Adrian McKinty

the first print review of HANG ON ST CHRISTOPHER in via @StarTribune & the great @claudepeck you have to read this one its incredibly rare that a reviewer totally gets what you were trying to do & digs it as well! (also who is this handsome devil? 👇) startribune.com/the-troubles-a…

if you're going to Ireland this summer & happen to find yourself in Carrickfergus my sister's pub is called Ownies a great pint of the black stuff awaits... a mini DI Duffy Carrick pub crawl wd be to Ownies & Dobbins Inn (alas several of Duffy's other pubs have gone now)

Jonathan Swift spent a miserable & lonely year in my home town, Carrickfergus, but he wrote a lot there (a Tale of a Tub for one) & possibly began a little book called Gulliver's Travels. Looking S from Carrick towards Belfast the hills resemble a giant pinned to the ground.

this guy 👇🙂 I've kept a reading journal since the mid 90s (when I left uni & started working in a bookstore) since then I've read circa 2400 books my peak year was lockdown 2020 when I read 101 another time I'll unpack the worst/best books I've read nytimes.com/2025/07/26/boo…

I've tweeted Louise Gluck's poems here many times before. She was the 2020 winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, as I successfully predicted that year. (This year it's going to be Murakami.) Gluck wasn't especially optimistic or cheery, but this poem is:

Dylan Thomas was 19 when he wrote this little masterpiece:

Ozzy doing his final show in Birmingham and then dying is such an Ozzy move RIP POD variety.com/2025/music/obi…

as requested on twitter about 3 years ago, s'one wanted me to unpack DI Duffy's remark from book 5 (?) of the Duffy series that he'd "met Leonard Cohen once" well I finally got to that in the new update: adrianmckinty.substack.com (as always fresh, free & feverishly copyedited)

there's a funny bit in Walden when Thoreau complains that the new transAtlantic telegraph cable (1854) is giving us information overload in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) Neil Postman says that 24hr TV news is heralding a Huxleyian dystopia what wd they make of 2025?

I tweeted this story last summer because it was 10 years since we lost Robin Williams (!) I thought maybe I'd tweet it again on his birthday this year, in case you missed it before & also cos although it wasn't much of a meeting I still think about it and Robin a lot. ☹️🙂

Film rec for you: RESTLESS is a 2025 low budget Brit crime drama from @metisfilms & debut director Jed Hart. A noisy neighbour moves next door to a fragile woman in a grim British seaside town (possibly Clacton). That's the whole plot. It's streaming now & it's f great 👍

my fav book of the 1880s? for me it's The Brothers Karamazov - the summit of Dostoyevksy's art I read it many years ago when I was in Russia and again during lockdown; I don't know if I'd ever want to read it again (which perhaps tells you s'thing) but I LOVED it both times 👍

The first 150 pages of Morrissey's Autobiography is really good about his childhood in Manchester and Ireland, the Moors Murders, etc. It's full of funny stuff, like this, the time young Morrissey faints & humiliates his father when he sees George Best play for the first time...

another update to the work in the progress free, fresh & unfiltered over on substack adrianmckinty.substack.com

ok, so now I've spent 3 days re-reading Smiley's People cover to cover (hey, I'm allowed to do such things I'm recovering from major back surgery, man) perhaps not quite up there w Tinker Tailor but def an espionage masterpiece 👍

golf in Ireland isn't exactly a blue collar past-time but at least when I was a kid it was quite accessible for any wee shite who wanted to caddy or bang out a round when I was a wee mucker I played a round at Royal Portrush w/out a handicap & (tell no one) wearing black jeans

before you cancel your Disney+ subscription after watching Andor check out Mr Inbetween its a 3 season long Aussie crime drama, v diff in tone, subject matter & pacing to Andor but equally as brill, if not better...