iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 04/10/2026

Sunbathing in the rain: Bridget O'Connor, After a Dance: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/10/0… The praise that was heaped on Bridget O’Connor’s After a Dance raised unrealistic expectations. Not unusually for a selection of short stories, it’s uneven; b...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 23/09/2026

I’m celebrating Coltrane’s centenary in a highly unorthodox way: listening to Christian Sands, Thomas Fonnesbæk and Rasmus Kihlberg play “A Giant Leaves (Giant Steps/Autumn Leaves) — for Alex Riel” from Between Then & Now 🎶

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 19/09/2026

Sinking in the bog: Sarah Moss, Ghost Wall: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/09/1… Sarah Moss’s sixth novel, Ghost Wall, centres on an “experiential archeology” trip to Northumberland, cuulminating in the reenactment of the Iron Age sacrifice of a young woman.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 18/09/2026

I ordered a CD from Denmark a little over 2 weeks ago. It’s “estimated to arrive no later than” 13 October. Maybe they meant “no earlier than”. According to Postnord’s tracking site, it arrived in Ireland over a week ago (10 Sep). How does it take a week to deliver a CD in Ireland?

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 18/09/2026

"‘If you really believed AI was going to kill us all why would you participate?’ was a common question to Amodei this week." Kathleen Stock,Unherd. I still think the answer to that is Roko’s basilisk.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 10/09/2026

Altman and tech “leaders” who rush ahead with AI while simultaneously warning of the risks of catastrophe probably take so-called Roko’s basilisk seriously. They feel compelled to press ahead while pleading with the rest of us to save them from the consequences of their cowardly credulity 😜

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 09/09/2026

I’d have sworn Sandy Denny had died earlier than 1978. I saw Fairport (for the second time) in Theatre L, UCD after she had died, and I finished in UCD in 1978, so it must have been very shortly after her death. No wonder an acquaintance of mine was getting very upset. Where the time went 🎶

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 05/09/2026

“The sort of queer stuff they look for in a story these days”: Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/09/0… What was meant to be a post about Anthony Cronin’s treatment of the novels of Flann O’Brien in Cronin...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 04/09/2026

"(For the record, I also thought Madeleine Peyroux sounded too much like Billie Holiday and Wallace Roney sounded too much like Miles Davis.)" Lovely parenthesis in the middle of a discussion of crime fiction by Ethan Iverson 🎶

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 01/09/2026

Somebody mentioned that it’s John Coltrane’s centenary this month 🎶

Screenshot from iOS Health app showing 8 steps taken for a walking/running distance of 3 Km

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 31/08/2026

Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake, on the blog “Elle Thinks”: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/08/3…

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 27/08/2026

It was a shock to read that Tim Curry had been 80; hard to imagine him as an old man. I rewatched part of The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983) on YouTube a few months ago, not having seen it since its original release. Time for a full rewatch, I think. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir82...

youtube.com

The Ploughman's lunch FULL MOVIE | Drama Movies | Jonathan Pryce | Movies to Watch

YouTube video by Movies to Watch

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 22/08/2026

No Talk about books post today, sorry: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/08/2… Today’s post was supposed to be about Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake but I’m sorry to say that I didn’t manage to write it. I intend to discuss Creation Lake eventually (probably in ...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 18/08/2026

"… who subscribe to a set of authoritarian ideas and plans for the future based on half-baked theories and an incomplete understanding of how the world works." Laura Miller in Slate, reviewing Gil Durán. Surely any “understanding of how the world works” is necessarily incomplete?

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 17/08/2026

Today I couldn’t get my dinky little toy HP wireless printer (which I tend to use at least once most years) to connect to the wireless router and I discovered the previously unsuspected fact that I can connect to it straight from the Mac without going through a router. What’ll they think of next?

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 13/08/2026

"the hard left will always pair a conceivably popular economic programme with a provably hated cultural one. The mystery is why." Janan Ganesh, FT No mystery. They’re terrified of having to implement the (conceivably popular) economic programme. Capitalism is how they get paid.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 09/08/2026

I like to remind myself every so often that Leopold Bloom was the same age (38) on 16 June 1904 as Cleopatra was in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 09/08/2026

“A small disturbance, quickly ironed out”: Helen Dunmore, Burning Bright: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/08/0… In Helen Dunmore’s second novel, Burning Bright, the lives of two women, two generations apart, are intertwined with those of two pimps a...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 08/08/2026

According to this Guardian headline, Sam Neill filmed role in Legend of Zelda film adaptation before his death. A “dog bites man” story if ever I heard one. How often does an actor film a role **after his/her death?

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Reposted by Art Kavanagh

Tracy King @tracyking.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Back when I had Twitter I used to offer free headshots for low-income authors, not sure I have much reach here but the offer is still there. London or Birmingham (although I’m in Glasgow and Edinburgh at the end of Aug and can fit in a session. Will have lights so can be indoors).

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 01/08/2026

I’ve finally finished reading At Swim-Two-Birds. I first attempted it at least 56 years ago and didn’t return to it till earlier this year. I kind of hate it: it’s bleak and depressing, the humour sour when not merely silly. Heavy going for a mere 228 pages. I’ll reread soon in case I’m wrong 📚

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 30/07/2026

For several years now, I’ve preferred to buy albums on CD. Elias Stemeseder and Thomas Morgan, Io Pur Respiro is available only as a download or on vinyl so I bought the download. Here’s Richard Williams’s review 🎶 🎹

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 27/07/2026

Human subjects: Mick Herron, Down Cemetery Road and Smoke and Whispers: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/07/2… Slow Horses author Mick Herron began is writing career with a series of crime novels featuring Oxford-based private detective, Zoë Boehm. The ...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 13/07/2026

“Verify your age” When I heard that Sam Neill had died my first thought was “Dead Calm” and my second “Reilly, Ace of Spies”.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 12/07/2026

An ever-increasing gloom: Susie Steiner’s Manon Bradshaw series: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/07/1… Susie Steiner’s three Manon Bradshaw novels were published between 2016 and 2020, the last of them appearing just two years before Steiner’s d...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 09/07/2026

Farrago doesn’t “find comedy funny”. That’s all you need to know — though in fact we all know plenty more than that about him by now.

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Reposted by Art Kavanagh

bestoftimes.bsky.social @bestoftimes.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Years ago I recorded a wren singing on my iPhone and used it as an alarm sound. Now my idiot brain will not allow me to sleep through that sound in the real world. Two days in a row now!

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 03/07/2026

It’s been 14 years since I’ve been in London (or any part of the UK), so obviously I don’t keep up with what’s on in the theatre. When I wrote about Stoppard’s Arcadia a month ago, I didn’t know the play was about to be revived in the West End. My uncharacteristic timeliness was sheer accident 🎭

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 02/07/2026

"Recommended Wynn Williams’s book [Careless People] to a friend, who bought it. A little poke in the eye for Facebook." So comments Charles Arthur, The Overspill

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 28/06/2026

“Live long enough and you’ll see everything”: Scott Turow, The Last Trial and Presumed Guilty: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/06/2… Two of Scott Turow’s three most recent novels feature the final criminal trials of two characters who appeared in his first ...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 27/06/2026

I answered without stopping to think. I used to believe that pedestrians were the big menace. They often don’t look around them. I’ve been knocked off my bike twice by wayward pedestrians (and once by a driver suddenly throwing open the door of her parked car). But no, drivers are worse.

An FT Edit poll asking “Who’s the biggest menace on the roads?” and offering three options: drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. I’ve selected “Pedestrians”, along with 9% of the 34 respondents so far.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 21/06/2026

@iamjonjackson.bsky.social I see that What We Can Know is now out in paperback, so I must read that soon.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 13/06/2026

“It’s a catastrophe. Relax!”: Ian McEwan, Solar: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/06/1… Ian McEwan’s novel, Solar (2010), is a savagely comic satire that touches on questions of renewable energy and the climate catastrophe. This has been seen as a departure...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 09/06/2026

Someone on the train has the Z Cars theme as his (I’m assuming) ringtone!

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 08/06/2026

Until a few months ago it hadn’t occurred to me that Anthony Head and Murray Head could be brothers. They seemed to belong to different worlds: 1) Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Centrepoint, “Say it ain’t so, Joe”; and 2) freeze-dried instant coffee ads, Slayer-watching 🤷‍♂️

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 06/06/2026

None of these options quite reflects my view. I’d say that till recently a degree has been essential, though not necessarily in economic terms. But its nature is changing (decidedly for the worse), largely because of the increased role and influence of administrators.

FT poll on university degrees offers 3 options: “A golden ticket to opportunity”, “Nice to have but not essential” or “Overrated and overpriced”

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 01/06/2026

Robert Reich was born 10 days later than Donald Trump. His reference to “ending his seventh decade and beginning his eighth” must be a deliberate error illustrating his point about reduced sharpness: someone about to turn 80 will be ending their eighth decade and immediately beginning their ninth.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 30/05/2026

An order things can’t happen in: Tom Stoppard, Arcadia: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/05/3… Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, covers a lot of ground: garden design and history, science, sex and literature, maths and physics, determinism. I suggest its m...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 16/05/2026

Look back in bemused wonder: Anthony Cronin, Dead As Doornails: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/05/1… Anthony Cronin’s memoir of literary and artistic figures in 1950s Dublin and London’s Soho has been reissued. Those guys could drink!

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 16/05/2026

Trip no further, Wesley Streeting … Journeys end in MPs’ bleating. www.ian-leslie.com/p/who-the-he...

ian-leslie.com

Who The Hell Is Wesley Streeting?

The Extraordinary Life Story of Keir Starmer's Challenger

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 12/05/2026

Today I learned, thanks to Adam Mastroianni’s Experimental History, that Lenin was a mushroom. That explains a great deal that has puzzled me for decades. I wish I’d known it much earlier.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 07/05/2026

On my way to the coffee shop today, I realized I’d forgotten my book so I looked in the Oxfam shop, not expecting much, and found a copy of Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont which I’ve been wanting to read for a long time. Loving it so far 📖

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 07/05/2026

I somehow missed the fact that Jack Shepherd died back in November. I first noticed him on tv in Bill Brand, then almost failed to recognize him as Baxter Dawes in Griffiths’s adaptation of Lawrence. Also have fond memories of Blind Justice. And then jazz piano: The play that changed my life

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 02/05/2026

My posts on Micro·blog (including my newsletter) usually get crossposted here 🦋 but today’s didn’t, for some reason. Anyway, here it is; it’s about Hamlet. letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/05/02/p...

letter.talkaboutbooks.net

Art Kavanagh - Purposes mistook Fallen on th’inventors’ heads: Shakespeare, Hamlet

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t: Hamlet’s stalemate.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 23/04/2026

"This is the predicament of modern Britain. The country needs centre-right reform at home and centre-left leadership abroad." So says Janan Ganesh of the FT. If that’s true, it sounds like an opportunity for Ed Davey and the Liberal Democrats.

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 18/04/2026

Sidelined narrators: Booker winning novels by Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes: letter.talkaboutbooks.net/2026/04/1… The Remains of the Day (1989) and The Sense of an Ending (2011) are both short novels which feature narrators who give the i...

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 16/04/2026

"Eurosceptic governments often counted on Orbán to veto proposals from Brussels without having to pipe up themselves. His absence might now draw out their own awkward views: on Ukraine, for instance." Depressing thought. Janan Ganesh in the FT on “The weird resilience of the EU”

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Art Kavanagh @www.artkavanagh.ie · 15/04/2026

This arrived in the post this morning. I had to pay An Post an extra €15 to get it delivered in Ireland because the publisher doesn’t yet have a distributor in the EU. I’d rather that money had gone to the editor and/or publisher but hey, at least I got the book 📖

Poems beautiful and useful: a choice of popular early modern verse made by Victoria Moul with an introduction and notes, published by Headless Poet, 2026

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