Welcome to a new regular feature on The Coven – Book Club.

The premise is simple. Some Coven readers read a book relating to that month’s theme, and then they discuss it. Since we’re all in different places, we WhatsApp it. Then you can all see it.

This month, we discussed Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Ehrenreich won several awards for her account of living on the breadline through minimum-wage work in several American states in the mid-90s, leaving a comfortably middle-class for a month at a time – with mixed results.

This made for a pretty lively conversation – here, we talk about shitty male managers, sexism, poverty tourism, privilege, feeling dehumanised, living in America and that time my (yr editor, Sarah Waldron’s) colleague got admitted to hospital for eating too much dehydrated mashed potato.

Taking part in the conversation this month was me (natch), Rebecca Kennedy, Fiona O’Grady, Jo Linehan, Emily Horgan, Áine Ní Laoghaire and a cameo from Ellen Coyne.