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.

Bronte Coates is reading two American classics

I’ve recently read my way through two American classics that I’ve had on my TBR list for a while: Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker (1962) and The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston (1976). The first is a smart and blackly funny novel about a young woman who is determined to sabotage her identical twin sister’s wedding day. Baker’s prose is wonderful; it bristles with wit, verve and just a hint of malice. Kingston’s writing is also marvellously vivid, though her work is entirely dissimilar – an inventive and intoxicating hybrid-memoir that blends autobiography and mythology to explore growing up in California with a Chinese heritage. Both books are excellent and I’m glad to have finally read them.

Mark Rubbo is reading Preservation by Jock Serong

I have really enjoyed Jock Serong’s earlier books which could be broadly classed as crime thrillers. Preservation is a bit of a departure – it’s an historical novel based on a true incident. Late in the eighteenth century, a ship carrying illegal rum foundered on the Victorian coast and a group of survivors made their way up the coast to the colony of Sydney to get help. Only three of the party survived. Serong’s description of the landscape, the encounters with indigenous groups and his finely drawn descriptions of the players in the story makes this a gripping and compelling novel that will justly draw comparisons with Kate Grenville’s acclaimed The Secret River.

Ellen Cregan is reading The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

I’m constantly recommending books to my parents, but this week they’ve finally recommended one to me!

The Heart’s Invisible Furies tells the life story of Cyril Avery, who is born out of wedlock to a teenage mother. His mother Catherine is kicked out of her West Cork village by a Priest in front of the whole congregation, for the sin of becoming pregnant outside of marriage. She moves to Dublin, and when Cyril is born, she gives him up to be adopted by a wealthy family. Cyril never really fits in with his adoptive family – his parents ask him to call them by their first names, and frequently tell him that he’s not a ‘real Avery’. They treat him not as a son, but as a child-tenant living in their spare room. Cyril knows from the time that he’s very young that there’s something different about him, something that he can’t change, and that others won’t accept. This is a bittersweet, tender and funny book about growing up feeling out of place, and about the hypocrisy of the Irish Catholic church and the culture that once surrounded it in Ireland.