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 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I have just finished Joanna Rakoff’s A Fortunate Age, which is a terrific novel, but also a very long and absorbing one, and after spending a few weeks with her characters, I’m ready to spend time with someone new!

To that end, next on my reading list are Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which looks heartbreaking and important and comes highly recommended; The Iceberg by Marion Coutts, which I bought on impulse in the Carlton shop one afternoon because the cover is so beautiful in person (and also because I’ve heard the book is extraordinary); and Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link, which a colleague has kindly lent me to read – and it’s perfect timing because Kelly Link is about to visit Australia for the Brisbane Writers Festival and the Melbourne Writers Festival!

Emily Gale is reading Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

I’ve been evangelical in my insistence that Rebecca Stead is one of the best new(ish) writers for tweens and young teens, to the extent that I felt quite nervous opening up her latest one, Goodbye Stranger for the first time. What if this one wasn’t as good as When You Reach Me (which somehow managed to keep both feet on the ground and at the same time sweep you away with its perfectly executed sci-fi element) or Liar and Spy (a book that somehow kept me sane on a mercy flight home after my dad had a heart attack)?

I had nothing to fear. As soon as I started reading Goodbye Stranger I knew I was still in safe hands, and I was twelve again. Rebecca Stead has such respect for her pre- and early- teen characters, and the girls and boys in this story are so well drawn. The main character, Bridge, who wears cat ears every day and is still (quietly) coping with the long-term psychological effects of a terrible road accident years before, is someone you’ll very quickly grow fond of. The story is about how friendships shift and change, how we shift and change, and how to live through the mistakes that we all inevitably make.

I identified with this story so much, and can’t wait to pass it on to my daughter.

Chris Gordon is reading Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner by Katrine Marcal

I’m always looking for fodder for dinner party rants, oh yes I am. I have found the perfect book: Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner.

This very easy-to-read book centres on economics and women. Adam Smith was the bloke that created the whole model of economics that we, as feminists, have been battling with ever since. He reckons that everything can be measured by the economic model of self-interest. All good and fine, except who cooked his dinner? Not measured my friend. Not remembered, nor acknowledged. Author Katrine Marcal charts the history of housework against the chronicle of economics.

And by the by, it was his mum that cooked his dinner, but you already know that.