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.

Ele Jenkins is reading Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

I just finished Lolly Willowes, a 1926 novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner. It’s a remarkable book, short and whimsical and deeply subversive. At age 47, Laura Willowes escapes the narrowly confined life of a spinster and flees to the countryside on a whim. But it’s more difficult than she had expected to rid herself of her interfering family, and in order to secure her independence she accidentally makes a pact with Satan himself. There, I’ve spoiled the ending for you! … Only I haven’t, because it’s impossible to spoil the quiet rage and utter delight of this book. Fans of Stella Gibbon and Angela Carter will enjoy this rather unusual witch story.

Jackie Tang is reading Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

A hot shimmery explosion of sex, love, myth, grief, and the exhilaration of the new and unknown. Reading this book feels like that heady moment you check yourself in the mirror before a going out for a big night – the potential of what’s to come vibrating in the air, your reflection refracted back at you with possibilities. Like a mix of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Orlando and a Todd Haynes movie – but also its own newly formed thing – Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl should be read with your favourite song blasting, with your back on the grass, with warm bodies in bed next to you.

Bronte Coates is reading The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg (translated by Dick Davis)

The Little Virtues brings together eleven essays written by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg between 1944 and 1960. It’s an evocative and immensely readable book. Opening with the incredibly moving ‘Winter in the Abruzzi’ and closing with her titular essay about raising children, this is a brilliant work of feminist writing with a devastatingly light touch. In spare, wry prose, Ginzberg explores family relationships, life under Fascism, her vocation as a writer, and more. This new edition opens with a glowing introduction from Rachel Cusk who joins a long line of authors to recommend Ginzburg, including Zadie Smith and Maggie Nelson. So if you can’t trust my opinion, please trust theirs!