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 listening to Hozier and readings lots of books

This week, I discovered Irish musician Hozier, and I’ve pretty much had his songs ‘Take Me To Church’ and ‘From Eden’ on non-stop repeat ever since. I highly recommend you take a listen.

In regards to reading, I recently read Meghan Daum’s collection of personal essays The Unspeakable and it’s now a late entry into my best books of the year. Her first essay in the collection, ‘Matricide’, is particularly extraordinary. The book is only available in hardback at the moment, but I suspect we’ll see a paperback edition sometime in 2015.

I also read Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe (Ed note: Paperback copies are scarce in Australia right now, which is why we’re linking to the hardback). I had to read it for my book club, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. But I’m delighted to say I was proven wrong with my reluctance. It’s so great! Nina is a twenty-year-old nanny in London in the 1980s, caring for the two children of a literary editor. The memoir is entirely made up of the real-life letters Nina wrote home to her sister. This book is utterly charming and heart-warming; it’s as comforting and English as a cup of tea on a wintery day. Nothing happens in the book, at all, and yet I was tearing through the pages as though it was a thriller. It made me laugh out loud, many times.

Finally, I’m currently reading The Life-changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever by Marie Kondo. She’s a famous Japanese tidying expert and the book has been a worldwide bestseller. I’m reading the book out loud to my boyfriend, as we are both messy as hell and need to learn the “KonMari” method of keeping our apartment tidy. Apparently, this book will change our lives forever. I can’t wait.

Bronte Coates is reading Pulphead: Notes from the Other Side of America by John Jeremiah Sullivan

I frequently consider myself lucky to be surrounded by great readers, including two housemates who are generous book-lenders. This week one of them sent me an essay by John Jeremiah Sullivan on animal consciousness (you can find it here), which jogged my memory about an older recommendation by my colleague Nina (from two years ago now) for Sullivan’s essay collection, Pulphead: Notes from the Other Side of America, which it then turned out my housemate owned. I read the first essay that evening and the most important thing I can tell you at this point is that it was very, very funny. There was something a little bit David Foster Wallace about the tone which I loved. I’m looking forward to reading the others though I’ve been warned not to expect them all to be funny.

Chris Gordon is watching 20,000 Days on Earth

Last night I went to the great foreign land that is the Melbourne Exhibition Centre to hear the Master himself. Nick Cave’s voice holds the anguish of a man caught in eternal life – it’s as if he has travelled through generations of humanity and has reached an understanding about the poverty of spirit, the torment of love and the tears of pain. His voice is both beguiling and sadistic. He has captured the Dante in us all.

And so, because I am a mad Nick Cave fan, this weekend I will be rewatching the mock-documentary 20,000 Days on Earth where Cave both reveals and obscures his thought processes. This terrific film is worth watching even if you are not a die-hard fan, if only for knowing what Nina Simone requested before appearing on stage; she lends a certain festive air to the show.

I may even read the poetry of Poe, of Dante, of Larkin in my quest to realise Cave’s inner torment. Or, I may simply turn his music up very loud and lie still on the floor, allow the summer sun to stream in and be grateful that someone out there is searching for meaning.