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.

Nina Kenwood is reading Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

Get ready, because I’m about to rave about this book.

I first heard about Single, Carefree, Mellow from a colleague who called it ‘the best book I read this year’. Then another colleague, Stella, wrote about it in last week’s What We’re Reading column, and her excitement further inspired me. I rushed out and bought it that day.

Single, Carefree, Mellow is a book of short stories about women in relationships (infidelity is a big recurring theme). One character, Maya, appears in three of the stories, and her first story, ‘Single, Carefree, Mellow’, is one of my favourites of the collection – it made me cry. Another favourite, ‘Blue Heron Bridge’, is simply a delightful, near-perfect short story, complete with humour, melancholy and moments of genuine surprise. ‘The Rhett Butlers’ takes an idea I am rather tired of – a teenager girl having an affair with her older, male teacher – and makes it funny, and smart, and brutal, and real.

This book is wonderful. I love it. It’s one of those books that feels like it was very specifically written to appeal to me. Heiny’s language, her characters, her humour, her tone and style – it may not be to everyone’s tastes, but it’s perfectly, utterly suited to mine.

All I can say is: read this book. As a bonus, it’s also beautifully produced, with a gorgeous cover and lovely gatefolds. (Here’s the part where I tell you that we currently only have 2 copies in stock, but plenty more on order that should be arriving soon.)

Stella Charls is reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

I’m a bit of a coward when it comes to reading fantasy and science fiction. This aversion to genre fiction is something I’m attempting to challenge, which I touched on in a previous What We’re Reading column.

This week, Station Eleven (about a global pandemic that wipes out civilisation) has won this year’s Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction and it sounds like the perfect entry point for me – a decidedly literary dystopian narrative that has a lot to say about the power of memory and the human need for art and culture. My colleague, Nina, raved about this novel, calling it: “Smart, haunting and inventive”.

I especially want to read the novel before hearing the author, Emily St. John Mandel, give the keynote address at the Emerging Writers Festival Opening Night Extravaganza on Tuesday 26 May.

Ann Le Lievre is reading Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views by Matteo Pericoli, with a preface by Lorin Stein

I have the best job in the world: I select books from our tantalising range of monthly new releases and promote them, through talking or writing about them, to libraries. So it very often happens that I bump into a gem. Today I found Windows on the World: Fifty Writers, Fifty Views by Matteo Pericoli and Lorin Stein. This book is a compilation of short pieces by writers from around the world, pondering on the view they see from where they are sitting and writing. Our own Richard Flanagan is here, writing from Bruny Island (which happens to be one of my favourite of all time places). I am entranced with what he sees from his window: “Below are sandstone bluffs and kelp-wracked beaches reeking of forbidden things …. Sometimes I dive on the shallow reefs here, looking for words.”

Ford Thomas is reading Robert Walser and Renata Adler

It’s always a joy to read Robert Walser’s jaunty flamboyant writing and I just finished Jakob Von Gunten. I’d previously read two of Walser’s New York Review of Books story collections Berlin Stories and A Schoolboy’s Diary and Other Stories), as well as his novella The Walk. For those who haven’t read Walser before it’s really hard to go wrong with his shorts which generally run between one to fives pages, making them ideal for short public transport rides and quick breaks. Berlin Stories is my recommended starting point. Jakob Von is my first long-form work of his I’ve read and, like his other work, it’s comical and somewhat hyper-candid. The book doesn’t have an obvious through-line, aside from the Von Guten’s running internal monologue and interactions with others.

Next I’m reading another release from New York Review of Books – After the Tall Timber which is a collection of Renata Adler’s non-fiction.

At the start of last year I came across many favourable mentions of Adler’s 1976 novel, Speedboat. A novel of non-linear paragraphs. This structure appealed to me so I quickly picked it up and was pleased to discover that on their own, these paragraphs are better than most novels, while when read together, they create an intricate and involving look at the life of journalist Jen Fain. I also read Adler’s following novel, 1983’s Pitch Dark which has a similar format and follows a woman on the cusp of an affair or a breakdown. While not as easy to read as Speedboat, the second novel has stuck with me for longer. I’m now keen to check out some of Adler’s journalistic work, hence: After the Tall Timber. I can’t wait to get started.

Bronte Coates just watched Steel Magnolias for the first time

This week I’ve been reading my way through Hadley Freeman’s Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned from Eighties Movies (and Why We Don’t Learn Them from Movies Any More) as I’m reviewing the book for June. I’d already seen most of the films that feature in each of her chapters except for Steel Magnolias, and so, naturally, I felt compelled to fit in a screening. I’m so glad I did as I’m certain that I enjoyed the chapter about it much more having done so.

The film has a stellar cast – Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLain, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah and Julia Roberts (who was still a newcomer at the time and was nominated for her first Oscar for her role) – and their performances are absolutely terrific. The story has dated a little and I had a few little inner cringes, but ultimately, I pretty much loved the whole thing to death. It’s also one of those films where every line is instantly quotable: “I’m not crazy, M'Lynn, I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 40 years!”; “I have a strict policy that nobody cries alone in my presence.” It’s very funny and also moving. The scenes between M'Lynn (Sally Field) and her daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts) struck a chord with me and felt wonderfully true-to-life.