iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I cannot tell you how much that means to me, Lisa. Thank you.

Reposted by Michelle Johnston

McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 16/06/2026

Step Three: Claim victory. Announce that the nuclear sites have been completely destroyed. Do not worry if your intelligence officers tell you otherwise. Prematurely declaring "mission accomplished" signals to the enemy that you are well-versed in American military tactics.

buff.ly

The Art of the Nuclear Deal

Step Seven: Threaten to destroy their entire civilization, preferably via your own social media platform. Make it clear that you do not want that to happen, ...

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Reposted by Michelle Johnston

Martin Shaw @thebooksdesk.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

Deal news! So delighted to announce @eleytherius.bsky.social's debut non-fiction book, Fifty Beating Wonders: a Doctor's Search for Meaning, a fabulous deep dive into the wonders of the human body & those called upon to fix it. Out this November! www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/202...

booksandpublishing.com.au

HarperCollins acquires Johnston nonfiction title “Fifty Beating Wonders” | Books+Publishing

Purchase a subscription to view job ads and other premium content on Books+Publishing.

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Reposted by Michelle Johnston

Mobius Stripper @mobiusstripper.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

This damn post has absolutely ruined my brain every time I hear someone mention "for the time being." Major kudos to the poster, if I ever meet you in person I will congratulate you and then punch you in the face.

Troutman @robotrowboat

Boss: Let's put this matter aside for the time being

Me: [looking around nervously] Can only you see the time being?

Boss: Huh?

Me: Is it standing near me?

Boss: Who?

Me: [on verge of panic attack] The time being

6:33 PM 06 Jan 18

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

so, is the arc of the moral universe long and bendy?

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

When times are weird & inexplicable, remember the f block of the periodic table, the dark alley, the shadowlands of strange: the lanthanoids, the actinoids, Lawrencium, Thorium, Promethium, a rag-tag bunch of fizz. All a little unhinged, or brief, or unstable. Weird, sure, but beautiful.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Ooh! How fabulous. How intriguing.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

And thus, that is that. All of these books golden. All of them deeply special. Thank you for playing along, lovely friends.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

So for book 30/30 it is books. These small wonderlands, each of them outstanding, a potpourri of sustenance. I keep them all close by, as in each there are sentences, words that bring solace or joy or delight or amazement or literary euphoria - whatever it is that my day shouts at me that I need.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

Book 29/30. Little World. Josephine Rowe. Little book, intense punch. A dream-like story travelling through the outback like a saint in a box, with those who hear her words connected, along with their questions, not the least of which come from the martyred girl lying long dead in tanamu wood.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

No book 28. No post today. Nothing but words to pour out love and support and solidarity for our Australian Jewish community.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Book 27/30. Imaginary Cities. Darran Anderson. Another ‘’Cities’. This one a flaneur’s delight, a peripatetic wander through cities & fables & architecture & whimsy & questions. A little Calvino, Joyce, a little Gehry.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

Book 26/30 Ghost Cities. Siang Lu. I adored this absolute feast of humour, fable, allegory, satire (#BadChinese), of love, of China, of Australia, of exploratory language. So thrilled it won the MF.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 12/12/2025

Book 25/30 Moral Hazard. Kate Jennings. This compact stunner - a 2002 wonder, missed at the time. If perfectly crafted sentences are my religion, this book is a church. Wall Street, Alzheimers, care and confusion, blade-sharp observation and a great arrow aimed at capitalism. Loved it.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Book 24/40 Shadows of Winter Robins. Louise Wolhuter. This gem of a book won the WA Premiers prize. It is rich & layered, set apart by its cleverly woven details, crumbs for a robin itself, inviting the reader to follow the trail and unpick the story of Winter Robins, the adult and the child.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Book 23/30 Green Dot. Madeleine Gray. Sassily funny story of a woman trying out the world - in a fabulously dead-end job (content moderator), so very now, looking for love in all the wrong places (married, chemist-bought sunglasses, indecisive). Gorgeous and wry, easily consumed, deeply clever.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Book 22/30 The Book of Records. Madeleine Thien. This is rapturous, sprawling, dreamy, allegorical - a migrant fable on the great sea. A little Calvino, a little Susanna Clarke, entirely Thien. A glorious, fabulous ocean of a book.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Book 21/30. Death Valley. Melissa Broder. A glorious surreal wander through Death Valley, the mind and a magical cactus. Another unhinged masterpiece (my preferred genre, it might appear).

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

💖 then I’m glad I’ve posted them, for you alone.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

Book 20/30 By Her Hand. Marion Taffe. An extraordinary feat of storytelling, built on meticulous research. Tenth century England, alive and pulsing in your own hands. A tapestry, a grab-bag, a lens on history, where women have always fought to have their stories heard.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Book 19/30 Fundamentally. Nussaibah Younis. I adored this utterly irreverent, ridiculously funny, blade-sharp commentary on international aid. Described somewhere as a 'Muslim Fleabag' and I cannot better that. A slap-in-the-face surprise and a joy.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

Book 18/30 Underland. Robert Macfarlane. Truly a dazzling wonder. The enormity and exquisite beauty of the planet and its beating heart below our own blithe, indifferent feet. Seeing things anew in the most spectacular and astonishing way. It is both lyrical and political, educational and dreamy.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Book 17/30 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. El Akkad. This book does the impossible - takes our formless internal howling shame & fire and crafts it into cogent, humble, generous, beautiful words. It is truly courageous, revolutionary & urgent. Such a must read.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Book(s) 16/30 Assorted poetry. 'Twas a fool's errand to choose the poetry book I loved most over this year. How different poems will speak to you at different times, with their perfection of language, JUST when you need or desire them. Clever universe. Anyway, here is a selection of books I adored.

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Reposted by Michelle Johnston

Harry Wallop @harrywallop.co.uk · 02/12/2025

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Book 15/30 To Sing of War. Catherine McKinnon. A magnificent, lyrical weave. A braided story of war, love, Virgil, Oppenheimer, Indigenous Australia, New Guinea and the quiet heroics of ordinary humanity in Nagasaki. McKinnon is a master-storyteller, and this is one beautiful epic.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Book 14/30 Praiseworthy. Alexis Wright. From the opening pages a voice that curls around you like a playful serpent, taking you to the wildest of places, places you want to go, you need to go. It's all Australia, its epicness, its humour, its shame, its wonder. Its donkeys. Big. Beautiful. Bold.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

Book 13/30. No One is Talking About This. Patricia Lockwood. A sublime whirlwind and emotional carnival ride, every page an adventure in language. It's an intimate portrait of love, the internet & grief. Nothing in the known world is the same once Lockwood turns her gaze upon it.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Book 12/30. I'd Rather Not. Robert Skinner. Unhinged madness, real, Australian, preposterously funny & not to be read in public. It is one unrelenting guffaw "I was sleeping in what might reasonably be described as a ditch, though I tried not to think of it in those terms for morale reasons ..."

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Book 11/30 The Cost of Living. Deborah Levy. Levy reaches out from her own Republic of Writing, giving us a book written in a garden shed with leaves and silence, gracing us with what it means to create, to write, to risk everything, to love and to lose, like an expired marriage vow. Supreme.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Book 10/30 Field Notes from Death's Door. Katie Treble. One of the most compelling medical memoirs I have read (and I have read a few). A rare wonder, surging with humility & humanity. The unfettered, uplifting, harrowing truth of the MSF experience in the Central African Republic. I stand in awe.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Book 9/30 Woo Woo. Ella Baxter. I worship at the altar of a great opening sentence. It tells you everything: the swagger; the style; the entire story encapsulated in one brief string of words. Plus, Woo Woo is unhinged, wild, dark, light & shines that brilliance on our weird conceptions of art

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

we've got 22 more to go ... ☺️

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Book 8/30 Nightingale. Laura Elvery. How rich. How enticing. How puzzling is this book. A story drifting between times & styles & narrative as though it's on a whimsical wind. Entering history through a side door, it's only PARTLY about the world's most famous nurse. It deserves all the accolades.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Book 7/30 The Peak. Sam Guthrie. I fell for this one. Ruthless, sneaky Australian politics, a global apocalyptic crisis, and that excellent thing, a STORY. Blade sharp writing with an insider's understanding of the fragile, geopolitical tectonic plates we muck around with. It really is a cracker.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Book 6/30. A Century of Poetry from The New Yorker. This book has made me stupidly, deliriously happy. 1000 pages of poetic glory. Every day, a number from 1-1000, chosen at random, letting the poem of the page speak. The advice I've got! I highly recommend this mode of living, pals.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

MAYBE I'M JUST PROVING I DIDN'T STEAL IT, MARTIN

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Book 5/30. First Name Second Name, Steve MinOn. Another flight of glorious imaginative fancy - a peripatetic odyssey - reaching back through our peppered Australian past with the undead jianghsi as our wry guide. Superb. Deserving of all its awards and accolades.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Book 4/30 The 31 Legs of Vladimir Putin. Oof - this wild flight of imaginative conceit, a barreling journey into comedic, absurd possibility. The ordinary juxtaposed with the powerful terror-wielders. 16 bewildered Putin lookalikes, around the world, on retainer. Glorious, mad, prescient.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Book 3/30 The Safekeep. Van Der Wouden. It hardly makes me original, but this piece of magnificence, managing to both glance off the holocaust & be profoundly, close to unbearably erotic (who can DO that?) was near perfection. I want to shout it from all the rooftops. The Safekeep! The Safekeep!

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Book 2/30. Arborescence, by @rhettsdavis. Entrancing, otherworldly & sharp as an axe, it's a transporting story of people deciding, or not deciding, to turn into trees as a sideways answer to the Anthropocene. Startling dialogue, intense characters. PLUS a little hat-tip to Lumen? Loved it.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Book 1/30 Dear Lord, I loved this book. The buzz & hum of the Sydney restaurant scene. Characters alive with the sadness & wonder of reality. Cracking dialogue. Light & shade co-existing within the sentence. The complexity of women's relationships with their bodies. The Big Merino. Supreme.

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Michelle Johnston @eleytherius.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Book lovers. Life lovers! Forthwith I shall post a book a day, books I’ve read this year. Books I’ve loved & have intrigued me, changed me, occasionally books I’ve wondered if I could marry. Maybe books YOU might love. And remember, dearests of the world, how GREAT books make for Christmas presents

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