iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

A novel of contemporary Irish Traveller life I couldn't put down. Pride shines through the pain, young women inspire their mothers to stand up to prejudice, a boxer and his spiritual link to Mohammed Ali's struggles... Thank you @paveebeoir.bsky.social!

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Looking for a beautifully written book about kind souls? Here you go.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Read this review, and I guarantee you will want to read the book! www.culturematters.org.uk/hunger-queue...

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Loving this second-hand bookshop find, 'Ireland of the Proverb' by Liam Mac Con Iomaire, photos by Bill Doyle.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

The action we need in the White House

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

I shed a tear at the end of this one, something I wasn't sure I was capable of anymore. Yes, it's ok to live in memoryland, to bask in the joy of moments long past. And to now live the dreams you shared then.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Read this in one day - could not put it down. I try, on and off, to write about a sociopath I encountered, who, like Oliver, grew up in institutions. It's not easy to inspire a smidge of empathy for a killer, but @liznugent.bsky.social pulls it off beautifully here.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Mentally ill husband plans family murder-suicide, partly succeeding. A journey through love, searing loss, and beyond. Compassionate and completely absorbing. @cmgleeson.bsky.social your Irish Book Award is richly deserved!

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

So the Hamptons and NYC night scene haven't changed in 40 years. Great read, TY Rob Franklin. This, along with much else, struck a chord: 'But exuberant expressions of rage seemed to him mere admissions of one's vulnerability, the power the other still held. He'd withhold them.'

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

The power of the novel... I'd read/heard plenty about Ireland's 'mother and baby home' genocides, but it took this book for me to really feel the enormity of it. 'The further the girl was from poverty, the closer her child was to living. Death wasn't random.' My aunt's child lived.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

'We had more children ... so as not to have to spend so much time together. Had we liked each other less we'd have had four, five. There's nothing like love's dilution to keep things in proportion.'

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

I couldn't put this down... I first heard about American nurses in the Vietnam War from a really sweet lady (a volunteer at my local library) who served there. In awe that she lived through such horror and somehow regained her lovely disposition in the years since.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I feel like I know this pub... 'Brendan drank in McCrink's every night where the clientele were already dead to themselves, their elegies long written in the heartbreak of their wives and children and their own brokenness.'

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Unquestionably the most useful book for writers I’ve read in a long time.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Taking a little break from Wimbledon

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

'He took off his hat and hung it on a peg in her entrance-hall which was the shape and size of a small kitchen table, and from the ceiling of which hung a crystal chandelier.'

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Pulled this off my shelf a couple of nights ago. Lovely, sweet stories, set in Cumbria's becks and fells, perfect antidote to the daily news. Thank you Jane Gardam, may you rest in peace.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Delighted to have a piece in Issue 23 here, at p.43 www.thewellsstreetjournal.com/past-issues-1

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

'Cynics see social problems, but [no] solutions. [I]f you think our problems [are] who we are, why do anything about it? So cynics end up voting less often ... protesting less often ... people who benefit from a population that doesn't trust itself are often autocrats and authoritarians.' Ouch!

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

'the philosophers were wrong and the meaning of life is not that it ends but that your one job on earth is to make everyone as miserable as your own sad self.' - a piece on our current leadership?? No - it's from Aria Aber's lyrical novel, anyone who was a wild child will love this, set in Berlin:

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Before the amazing Belfast writers now on the scene, there was the brilliant Robert McLiam Wilson. Keep a dictionary handy when reading Ripley Bogle. The erudition is way beyond mine - but that doesn't stop it being a great read.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Picked this up with no expectations, and find I can't put it down! Pure serendipity that it centers on a topic of great interest to me: a life derailed by an out-of-character moment, particularly in our age of cyber-bullying

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

'These are sudden times' says a character. To which I can only reply, 'No kiddin'!'

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Just a reminder, Ireland - tiocfaidh an samhradh - summer will come...

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Powerful poem of the poor, everywhere, from Tangier poet Rachida Madani, translated by Marilyn Hacker. ('Shahrayar', vengeful one...) wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

‘curry favour’ from ‘curry Fauvel’ based on 14th century poem Roman de Fauvel. Fauvel (‘false veil’), a horse, became king and was curried (groomed) by the nobility and clergy; he wanted no dung to remain on him. Acronym of Flattery, Avarice, Vileness, Envy, Laxity Satirical prophecy?

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

'..how helpless desire is outside its little theater of heat, how ridiculous it becomes the moment it isn't welcomed, even if that welcome is contrived.' Universal truth from @garthgreenwell.bsky.social

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

‘…when a man speaks from his heart, in his moment of truth, he speaks poetry. …embarrassment, self-consciousness, remembered criticisms, can stifle the average person so that less and less in his lifetime can he open himself out.’ Ray Bradbury's motivational musings and notes on craft:

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

On the land grab in the American West: 'You could take your slice. Those who had been dispossessed would forever remain so - this was the golden promise of the Republic.' Kevin Barry in his lyrical and wonderfully funny 'The Heart in Winter.'

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

I visited one in Louisiana and one in Florida. Had a trucker play chicken with my teeny car en route to the Louisiana one. I pulled over...

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

The Irish Examiner: 'Palantir ... is one of (Thiel's) companies named ... from Lord of the Rings. Rivendell, Mithril, etc — are relatively benign. But the palantir in Middle Earth fantasy is a crystal ball via which two primary evil characters communicate with each other.' (paraphrased)

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

If you find a copy of this, do not pass it by. You won't be disappointed! And please, please let me know if he brings out another book.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

An Irish writer we don't hear enough about. Or am I looking in the wrong places? www.faber.co.uk/journal/wher...

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

RIP Ian Hamilton. For 40 years he lived on a raft in Richmond, one of London's most expensive boroughs.

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Sharon Keely @sharonkeely.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I love this quote from Pond: '.....people who are hell-bent on getting to the bottom of you are not the sort you want around.' Claire-Louise Bennett

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