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.

Emily is reading Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty is my number one go-to for a holiday read. But since I’m not due a holiday for ages and she has a new book out, I’ve had to make an exception.

What I really enjoy about Moriarty’s writing is that she simultaneously sends-up and finds compassion for her characters (like her equally brilliant sister Jaclyn she often writes multiple point-of-view narratives). She’s appropriately strict when they misbehave but understands them too, like a good parent. They are usually white, middle-class and 30 to 40-somethings, so I’m not calling these books ground-breaking – I know that a lot of my enjoyment stems from recognising myself, my lifestyle and my foibles in her characters. Not least in this latest novel, which is set in a primary school in Sydney but might as well be my local one here in Melbourne.

Although Moriarty is very playful, even farcical, she is never absurd. Her observations are spot-on, and the inner-workings of her characters show her tenderness and her fascination between what we really experience and what we choose to reveal about ourselves.

Bronte is reading Sticks & Stones, Animal Homes by Tai Snaith

My favourite picture book of 2012 was The Family Hour in Australia and so I was delighted to see Melbourne artist Tai Snaith has released a new picture book! I was even more delighted to discover that Sticks & Stones, Animal Homes features more of the same (as in more instantly lovable anthropomorphic animals). This time Snaith looks outward from Australia and across the world to explore animal habitats of species that use interesting building methods.

Alexandra is reading An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

Recently, a number of people have recommended to me Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music. If so many unrelated friends have told me I must read this book, then I guess I really must!

This week, in between working, studying, practicing singing and helping out my invalid mother, I’ve managed to find the time to finally pick it up and start reading. And I’m pleased I have. Having read only a handful of pages, I’m already enjoying the way Seth describes musical rehearsals, and depicts conversations amongst musicians. I especially love reading Seth’s evocations of West London, where I’ve spent an awful lot of time, so also it’s a bit of a fun trip down memory lane. With any luck, I’ll find time over the next week or two to continue reading and enjoying this book.

Fiona is reading The Martian by Andy Weir

I’m not a particularly avid science fiction reader – I love space and I love books but never do the twain meet on my bookshelf. Unless I am bullied into reading it for a book club episode of the podcast Remote Viewing by my fellow podcasters, of course. I supposed I had bullied them into Gone Girl last time so I guess I can listen to them, occasionally. Their recommendation – The Martian – was originally self-published by Andy Weir back in 2012 but it garnered so much attention that it was picked up by a traditional publishing house and released as a physical book earlier this year. Now it’s slated to become a movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon as Mark Watney, the eponymous Martian.

Sent to Mars on a manned flight, Watney and his fellow crew members are told to abort their mission a bare few days in, after a sandstorm threatens their means of escape. On their way from habitat to spacecraft, Watney is knocked over by a flying piece of debris, skewered with an antenna and loses all signs of life. Devastated, his crew leave without him for the safety of Earth, still months away. But Watney is not dead. His blood has sealed around the suit’s puncture and instead, he wakes up in a crater. Alone. Injured. On Mars.

Not all is lost: the habitat is still there and he still has food, water and oxygen – enough for many months. Except no one is returning to Mars for years, and by then, he will have nothing. Luckily Watney is as resourceful a space-Macgyver as you could imagine and he’s not going to let something like no hope stop him.

The technological know-how in this book absolutely blew my mind, and, let’s be honest, often confused me. Like that time he makes an unexpectedly successful attempt at creating water by basically getting two H’s and an O and then poomf, water. Weir has the background and knowledge to create a character who can engineer anything, but he also has the chops to make Watney - the only person we hear from for the first entire third of the book - hilarious, likeable and enough of a pain-in-the-ass to be real. Even though some of the tech stuff went right over my head, I stuck it out every time for Mark’s story, for what turned out to be a ridiculously fun read.

(And for the record, everyone in our book club agreed.)