iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

Little interlude with a novella by a writer I’ve never read before — a mash-up of Bluebeard and the Garden of Eden

Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

My summer re-read of Margaret Mahy’s 1980s YA (the author was so prolific that this constitutes a reading project) reached The Catalogue of the Universe today

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

It’s fastest to share the official blurb because there’s a lot going on in this book beyond the plot

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I saved up @elizabethknoxnz.bsky.social’s latest book for the summer break and was DELIGHTED to re-enter her fictional world of Southland, the setting of Dreamhunter + Dreamquake, brought up to the current moment

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I reserved this thinking it was one of Strange’s longer novels, but it’s actually from a series she’s done for Barrington Stokes, an imprint of Collins that publishes short books by British children’s writers that are designed (writing, layout, typeface, paper stock) to be dyslexia-friendly

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

Rediscovering how complex Melvin Burgess’s “Bloodtide” is. Based on the Völsung epic, set in a London abandoned to warring gang factions, fringed by human-animal-machine hybrids, told from multiple perspectives, & with a long passage I’ve just listened to that I suspect is based on Princess Diana

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

First day of the new year reading … something old …

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Snapdragon seed cases look like tiny little screaming heads of doom

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Thank the lord for secondhand bookshops that serve up tween classics at just that moment when you realise all the books you brought on holiday are just a touch too earnest

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Only finished this because the same week my reserve came up at the library it made the Booker list. My problem, not the book’s: I just like more plot in my reading.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Imagine Kate DiCamillo wrote a book about a little girl facing life’s problems and her family’s much-loved dysfunction for adult readers. That’s this book exactly.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

This is an Erdrich I had somehow missed. It’s wonderful! And it made me think about how the land has evolved as a bigger and bigger presence and driver of story in her books (contrary this to The Mighty Red, for example). Tender, rich, observant.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

This couldn’t be more different: a pick-up of Alice set in 1919, with the original’s grand-daughter Alyce being swept into Wonderland to settle a dispute between the Sun King and the Queen of the Moon

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Can’t for the life of me keep my Books Thread threaded. So we start over again with a must-read: one of those ones all the American podcasts recommend and you’re like “do I really need a addiction-recovery-war-abandonment memoir” in my life? and then you read it and YES you do

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Somehow I’d managed to miss this 2003 Erdrich, a sweeping epic of two world wars and an incredibly close character study of immigration, settler colonisation, love, despair and hardscrabble lives in small town America

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

In the vein of Maeve Brennan’s “The Visitor”, Elizabeth Taylor’s “Angel” is another fantastically chilly novel, this one charting the life arc of novelist Angel Deverall

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

This book pulled me out of my reading rut. Utterly embedded in its remote Alaskan setting, with a cast of deeply realised characters and a shapeshifting twist that stays firmly in the real world.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Queer romance and English folklore combine in a very satisfying novella. Particularly taken with the dryads.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Sooooooo close. Again, would make an AMAZING tv series, such incredible world building

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

“Gwen and Art Are Not In Love” was such a charmer; this didn’t quite live up to that sparkle but if you like Sherwood Forest and chosen families, it’s likely spot on for you

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

I wanted to love this more. Would make an elegant tv series. Telepathy, political manipulation, divided societies, friendships across the lines.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

I like how withheld Ali Smith’s books feel. If this was a long novel I’d be frustrated by the feeling of elisions and lacunae; as it was, it felt light (for an apocalypse novel)

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Gosh Donoghue pumps books out. This (a reimagining of a real life Parisian train crash told as a potential “terrorist” plot) wore its research a bit too heavily and the post-modern theory vibes of transport and modernity stuck out a bit too strongly

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

“A Grief Observed” by CS Lewis set my bar for grief memoirs HIGH. I enjoyed the modesty of Brooks’ book, and the pragmatism of the advice offered in the closing pages.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Catching up on books read in the last month or so. I ordered this thinking it was another Harding middle-grade (of which I’m a fan) but it’s a sophisticated picture book which is not my bag (and which I found pretty dull)

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Slipped behind on book posting as I hit a rut. This pulled me out. While it has a bit of books-as-therapy to it (probably great for actual child readers) which sticks out to an adult reader, the world-building is great and who doesn’t love a lost gods story?

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

These two are in my current books of the year list - not relaxing reads, but engrossing.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Bringing the last of summer home on the train

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Good to read a fantasy that comes from a different heritage from where I normally read (gangster sagas / kung fu movies) but I didn’t become attached enough to the characters (who never did anything surprising) to continue

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

A bit of a slow start, but an enjoyably chaotic, slapstick and well orchestrated ending. Perfect weekend read.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Pulled out of the stacks thanks to a mention from Jessie Bray Sharpin, this is an adored but lost book from my childhood

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

Ever reliable comfort read while travelling. Might be the best thirteen bucks I ever spent, this book has gone to a lot of places with me

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Can I recommend you read this alongside a visit to our Vivienne Westwood exhibition at Te Papa? Deeply researched, beautifully structured essays examining deep time and human values through the lens of organic gems — coral, pearl, jet and more.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Leading the race for my Book of the Year. The story of the encounter between Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma in Tenochtitlán on a single day in 1521 told as a farce, a palace intrigue, a pungent and hallucinatory pageant. Not straightforward to follow but incredibly rewarding.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

This one is going to take a lot of digesting. Has disrupted my understanding of everything from rocks to soil to clouds. Phew.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Oh my lord, these relentless clear eyed 20th century women writers with their effortless handle on spitefulness, vulnerability and yearning for love. My first Maeve Brennan, and you combine her own story with this icicle of a novella and you have some kind of emotional horror epic

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

No-one else can make your heart live outside your body for 300 pages quite the way Louise Erdrich does. The deep, deep care you develop for her characters is incredible.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

I’ve come to really enjoy Susan Price’s story collections. They remind me of Kipling’s “Puck” books which I adored as a kid - stories told by characters. In this one, stories for childbed, for marriage, for funerals, for leaving home told amongst 3 women

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Nearly 25,000 votes have been counted and Aotearoa has now crowned the Ngāokeoke | Velvet Work as Bug of the Year 👑

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Oof, this one hit HARD. It’s 412BC and two unemployed potters in Syracuse hatch a plan to stage Euripides’ “Trojan Women” with a cast drawn from the hundreds of starving Athenian prisoners trapped in the local rock quarry. Tragedy, inevitably, strikes, alongside mystery and surprises

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I haven’t tested how gardeny this place is. So — I’m considering embarking on chrysanthemums. Any beginner’s tips? My garden is HOT in summer and frosts in winter. Soil is clay in patches and dries out fast. (Images emphatically not my own).

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

A stonking run-the-clock-down thriller - does what it says on the can (teenage boy gets sucked into a sperm whale’s belly while diving for his dead father’s remains off the coast of California) and so much more. Gripping.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Somewhere between fantasy and thriller, with an unsettling eroticism. I’ll be thinking about the closing pages for a long time.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Speaking of nuns earlier, this slim book interweaves the lives of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe convincingly but could have been 20% deeper

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Not fully accepting the world building in this series didn’t stop me from reading all three books

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

A quiet, beautifully observed book that gently but relentlessly takes on love, betrayal and self-deception. In tone quite close to his WONDERFUL “The Slowworm’s Song”.

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Hysterically funny, a series of Surrealist set-pieces linked by a caustic and determined elderly narrator. This is just one throwaway para (which has nothing to do with the “plot”, as such)

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I’ve lost my old book thread so let’s start again. I loved this - I think it got thrown up alongside “The Abbess of Crewe” when I was looking for “nun books” and really the only thing that links them is a fairly sacrilegious tone.

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