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.

This week, we not only share what our own staff are reading, but also what the team behind Melbourne literary journal Kill Your Darlings is reading too (see here).

Nina Kenwood is reading Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson

Everyone at Readings is talking about this debut Australian novel (our head book buyer Alison raved about it here) – both because it’s attracting very positive reviews, and because it’s written by one of our own, a bookseller from our St Kilda shop.

Fever of Animals is a novel about travel, grief, art, and identity. It’s also a book that’s very interested in relationships. The story of main character Miles and his girlfriend Alice had me hooked from the beginning, as Allinson digs deep into the gritty details of their failing romance. He beautifully captures the cruelty, honesty and longing of the couple, and the painful messiness that comes with separating from one another.

Throughout the book, Allinson explores time and memory, and loops back around in his narrative to tell different parts of the same story at different times. I’m really looking forward to finishing this terrific book over the weekend.

Stella Charls is reading A Modern Way to Cook by Anna Jones

As part of a general, idealistic self-improvement plan, I’m constantly telling people that I’m going to become a vegetarian soon. Really soon i.e. probably next week, or at the start of summer, or maybe from the new year onwards. Truth is, I’m feeling more challenged by the idea than I’m happy to admit, but two cookbooks by UK cook Anna Jones are steadily strengthening my resolve.

Anna’s first book, A Modern Way to Eat, came out mid last year, and caught my eye initially because of it’s beautiful design. Anna’s follow up, A Modern Way to Cook, was just released earlier this month. These books have been so popular because Anna’s recipes are simple, accessible and incredibly tasty. As well as being healthy and quick to prepare, they’re hearty (no sign of insubstantial vegetarian food that fails to fill you up within these pages). My favourite feature are various tables scattered throughout both books that list ingredient combinations you can play around with when making soups, salads, preserves, dressings etc. – super useful for improvising with what’s fresh or what you have lying around the kitchen.

Safe to say these books celebrate a vegetarian diet, and make the challenge seem achievable and delicious. Very persuasive!

Bronte Coates is reading some excellent YA

As well as reading my way through the Readings Prize shortlist (which I wrote about in this column last week right here), I’ve been treating myself to some excellent YA fiction.

This week I finished the final book of Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy which I thoroughly enjoyed. I love fantasy books but find them dangerously addictive; I usually end up being so enveloped by the worlds they create that I do all kinds of decidedly non-adult things like catch public transport instead of ride my bike/cancel doctor appointments/eat toast for dinner/etc, all so that I can spend as much time in these worlds as possible. And the world of Taylor’s books is particularly amazing and compelling.

Before this series, I’d also enjoyed both Justine Larbalestier’s Razorhurst and Fiona Wood’s Cloudwish – which contain impressive worlds of their own. Razorhurst presents a dark and thrilling re-imagining of 1930s Surrey Hills complete with ghosts, completely removed from the real world. In contrast, Cloudwish feels completely real to our life now in Australia, set in the same fictional version of Melbourne as Wood’s two other books – Six Impossible Things, Wildlife.

Chris Gordon is reflecting on books and friendship

Every year, for a very long time, Readings’ Head of Marketing and Communications Emily Harms and I have exchanged gifts at Christmas time. While we didn’t know each other before we started working here at Readings – in the same office, at the same time – our friendship was quickly formed. It was books that brought us together and so each year we chose a book for each other to enjoy over the summer break. I’m sure many of you out there already have this ritual with your nearest and dearest but if not, I suggest you give it a red hot go. It’s a lovely ritual to join in with.

A couple of years ago Em brought me the most beautiful hardback edition of A.C. Grayling’s Friendship and because she is leaving Readings to become the Head of Marketing and Communications at the Wheeler Centre, it feels timely that I refer to this book now. The author is surely right when he concludes that friendships, “are a large part of what gives meaning to our lives, just as our lives give meaning to them: without them we are less, and in danger of being too close to nothing”.

I’ve spent the last ten-and-a-half years sharing an office and my life with Emily Harms. I’ve passed more time with her than pretty much anyone else in my life. Every single week she has made me laugh at myself, at life and at her. I love that in a friend. Any specific week she has mopped up from some small catastrophe that has occurred without complaining and without chiding. She has demonstrated grace. Each week Em has had to repeat messages, the same messages, to different people. She has remained constant. Over the decade she has shown not only tenacity and strength, but also kindness and honour.

I reckon the Wheeler Centre is very fortunate.

It’s a nebulous title: Head of Marketing and Communications. It seems to say too much, yet strangely at the same time, very little. This grand title suggests a position that takes control of ‘wheeling and dealings’ through tricky situations, and advocates a touch of glamour, long lunches and a launch here and there at cocktail hour. If only that were so, I hear our dear departing Head say wistfully. Rather than simply being present at ‘lipstick’ occasions, Em’s decade here at Readings has been spent elbow deep in hard work. Her goal has always been to help make moments at Readings a delight, to ensure visits to our shops are easy and informed experiences – and to do it all while remaining invisible. I think she’s pulled this trick off spectacularly.

I’ll miss Emily Harms, but she’s just down the road; I think she’ll even be able to hear me if I talk loudly enough. And we’ll catch up – there are lunches to be had and drinks to be shared. In that way, it’s business as usual.