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 Le Lievre is reading The Fish Ladder: A Journey Upstream by Katharine Norbury

Last year it was Tasmania. I soaked up the writing of Bob Brown, Maggie MacKellar and Favel Parrett. This year I think it will be Wales.

I am loving Katharine Norbury’s The Fish Ladder. The author lives part of the year in a small cottage on the Llŷn Peninsula: ‘At its western tip the Llŷn Peninsula is like a pointing hand; a solitary finger gesticulates a warning against the Irish Sea, at the place where the tides converge, and this place is known as the Swnd, or Sound.’

Norbury’s life has been filled with loss. She has suffered the miscarriage of a longed-for child and she has also been experiencing loss throughout her life in another way. She was raised by adoptive parents after being abandoned as a baby. These events become the motive for her yearning to be outdoors, to experience the rawness of nature. Norbury takes us on walks, into the Welsh wilderness and then into Scotland, searching for streams to follow, hopefully from their source to their eventual completion at coast-end. The writing has an ebb and flow, echoing the movement of water, and moving backwards and forwards across time, too, with the interweaving of stories from local myth and legend.

I am in very good hands

Fiona Hardy is reading The Underwater Fancy-Dress Parade by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys

This gorgeous book made up of only a few colours: orange, shades of blue and grey and, on the cover, a shimmering silver. It’s about a boy named Alfie who is about to attend a fancy dress parade as Captain Starfish, but the night before, he gets that feeling in his tummy. You know it, don’t you? You feel sick. Are you coming down with something? Oh no, maybe you won’t have to do that anxiety inducing thing because of a legitimate reason like legitimate totally real illness that you’re about to come down with.

The Underwater Fancy-Dress Parade is an interesting book in that it discusses anxiety without either demonising it or fixing it with a magic wand. Alfie feels anxiety strongly and has for a long time; his parents offer support and help instead of fury or impatience. The ending offers a gentle nudge of hope but does not see Alfie suddenly (and, let’s face it, unrealistically) parading in front of a giant crowd.

Besides, any book with a penguin driving a bus is a-ok with me.

Mark Rubbo is reading Hello, Beautiful!: Scenes from a Life by Hannie Rayson

Hannie Rayson’s Hello, Beautiful! is a memoir of sorts – a series of vignettes that illustrate a time or event in Hannie’s life. It is such a positive happy book that it has me smiling most of the time – or laughing. Not that it isn’t wise or serious at times – it’s often the first and sometimes the latter. The message I’m getting from the book is that we should embrace life and those around us. Coming from the theatre world, Hannie has some lovely anecdotes. She’s also shockingly frank, personal and funny. Talking about her an ex partner, she recounts how he had a brief fling with Helen Garner after they’d separated; she asked him if he’d mind if she put it in her the book and he replied: ‘Sure, but it was more than a “brief fling”’. She doesn’t say if she asked Helen!

Nina Kenwood is reading Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido

ABC TV’S Book Club recently raved about Brother of the More Famous Jack – guest panelist Elizabeth Gilbert loved it and said ‘pretty much everyone whose hands I’ve put it into, and I’ve put it into a lot of people’s hands, also love it’. Marieke Hardy said it was ‘a very sexy book without being very explicit… It’s a deep, beautiful love story with people who just tease each other constantly.’

After hearing that, I decided I had to read this book. Published in the early eighties, this is Trapido’s debut novel, and it’s rather delightful. I haven’t finished yet – I’m about two-thirds of the way through – and I’ve really enjoyed it so far. This is a novel about families, and relationships, and it has a lot fascinating things to say about both. It also makes a few sharp turns in the plot which I wasn’t expecting and I like that Trapido is a confident writer who isn’t afraid to do what she likes with her story.