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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First day of the new year reading … something old …

Snapdragon seed cases look like tiny little screaming heads of doom

You really should read this

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

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

‘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.’

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

Great news that Ralph Hotere’s monumental Black Phoenix is back on show at Te Papa: check it out for Matariki! In celebration of its return here’s a poem about it from Chris Price’s 2016 collection, Beside Herself

Bringing the last of summer home on the train

Hard agree on this assessment. The point in L:AED where Peet zooms out from two lovestruck teens to the Cuban missile crisis is extraordinary. It’s got the intense teen boy emotion of Mitchell’s “Black Swan Green” & storytelling inventiveness of Marcus Sedgwick’s “Blood Red, Snow White”. Unmissable.

Just spotted a man walking fast up Mt Vic AND reading a hardback Elizabeth Strout. Respect.

👑🐠👑 We have a winner! Is it any surprise the blobfish took out Fish of the Year for 2025? 👑🐠👑 www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

'Whenever I take up a new activity, I secretly believe I am going to be brilliant at it. I go in expecting that I will nail it on my first attempt and be, even in middle age, something of a prodigy.' The great Kate Camp on swimming and writing. thespinoff.co.nz/books/15-03-...

The Spinoff Essay: Diary of a writers’ festival

On the cutting room floor is the bit where the host introduced their interview series, The Interview, and I asked how long it took to come up with the name. Anyway, here’s me talking about birds and science and burnout and moving through the world. The photo’s nice! www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...

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

And all the #FACT2025 sessions are now up online with recordings and illustrated summaries. Enjoy - there's a lot to watch and they are jam packed with ideas and hope www.acmi.net.au/projects-par...

New #podcast episode just dropped, coming to you live from #Antarctica! We talk to @notothentoma.bsky.social about the amazing adaptations of #Antarctic #fish: Clear blood, antifreeze and parental care. www.armatusoceanic.com/podcast/055-...

We have a new newsletter about arts and culture we'd love for you to subscribe to: 51b5483c.sibforms.com/serve/MUIFAJ...

Voting for Aotearoa's Bug of the Year closes midnight tonight (17 Feb). I'm battling a colleague who is backing the Putoko ropiropi | Gherkin Slug so get in there and vote for anything else! bugoftheyear.ento.org.nz/vote-here-20...

Totality of my afternoon plans

This was a lovely surprise! www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

A joy to talk to Mark Amery for RNZ's Culture101 this week, romping through Te Papa's Vivienne Westwood exhibition, the brand new book on the magnificent Eden Hore collection of vintage-yet-avant-garde Aotearoa fashion, photography exhibitions, spirituality & ecology... www.rnz.co.nz/national/pro...

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).

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.

Nothing makes me feel more like my 9 year-old self than having too many books from the library to choose between

It brings me such joy to see this show bringing others such joy. Thanks @clairemabey.bsky.social and Lyric Waiwiri-Smith for sharing the love (I want to join your orb tattoo gang ...) thespinoff.co.nz/pop-culture/...

Piriwai, Pūngawerewere, Rō or Whe; Frosted Phoenix, Giant Springtail or Gravel Maggot? It's Bug of the Year time people! Get voting!! bugoftheyear.ento.org.nz/vote-here-20...

I hope our lure attracts squi... THUNK! #ProjectESCA works! Squid like the lure and a 360 camera means nowhere to hide. Likely a glacial or clubhook #squid, this is 200m in #Antarctica #AntarcticClimateConnections #SchmidtOcean #PureOceanFund #Te_Papa @autsquidsquad.bsky.social

A book list to keep you going after you've done Claire Keegan! I can vouch for "Kick The Latch" (intimate, engrossing), "When We Cease to Understand the World" (disorienting in a mostly great way) and "Ash" (quietly riveting). thespinoff.co.nz/books/21-01-...

Large, deep-sea squids tend to be camera shy so if we want to see them we have to get creative... so @deepseapod.com & I made A Thing and now we're off to Antarctica to see whether anyone comes to take a look! Huge thanks to @PureOceanFund for the support; stay tuned! #ProjectESCA

#ProjectESCA lives! @autsquidsquad.bsky.social and I developed this novel light lure with support from the #PureOceanFund. It uses illumination invisible to the animals, a 360-degree camera, and simulated #bioluminescence to attract #deepsea animals. www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8PU...

Post a short story you love I never do chains but — any opportunity to highlight Margo Lanagan’s “Singing My Sister Down”, a perfect story, a whole world built in 10 pages www.dentonisd.org/cms/lib/TX21...

I think some auto-correct jumped in when Curtis Sittenfeld’s latest was being catalogued

Brookhaven send your purchases wrapped in sheet music. My hunt for Susan Price books continues — I am VERY excited for The Sterkarm Handshake (and the decoupage effect of the other book gives me warm vibes of my battered edition of Possession, may AS Byatt rest in eternal admiration)

Good time to check if your library membership gives you Bolinda access (or, heaven forbid, sign up to your local library for the world of paywalled content it allows you to access)

On the one hand, perpetually reminded that taxonomies are a pervasive (though useful) product of Western Enlightenment thought. OTOH, thinking that this particular taxonomy is a wonderful creativity prompt.

Browsing Libby this morning for 20th C women writers and somewhat surprised by (yet see the logic in) the “similar titles” results for my beloved Cold Comfort Farm

Picking my next book and what I realise is that I want Megan Dunn (or someone like her, I would totally take a short-form version from Hera Lindsay Bird) to take on the teen-girl-dragon-school phenom from an early-midlife perspective

119 books in 2024 with the help of the Wellington Ciry Libraries reserve service (what a blessing). The two that have lodged deeply are Paul Murray’s Prophet Song and Benjamin Myers’ The Perfect Gilden Circle, alongside the oddness of Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light www.goodreads.com/user/year_in...

I posted my end of year blog roundup -- my most popular posts of 2024 and my favourite ones too (the lists are not the same). Plus some stats Weekly streak is now 249 weeks, so 2025 will bring up five years of the posting streak AND my blog's 25th birthday interconnected.org/home/2024/12...

Seven quiet breakthroughs for climate and nature in 2024 you might have missed, from BBC www.bbc.com/future/artic...