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.

Kara Nicholson is reading This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein

I’ve just started reading Naomi Klein’s latest book. If the no-nonsense front cover and title are anything to go by, I’m in for a serious and thought-provoking read. Klein’s last book, The Shock Doctrine, was a sobering and brilliantly researched expose of corporate power that came to some very unsettling conclusions. She is extremely skilled at distilling complex issues into highly readable works so I was very interested to find out her latest book would tackle one of the most complex problems of our time. As she writes in the introduction, climate change is an issue that many people find hard to hold in their heads for very long; we ‘remember and then forget again’.

Hopefully this book, by going right to the heart of the problem and tackling the failings of capitalism, will put climate change firmly into the forefront of our minds. If the phenomenal success of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is anything to go by, critiquing the entire economic system is no longer so radical a concept and an argument to be taken seriously. I’m looking forward to finding out what Klein can add to the debate.

Mark Rubbo is re-reading the Readings New Australian Writing Award shortlist

As one of the judges for the Readings New Australian Writing Award, I’m currently re-reading the shortlisted books and last night I finished After Darkness by Christine Piper.

I enjoyed the second reading very much; its such a finely-nuanced work of fiction. The protagonist, a Japanese doctor who is interned in an Australian POW camp, reflects on his life and the novel is a fascinating and sympathetic insight into that period.

Emily Gale is reading The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane

With most of my time spent (happily) engaged in children’s and young adult books for work, I get nervous choosing adult fiction because my time spent reading it falls into precious leisure time and so it has to be excellent. And after I’d read the judges’ report for this year’s New Australian Writing (NAW) Award shortlist, Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest stuck out as my first choice.

Reading this novel, I didn’t regret my choice for a moment. The prose is just so assured, the imagery very precise, and the writer in me kept wanting to copy down phrases so I could look back at them later. I found the story incredibly tense and was at its mercy, anxious about the resolution and just as bewildered as poor Ruth. The tiger element also really appealed to me – as one of the participants in our NAW Reading Challenge said, this novel is like The Tiger who came to Tea, but for adults. (You can read her full response here.)