iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 14/09/2026

Another Spybrary podcast interview of mine is unleashed on the world. It’s with David McCloskey-recommended writer Robert McCaw, about his Washington molehunt book Traitors. Get it from your usual podcast source, or the link’s here. #readingcommunity #books #BookSky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 12/09/2026

Read: The Predicament by William Boyd 📚I’ve loved Boyd’s standalones for years and this Greene-ish spy series either Gabriel Drax isn’t hitting the spot for me. Thin characters, clunky prose, sluggish pace. #BookSky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 08/09/2026

Read: Let it bleed by n/a 📚Rebus investigates high level corruption in Edinburgh. Again. It would be easy to dismiss it as just more Rankin content, except Rankin content is consistently very very very good. I’ll even forgive the Stones reference. #BookSky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 08/09/2026

One of my genuine all time writing idols, who came up with lines that will survive in my brain long into dementia, has followed me on Substack. I am, as the kids say, legit stunned.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 07/09/2026

Some of us would argue that if someone needs a ghostwriter, they're not, themselves, in fact, a writer.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 06/09/2026

Probably a bit slow on the uptake here, but in Facebook, pretty much everything other than posts to groups is AI shit now.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 04/09/2026

'We will declare a national emergency' if we don't get our way... not fascism-y at all. No hint of authoritarianism there. Nothing to be worried about. #ReformUK

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 04/09/2026

Enjoying the audience involvement at Farrage's #ReformUK 's speech. It's helping undermine any chance of gravitas.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 04/09/2026

Nigel Farrage has really cracked the 'mwahahahaha' evil dictator laugh, judging by Reform's conference coverage.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 03/09/2026

Read: The alienist by Caleb Carr 📚Cracking atmospheric period NYC serial killer procedural with a walk on part for Theodore Roosevelt. #BookSky #readingcommunity #books

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 03/09/2026

Read: The Absinthe Forger by Evan Rail 📚One of those niche histories about something obscure. In this case, fake absinthe from pre-1915 when most of Europe banned it in a moral panic. Happily quirky, slight, and a bit hazy, like an afternoon drinking in the sun. #BookSky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 03/09/2026

Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I will never understand why so many people on social media are convinced other internet strangers should give a single flying fuck about their opinions. It’s like scrolling a town centre full of lunatic street preachers, and censorious sanctimonious ones at that.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 01/09/2026

I interviewed Jinwoo Park about his spy novel, The Oxford Soju Club, for the Spybrary podcast, and it’s finally dropped, or posted or up or whatever it is podcasts do. #readingcommunity #books #BookSky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 26/08/2026

Thea Gilmore vs The Algorithm: matthewhurst.micro.blog/2026/08/26/… I’ve loved Thea Gilmore’s music for decades. Now she wants people to pay close attention by making it harder to find, temporary. This one’s about power hiding. It’s here on The Echoline #...

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 26/08/2026

Read: [The Cold Cold Ground ](micro.blog/books/978109...) by Adrian McKinty Gripping and atmospheric, Harry's Game-esque, but the realism is undermined by weird solecisms and a largely unnecessary infodump at the end. #books #booksky #readingcommunity

micro.blog

The Cold Cold Ground

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 26/08/2026

The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty: matthewhurst.micro.blog/2026/08/26/… Read: The Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty 📚 Gripping and atmospheric, Harry’s Game-esque, but the realism is undermined by weird solecisms and a largely unnecessary infodump at the...

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 25/08/2026

Read: Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway 📚Le Carre’s son picks his father’s Smiley/Karla rivalry. Superb. Enough to make me reconsider my proscription on works that fills in holes in the canonical texts. #booksky #sky #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 24/08/2026

Want to read: The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin 📚 #litfic

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 20/08/2026

Review: Rothstein - The Criminal Genius Who Fixed The World Series: matthewhurst.micro.blog/2026/08/20/… Read: Rothstein by David Pietrusza 📚 Another biography with more pages than story. Rothstein was a (very rich) New York grifter in the early 20...

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 19/08/2026

Read: [Yesteryear: A Novel](micro.blog/books/979821...) by Caro Claire Burke 📚Tradwife influencer wakes up in the actual 1850s and has to deal with her new reality. Page turner and genre psych-thriller rather than a commentary on living through social media. #books #readingcommunity #booksky

micro.blog

Yesteryear: A Novel

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 19/08/2026

Every time I get a website asking 'are you human?' I need them to offer a tickbox for 'I am dancer'. Even though I'm one of the least dancey people known to mankind.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 12/08/2026

Read: Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe 📚Scandinoir in central Ontario. Scanadia-noir? Jaded small town detective catches a religious nutjob serial killer. Thoughtful and atmospheric. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 10/08/2026

Read: Next of Kin by Kia Abdullah 📚Aunt kills toddler nephew. It’s and accident. Or is it? Kinda courtroom, kinda psychological, thriller. Fast, tropey read, which is not a bad thing. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 02/08/2026

Read: The Age of Wonder by Holmes, Richard 📚British scientists and breakthroughs in the wider culture where they happened, from about 1760 to 1830. Sounds pedestrian but it’s rivetting storytelling. #books #readingcommunity #booksky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 01/08/2026

Read: Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 📚Gleefully weird and Vonneguts gonna Vonnegut. He seems to slip under the ‘problematic’ radar with some of his language. He’s using it to making a point, but that doesn’t always stop the Bad Word Police. So it goes. #books #readingcommunity #booksky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 22/07/2026

Read: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 📚Very, very belatedly read this and remembered how weird and good Vonnegut is. Grim, black humour and immensely readable. So it goes. #books #readingcommunity #booksky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 21/07/2026

Graham Greene made spy novels respectable, but he (probably) never stopped spying himself. I interviewed the director of the Graham Greene Festival about Greene’s writing, spying, and friendship with Kim Philby. #books #booksky #readingcommunity spybrary.com/graham-gr…

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 20/07/2026

Quick question. What does ‘the privilege of my life’ actually mean?

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 19/07/2026

Quick call out: Has anyone made a block list of ‘sanctimonious twats’? Could really do with one of those.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 12/07/2026

Why are there so many empty seats on centre court at #Wimbledon2026? There are huge blocks of them on the side opposite the umpire.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 06/07/2026

Read: Agent Sniper by Tim Tate 📚Real life Zelig-esque Polish spy/defector (and massive fantasist) in the Cold War, clearly written and researched. A good read.#booksky #books #reading

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 01/07/2026

Pulp Asylum has just published my latest short story, The Man Who Said Too Much, which features an ice storm, stealing old chairs, and a Russian genius. Read it here: bit.ly/4y6ypBF #crime #thriller #amwriting #writingcommunity #writersky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 28/06/2026

Read: Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum 📚 on audiobook, which came out two years ago. So much of what @anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu says about countries run by greedy narcissistic bullies could now be said about the US. #booksky #books #reading

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 26/06/2026

Read: Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark 📚 One of those ‘how autobiographical is this?’ games about a struggling 1940s writer. Snarky and funny and far more tricksy than I expected. #reading #books #booksky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 22/06/2026

Burnham is another ‘swipe right’ prime minister. 6 months of highest ever approval ratings then people will notice he hasn’t solved any problems and he’ll have lowest ever approval figures and we’ll be onto the next one: Streeting, Rayner, whoever. And so it goes, to quote Kurt Vonnegut.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 16/06/2026

Read: The Pretender by Jo Harkin 📚Peasant Pretender puppeteered by powerful Plantagenet proponents. Wolf Hall minus the portentousness. #booksky #reading #books

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Reposted by Matthew Hurst

Nick Harkaway @nickharkaway.com · 12/06/2026

Sidenote: I'd really appreciate it if you repost this, if only because getting the damn thing to display on Bsky with a decent alt text was something of a labour of love. And also because, obviously, I want everyone in the universe to know this is coming.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 11/06/2026

I'm not apathetic, I just don't care enought to spout opinions on BlueSky.

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 11/06/2026

Read: London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe 📚As in his ‘Say Nothing’, Keefe clearly disentangles a lot of complicated world views and confabulations to illuminate a particular world, though the overarching story isn’t as sharply defined. #reading #books #booksky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 09/06/2026

Read: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt 📚Cormac McCarthy with a sense of humour and optimism, and also an editor, and all the more likeable for it. #books #reading #booksky

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 06/06/2026

Read: Last One Out A Novel by Jane Harper 📚Her usual territory: resident returns to Australian small town and insular relationships (often between 3 male friends) which led to a tragedy a few years before. Realistic characters, well observed interactions, but nothing new. #booksky #reading #books

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 02/06/2026

Read: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe 📚Fantastically researched especially the bits the TV series smoothed over. You do wonder exactly why Adams hasn’t sued over the allegations it makes about him. #books #booksky #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 31/05/2026

Read: Pearl by Siân Hughes 📚Hughes is an award winning poet, and it shows, in a good way as her narator writes intensely and immersively about her mother’s death. As someone who felt no cause to grieve my own mother’s death, it was… informative. #books #booksky #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 21/05/2026

Read: Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell 📚Big, detailed, accurate and gruesome. Also a cracking story (though not exactly genre-expanding). Great for immersion… #booksky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 19/05/2026

Read: Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow 📚Freshman outrage at the shock of big companies being unscrupulous about how they make money. Nothing you can’t hear him perform any day of the week for free. #books #booksky #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 14/05/2026

Read: Agents of Innocence by David Ignatius 📚Drips realism and apparently the CIA uses it as an exemplar of Middle Eastern espionage. The detail draws you in and the conflicts between ethnicities and sects is tragically still relevant. #booksky #books #readingcommunity

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 09/05/2026

The squid reached up and pulled the lever. The conveyor carried him out over the sea. They'd planned it all along. I hope "Squid Jigger" stays with you. 🦑 bit.ly/squidjigger #booksky #horror

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Matthew Hurst @stubsackfiction.substack.com · 06/05/2026

The best horror makes you feel complicit. I wanted "Squid Jigger" to do that — by the final page, you understand why this happened. And you can't entirely disagree. bit.ly/squidjigger #booksky #horror

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