Courtney Johnston

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”.

Leather & Chains: excerpts from Kate Camp’s 1986 diary 'In the pantheon of bad teenage writing, this surely rates among the greats.'...

Leather & Chains: excerpts from Kate Camp’s 1986 diary

Spotted it first

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

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

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

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.

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

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..

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

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

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

Kings of This World by Elizabeth Knox - Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books A 'coming-of-age adventure set in a boarding school steeped in supernatural talent'.

In the meantime, here’s a proper review www.nzreviewofbooks.com/kings-of-thi...

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

… 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

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)…

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

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.

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

And something new …

First day of the new year reading … something old …

Just a photo of nature happening like it always has

Snapdragon seed cases look like tiny little screaming heads of doom