iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone.

David Attenborough with a green frog on his hand.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Any suggestions for next year? 🤣 📚 💙

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

The 25 books I read in ‘25. Top 3 fiction: Kudos Intermezzo Greengates English Journey by JB Priestley was the best nf book I’ve read for years. Thoughts? 📚💙 #books

25 books laid out on my dining table in 5 rows of 5.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

I had only previously read Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (at school), but picked this up recently and absolutely loved it. Beautifully but simply written, it is a powerful novel about faith, honour, and human weakness. Really terrific.📚💙 #books

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Picked up these beauties recently in a second-hand bookshop. The cover art on the Edna O’Brien is by Alan Aldridge, who illustrated album covers and books for The Beatles, Elton John, and The Who, among others. 💙📚 #books #art

A 1967 Penguin edition of Edna O’Brien’s novel, Girls in their Married Bliss, with funky cover art by Alan Aldridge.

A cool US, Signet Books edition of 1984, by George Orwell.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

I couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve been dying to get stuck into this lovely book by the wonderful @regretteruane.bsky.social for a while now, so I moved it 47 places up my physical TBR pile and I’m going in. 📚💙 #books

A paperback copy of Birding by Rose Ruane.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Lombok, Indonesia - full of the nicest, most apparently content people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting - a joy 😊

A truck packed with labourers on their home from work on a road in Lombok, Indonesia, a moped on either side.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

My latest read. Priestley’s utterly brilliant travelogue of his 1931 trip around England. Fascinating, wise and remarkably prescient - social history at its finest. 📚💙#books

A copy of JB Priestley’s English Journey.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Noah (17) has had his pencils out again. 1.5 hrs. No art at school, never had a lesson, and prepping to study Maths and Physics at uni next year! This looks pretty decent to me. Thoughts? #art

A portrait in pencil of Winston Churchill drawn by my son Noah, 17.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Well after 30 years on my TBR pile I finally read Middlemarch. Is it the best English novel. IMHO no. But I did really enjoy it. Why is it not at the top of my all-time list? 1. It’s 200 pages too long. 2. Ladislaw is not the man for Dorothea. 3. There is no humour in it at all. Thoughts? 💙📚 #books

An image from the BBC adaptation of Middlemarch showing Juliette Aubree and Rufus Sewell as Dorothea and Ladislaw.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Lovely run this morning. Just me and the marmottes. 🏃‍♂️🦫 (yes, that’s a beaver, but there’s no marmotte emoji) #run

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Considered by some to be the greatest English novel, Middlemarch has been on my TBR pile for, oh about 32 years give or take. I’m finally going in. Have you read it? Where do is it sit in your all-time list? 📚💙#books

A copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot face up on my old, gnarled wood coffee table.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

The final Auster 😢. I’ve been putting it off because his novels have been a part of my life since I read NYT as a student 30 odd years ago, and I didn’t want that to end. It’s a long way from his finest work, but it is unmistakably him - and for this reader, this time, that was enough. RIP 📚💙 #books

A copy of Paul Auster’s final novel Baumgartner, lying face up on my old, heavily grained and knotted coffee table.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Current read: Pym’s rejected seventh novel. Written in 1962 and sent initially to Cape the following year, it was finally published posthumously some 20 years later. 💙📚 #books #Pym

Grafton Books edition of An Unsuitable Attachment, by Barbara Pym.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I adored ‘The Fortnight in September’ so much that I put off reading this for fear that it would diminish my admiration for the author. It didn’t. This novel is such a wonderful read: a perfect antidote to the noise and nonsense of today’s world. 📚💙 #books

A Persephone copy of Greengates by RC Sheriff.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

Finished this final book of Rachel Cusk’s quite brilliant ‘Outline’ trilogy a few days ago. Wonderful, intelligent writing that makes you question what you thought you knew about what a novel is, or can be. Dazzling. 📚💙

A copy of Kudos, by Rachel Cusk, on a rust and white patterned outside mat, on gravel.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Retreat: writing ✍️ , running 🏃‍♂️, reading 📖. #vanlife #run #books 📚💙

Our VW camper parked with the door open and the roof up at a campsite in rural France.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Nice little secondhand bookshop haul for less than a fiver. I read the Ford first, in two days: spare, tragic, elegiac. Set over 3 late-Autumn days in the early 1960’s it brilliantly catches the fragility of a settled life. I really enjoyed it. 📚💙

Wildlife by Richard Ford face up on a wooden table.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

I drive past this tree almost every day, and always look forward to this time of year. 😊 #nature

An old apple tree in brilliant white blossom. The grass beneath is dotted with buttercups, and the odd red tulip. In front curves a foot-high Cotoneaster (I think) covered in tiny white flowers.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

My novel Slings and Arrows was published 1 year ago today. Many thanks to all those who have read, reviewed, commented or in any other way supported it. 📚💙 #books #writer

A picture of a colourful multi-tiered birthday cake, with glitter, balloons, and candles. A cut out of my novel Slings and Arrows has been cropped in at the top. 🎂

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

A very Happy Birthday 🎂🎈 to the wonderfully creative, quirkily funny, and straight up lovely @flamingomcflurry.bsky.social 😘

Charlie Brown walking with a Happy Birthday sign with 4 Woodstock dancing and flying around him.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Nice flat course along the front for the Hastings parkrun this morning. But freezing 🥶 🏃‍♂️ #parkrun

A view of the sea from Hastings promenade.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Claire Keegan is so good that I ration her books and short stories so as not to run out too quickly. I read this yesterday, it’s a gem. 📚💙

Hardback copy of Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day, face up on an on old, heavily grained and knotted wooden table. (Which I made from an old barn door.)

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Nearing the end of my current read. An unusual and intriguing novel turning over for examination the characters and events of a fateful day on an ordinary street somewhere in the north of England. Anyone else read it? Thoughts? 💙📚

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Needed an afternoon in the garden away from the horrors of the purulent satsuma.

A pile of sticks on the lawn and another in a wheelbarrow. The lopped hornbeam hedge is behind with the branches of an ash tree strafing a blue sky striped with wispy high cloud.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

From left to right: Statesman, Rapist, Thug.

Zelensky, Trump, Vance in the Oval Office.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

My novel Slings and Arrows sits between a Booker winner (McEwan) and a Booker nominee (Mistry) on this shelf. Whose books does/will/would yours sit between? 📚💙

Close up of a bookshelf. Two copies of my novel Slings and Arrows stand centre, between books by Ian McEwen and Rohinton Mistry. Partial view of other books on the same shelf with authors whose surname begins with M, N and O, as well as above (F,G,H) and below (S).

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Detoured to Oswestry today to stand for a moment where Wilfred Owen, and Barbara Pym once stood. ‘And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.’

The front aspect of Plas Wilmot in Oswestry, where Wilfred Owen lived as a boy.

Morda Lodge from the front gate, where Barbara Pym lived in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Blue plaque on the wall of 72 Willow Street Oswestry, where Barbara Pym was born in 1913, and lived until 1919.

Black and white photographs of Wilfrid Owen left, and Barbara Pym, right.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Grey and damp in Wales this morning for my run, but these two didn’t seem to mind. #run 🏃‍♂️

Two brown horses grazing in a field. Mossy boulders in the foreground, russet bracken, dry stone walls, and a tree covered hillside sit beneath a grey sky.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

My wife and I were looking forward to a weekend away at ‘one of the world’s finest hotels.’ But I have to say it definitely looked much nicer than this on the website. Disappointed 😔.

The front entrance to a shabby café in France with a sign above the door that reads ‘Le Savoy’.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Morning. One of my favourite trees.

View towards Mont Pourri, through the bare branches of a walnut tree.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Nothing like butter and marmalade on a slice of Nordic Bastard for breakfast. 😋

A chopping board with the word Pain partially visible, a metal bread knife, two loose slices of brown, grained bread and a packet containing more bread with the words Batard Nordique written across it.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Hi Sam, thank you for this 🙏. My first novel Slings and Arrows, set in 1982, was published by The Book Guild in March of last year. It’s a story about friendship, family - and darts. And has been described as tender, moving and funny. 📚💙

My black cat 🐈‍⬛ Jem asleep with her front leg draped across a copy of my novel Slings and Arrows.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Loved this collection of short stories by Tessa Hadley. This by Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social next, who I had the pleasure of meeting at a talk he gave @scarthinbooks.bsky.social last year. 📚💙 #books

A copy of Tessa Hadley’s short story collection After the Funeral.

My cat Jem sunning herself on the balcony alongside a copy of Tom Cox’s novel 1983.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

21 years old and in my final year of university when Twin Peaks blew the doors off what TV could be. RIP David Lynch, and thank you.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Morning Bluesky. This was actually last night’s sunset but it’s a nice way to start the day 😊. #photography #sunset

View from my garden, looking south at a peach and faded yellow sky, through the black confused branches of a greengage tree. The valley below is filled with an ethereal mist, with the ridge line of the mountains in the distance an uneven line against that beautiful sky.

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Nick McLoughlin @nickmacwrites.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

So for less than a fiver (plus postage), you could be sitting in your favourite armchair, tongue freshly scraped, bust comfortably supported, smelling delicious and reading my book, while Tiddles plays happily at your feet with her new fish toy. Imagine! 💙📚 #kindle #reading

Images on a pink background of the items mentioned in the post all currently available to buy on Amazon for less than a pound.

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