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.

Ann is reading Optimism: Reflections on a Life of Action by Bob Brown

Bob Brown’s new memoir has been reviewed recently by Maloti Ray here and I can’t hold back my enthusiasm either. When I picked it up and turned to the back cover my heart melted. Here is a photo of a little white weatherboard farmhouse, nestled at the foot of a snow-capped mountain range. Brown is standing on the verandah. This is Brown’s home, Oura Oura, and the range is Dry’s Bluff and we are high up in the Liffey Valley.

Brown revisits stories of his battles, both in the public arena and in his personal life He takes us on journeys through the Tasmanian bush and we live and breath it with him. I was mesmerised by his story ‘Picturing Recherche Bay’. It was here that the French explorer Rear Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux landed and set up camp in 1792, and not only that, became friends with the people of the Tasmanian Lyluequonny clan. A little known story of two disparate cultures coming together in peace.

Brown’s memoir deepens our understanding of our unique and beautiful landscape and our struggle to forever protect it.

Nina is reading This House of Grief by Helen Garner

This House of Grief is a difficult book to talk about. It’s pacy, beautifully written and absolutely addictive to read. But it’s also harrowing and utterly disturbing. How to say you can’t stop reading a book about a man who might have drowned his three sons?

Garner is as good as she’s ever been (so far I’ve loved this just as much as I loved Joe Cinque’s Consolation). The horror of this particular story, however, has seeped into my bones. It’s affecting my mood. Perhaps it’s resonating so deeply with me because I am from a small town in the Geelong area and I know many of the places featured in the book. Or perhaps the dark nature of the story means it will affect every reader this way. Large sections of the courtroom testimony have made me cry, and yet, I am impatient to keep reading it, carrying the book with me at every moment. I even read it while going up an escalator yesterday.

This House of Grief is not out until 20 August but if you pre-order it from us now, you can get a copy signed by Garner.

Bronte is reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

This classic coming of age story is one I’ve always meant to read but never remembered to search out when I was in a bookshop or library. Then, last week, as I was browsing the Carlton shop for a book to take with me on an upcoming plane trip, I happened across a copy by chance. It was what one of my colleagues describes as ‘a moment of bookshop serendipity’.

First published in 1943, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is the story of Francie Nolan and her family who live in the slums of Williamsburg, Brooklyn – an epic narrative of hope and resilience during hard times.

While reading, I was deeply invested in Francie’s world that became more and more real to me even though I’ve never visited Brooklyn of today, let along the Brooklyn of 1912 that Smith so vividly depicts. The intimate details she provides create a moving portrait of the people and place of that era, and Francie’s journey from childhood to adulthood is heartfelt. Searching for a word to describe the novel I landed on ‘moral’, though I wouldn’t want this to put off potential readers! I never felt like I was being preached at, but simply being offered suggestions.

Take this one passage as an example: ‘There was a special Nolan idea about the coffee. It was their one great luxury. Mama made a big potful each morning and reheated it for dinner and supper and it got stronger as the day wore on. It was an awful lot of water and very little coffee but mama put a lump of chicory in it which made it taste strong and bitter. Each one was allowed three cups a day with milk. Other times you could help yourself to a cup of black coffee anytime you felt like it. Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.’

A Tree is a great pick for anyone who loved classics like I Capture the Castle and To Kill a Mockingbird.