, in my opinion, drag of a subject matter, which is a writing teacher complaining about how dumb their students are. Spare us all from this please. Around the same time I was reading, in small bits just so she could hear my voice, the Roald Dahl book Matilda to our six-month-old daughter, which I’d never happened to read before. What a book! It’s about a child who is magic, but only briefly. The students are a delight, the adults are, mostly, a drag, and Matilda’s parents, Mr and Mrs Wormwood are almost perfect comic creations. If you haven’t read it before give it a whirl and if you have read it before read it again.