Michelle Johnston

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

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.

Ooh! How fabulous. How intriguing.

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

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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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

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.

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.

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.

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 ..."

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.

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.

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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