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.

Mike Shuttleworth is reading Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe

I recently went on holiday and took with me Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why I enjoyed the book so much, but what I do know is that it was an effortless, addictive pleasure.

Nina Stibbe was in her late teens in the 1980s when she was employed to care for the two children of Mary Kay Wilmers – when Wilmers was establishing the London Review of Books – which she still edits today. There is generosity and natural comedy in Stibbe’s sharp-eyed observations of family life that moves Love, Nina way beyond below-stairs literary gossip. The children, Sam and Will frequently take centre stage, while the support cast includes playwright Alan Bennett and the stern but admirable Wilmers. The result is part real-life YA and part fly-on-the-wall social comedy.

Nick Hornby has recently adapted the book for the BBC with Helena Bonham-Carter as Wilmers. The book is a treat.

Amy Vuleta is reading The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

I’ve just picked up Emma Donoghue’s new novel and am already feeling swept along by its careful, precise prose. The premise: set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, an 11-year-old girl stops eating but remains alive and well. I’m pleasantly weighed down by the creeping sense of suspense, gentle yet dark, that Donoghue is so skilled at creating; only a handful of pages into the book, and it’s clear that all the characters hold secrets the setting is threatening to reveal. I’m looking forward to seeing how Donoghue further expands on some of the ideas she took up in the final third of her best-selling Room – fundamentalism, sense, love, murder, mass intrigue and investigation, and ingrained values and beliefs.

Adam John Cullen is reading Macguffin Issue 3: The Rope

‘The Rope’ is the subject at the centre of issue three of MacGuffin, an interior design magazine coming out of Holland. The magazine is focused around ‘the life of things’; previous editions include ‘The Bed’ and ‘The Window’. MacGuffin encompasses the knowledge and practice of various artists, designers and architects, and uses a specific object as the focal point. It is the most interesting and refreshingly unpretentious interior design magazine around. This issue looks at the cross-cultural uses of rope, both practically and symbolically.

Chris Gordon is reading A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants edited by Christopher Brickell

Years ago, my dad decided he would use Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion as a guide for all our family meals, and that he would work his way through every recipe in it. Consequently we found ourselves only eating apple-based dishes for seemingly weeks and weeks. This exceptional reference book, the Royal Horticultural Society’s A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, could illicit a similar response. It would be a daring move to plant – or even to familiarise yourself with – every plant listed in this book starting with A. It’s definitely possible although you may find your enthusiasm waning, as my father did when he reached ‘Brussels sprout’.

There are over 15,000 plants listed in this guide and despite a lifelong love of gardening, I am familiar with less than 10% of this collection. Each entry has its own description, Latin name, place of origin and planting guide, and all are valuable additions to a gardener’s mental library. Take the Ismelia which is grown mainly in Morocco, but also useful to know of here in suburban Melbourne; I note that it is a hardy plant and reportedly trouble-free.

Brought to you by the expertise of the Royal Horticultural Society, under the careful hand of editor Christopher Brickell, this tremendous guide is a must-have book for all of us with a green thumb.