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 I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum

Emily Nussbaum has long been a writer I admire so I was very excited to get stuck into her new book, I Like to Watch. This work brings together a collection of her reviews and profiles, as well as a couple of previously unpublished essays. I’ve read some of these pieces before, but revisiting them in the context of a collection of work gives a new perspective on Nussbaum’s arguments about television. I especially loved her profiles of Kenya Barris, Jenji Kohan and Ryan Murphy which transported me inside of writers’ room with an immediacy that felt deliciously juicy. This is an engaging, smart, funny, passionate book that will make you want to binge watch every show Nussbaum mentions, even, and especially, the ones she pans.

Miles is reading Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley

Late in the Day by Tessa Hadley really caught me by surprise. It is so psychologically insightful and so carefully made (so precise and quiet) that when it finally moved into gear, I was blown away.

Mike Shuttleworth is reading Fing’s War by Benny Lindelauf, John Nieuwenhuitzen and Dasha Tolstikova

Fing’s War really is something special. The story keeps a tight focus on teenager Josephine (‘Fing’) Boon, her family and people of the village as World War II swirls around them. The story opens with a glimmer of hope with Fing being offered the chance to train as a teacher. The Boon family live in less-than genteel poverty on the edge of a small town near the Dutch/German border. Soon, a pro-Nazi group in the town is imperilling the lives of children as well as adults. Then Fing’s father and brothers are sent across the border to work in German factories. When her friend becomes active in the Blackshirts, Fing is forced to choose sides.

Lindelauf is not afraid to send his characters across the moral tightrope, and the drama is almost unbearable. The inclusion of Limburgish, Yiddish and German words brings the drama even closer to the reader. Fing’s War stands comfortably alongside novels like The Blue Cat by Ursula Dubosarsky and The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay, and will be high on my best books for 2019.