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.

Chris is reading White Noise by Don DeLillo

I’ve had this book recommended to me often, and I’d passed up the opportunity to read it again and again, until recently after a friend recounted a few scenes and lines to me that he’d found funny.

DeLillo’s book covers Hitler studies, academics, psychics, chess games with murderers and a poisonous cloud of death, but overall it’s a sweetly sad book about a man and a wife, both terrified over which one of them will die first.

Nina is reading The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

I’m only a little way into The Cuckoo’s Calling but I already know I was a fool for putting off reading it this long. I love Harry Potter, and I love JK Rowling, but I have resisted reading any of her adult work so far. The Casual Vacancy sounded a little dull. I didn’t like the cover or the title for The Cuckoo’s Calling. So I ignored them.

But from the minute I started reading The Cuckoo’s Calling, I felt like I was home. That sigh of a relief, to know you are in the hands of an author you trust, who is going to take you to wonderful places. Sorry JK, to ever have doubted you.

Bronte is reading My Dirty Dumb Eyes by Lisa Hanawalt

Lisa Hanawalt’s debut comic collection, My Dirty Dumb Eyes, is gorgeous, strange and very, very funny. Inside there are illustrated movie reviews, tips on how to tell if Martha Stewart is drunk, a list of things dogs actually want, and so on. Some of the content is hilariously lewd so it’s maybe not for everyone. I’ve also been reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem which I’m enjoying so much. Her essay on John Wayne is wonderful, a tender appraisal of masculinity and its decline in one her childhood heroes.

I’m anticipating the arrival of Trent Parke’s Minutes to Midnight which I ordered immediately after reading this article from Sam Twyford-Moore.