iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

It’s so weird. And so obvious.

Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

But seriously - no. I asked the Google guys how education was going to have to change to support kids in the world they were describing, and got crickets in reply

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

It was like I was speaking another language. And to be fair to them — with jet lag and a thick Nu Zild accent, I kinda was

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

This is so similar to the question I asked a bunch of (non-decision-makers) at tech companies in SF last year. If successful AI use is relying on judgement skills users cultivated in a pre-AI world, in 2-10 years time with users who’ve never had a chance to cultivate that judgement — what happens?

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Benjamin Myers’ “Perfect Golden Circles” is a story of tender male friendship that I found magical & restorative. Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Romantic Comedy” — if you haven’t read this, you must, it’s perfection. My forever comfort read: Stella Gibbons’ “Cold Comfort Farm”.

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

Her “When You Reach Me” is hands down one of the best middle grade books I’ve read

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

This was probably my favourite middle grade read last year. Stead is just so good at family dynamics and tender friendships and this story’s VERY quirky premise sets these off beautifully

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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

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

Once again, it’s the warmth and depth of the family relationships I enjoy the most here (probably even more than the teenage psychology, which happens when you’re a reader in your 40s). The Potter family in this book might be my favourite Mahy family to date.

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

… that Mahy turns up the saturation in her books, full of sinister characters, signs and portents, word play that fringes on spellcasting

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

Like “Memory”, this is a book where nothing strictly supernatural happens. In fact, it’s quite circumscribed: two main characters, one city setting, one mystery to resolve. Having said that, I noted down the words “heightened brightened tightened frightened” while reading, in response to the way..

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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 · 06/01/2026

Do you make comfrey tea? And does it smell as bad as I’ve read it does?

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Weighing up watching A Room with a View Pro: the way HB-C says “Cecil” and her fringe pouffe Con: never revisit the things you loved at high school

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

I think I might have to back read the duology & Knox’s other Southland book, “Mortal Fire”, to see how this all meshes together

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

… whereas KOTW feels more like social media — the wielding of P feels (at its worst) an awful lot like online influencing in our current political climate

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

Specifically, I wanted to find out more about how the Place of the Dreamhunter duology relates to the Power of Kings of this World. I went down a little rabbit hole thinking about how Dreamhunter was about broadcast technology (it centres on the sharing of dreams in theatres, kind of like movies)…

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

The book has the pace of a thriller rather than the languor of a fantasy. While the two central stories (the kidnapping, and the true nature of Vex’s power) are resolved, I found myself constantly diverted by the extra details & wanting Knox take me down some of the side paths she strews throughout

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

The two timelines mean the fleshing-out of the “dark academia” setting is disrupted: backstories about the networks of friendship and the varieties of “P” power are dotted throughout rather than given in the run-up. You have to read with your memory switched on.

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

The book moves on two timelines (the kidnapping, and the five weeks leading up to the kidnapping) as well as flashbacks to Vex’s childhood and the point where we enter the book: little Victoria Magdolen, found in a parked car with her ribs broken, deserted by her father, the leader of a commune

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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

So it was just a ten-minute read, but it’s a terrific little ghost story and I had an actual shiver when I clicked the twist 3/4 of the way through I really recommend you look in to Barrington Stokes if you’re looking for good books for less confident readers of all ages (plus very good authors)

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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

Not 100% down with the narration, but definitely holds your attention on a long walk

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

It is weird and brutal and richly layered and I struggle to imagine it being published today.

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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

Just a photo of nature happening like it always has

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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 · 27/12/2025

Today I managed to get three English batters out by walking into the lounge and saying “What’s happening in the cricket?”

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

PS if anyone has a spare copy of Prudence M Muggeridge, Damp Rat, please let me know 🙏🏻

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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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Reposted by Courtney Johnston

IIML @modernletters.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

‘Elizabeth Knox navigates, with impressive skill and sensitivity, some of the very real anxieties confronting the young adults who will, I feel certain, be her many avid readers.’

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

That’s a goal for this summer

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Courtney Johnston @auchmill.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Sorry — I don’t use X so haven’t seen it

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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 · 31/07/2025

Reserves pile-ons rate highly in my luxury problems list

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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

I think if you’re fond of the original but know it won’t play for kids today, this is a good way to share that enjoyment.

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

James brings the riddling and wordplay of the original through beautifully, and you deeply feel Alyce’s foot-stomping irritation at the ridiculous encounters she has along the way. James also simplifies her story a lot — adding a grief motif, but also a clear problem to solve & end to the adventure

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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

This book is ambitious, layered, and deftly walks a line between grittiness and surreality. I think that the ending is a bit tidy but the pathway there is terrific.

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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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