Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code”:http://www.amazon.com/Da-Vinci-Code-Dan-Brown/dp/0385504209/ref=benhourigan-co20 (2003; repr. London: Corgi, 2005), 593pp. 3/5 This pacey but overexcitable thriller lets itself down by claiming to be more than fiction. By now The Da Vinci Code has well and truly been cracked. Reading the tale of how religious symbologist Robert Langdon races against time, accused of murder, [...]
Looking around modern Japan, I don’t know why, but invisible rules have grown up everywhere. Lifestyle, human relations, clothing, deportment—each of these is enclosed in a framework. Just as the audience at a wedding stands up, sits down, and points their camera at the MC, so people are bound up in rules. (Nakano Kiyotsugu, quoted [...]
Last night I went “clubbing” for the first time in my life. Sure, I’d been to bars that play loud music before, and places with a dancefloor, and places where you can’t hear your friends when you try to talk to them. But I’d always tried to avoid places that are those things so relentlessly [...]
Japan was a bust. The slap-the-country-in-the-face-post can wait until I return to Melbourne in 27 days. I’m looking forward to clean air, trees, beautiful buildings, great food, jobs that don’t take 14 hours out of every day, and women who speak English. I also have a new header image featuring the Melbourne skyline (courtesy of [...]
While using Wikipedia to research “Montréal”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal and the surrounding area, I came across this image of a “New Hampshire”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire “numberplate.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:CurrentNewHampshirePlate.jpg I wouldn’t die for freedom, myself; under dire oppression, I’d rather bide my time looking for a way to put my life and liberty together. Yet I have always loved this American revolutionary slogan, and [...]
Last night I changed my blog header image. Since I’m thinking of moving to Vancouver, I wanted an image of the skyline. I was planning on using Doug Morgan’s wonderful “Twilight Over False Creek,”:http://www.pbase.com/douglasjmorgan/image/36508393/original which I’d recently seen on the Wikipedia article for “Vancouver.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver When I went to check on the license for it, though, [...]
For those inclined to use the word “conservative”:http://en.wikipedia.org/Conservatism without thinking carefully, “my last post”:http://benhourigan.com/archives/2005/03/01/proposed-japanese-constitution-to-restrict-basic-freedoms/ expresses a classically conservative sentiment. I’ve just said Japan should keep things the way they are, because the status quo is better than the alternative, according to my values. I’d call myself a libertarian overall, but I can still hold politically [...]
A little while ago Mel posted a link to an “article,”:http://www.nerve.com/personalessays/calhoun/mcsweeneys/ along with “some of her own musings”:http://wildyoungunderwhimsy.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_wildyoungunderwhimsy_archive.html (scroll down and look for February 16) expressing distaste for the emotionally arid cleverness of “McSweeney’s”:http://www.mcsweeneys.net/. Both this post and “Christian’s”:http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/~Mccrea/archives/2005/02/index.html (again, no permalink, look for February 18), mentioning it, also link to the fictional exploits of [...]
“Arthur Conan Doyle.”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle “A Study in Scarlet.”:http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9556 1887. Project Gutenberg. Audiobook. There’s a pattern in my media consumption habits: get very close to the end of something, then put it aside for months, only to finish it off when I’ve got some spare time. I downloaded this audiobook when I was working non-stop on my [...]
Read the novel
Kiss Me, Genius Boy is Ben Hourigan's debut novel, and the first of three volumes in the No More Dreams series. Available on the full range of ebook platforms starting at just 99c on Kindle, KMGB is an unforgettable tragi-comic tale of teen romance and obsession. Full details here.About
Ben Hourigan is an indie novelist, the author of Kiss Me, Genius Boy (2011). He is also the manager of digital operations at a Melbourne design publisher, a freelance writer and editor, and the founder of ebook label hourigan.co.
benhourigan on Twitter
- http://t.co/HUAYYP8b My entry as a freelance writer and editor on Editors Victoria's excellent Freelance Register.
Friends and allies
Melbourne novelists
Benjamin Grant Mitchell
Joanna George
Iain H. McLean
Christos Tsiolkas
Elliot PerlmanOther novelists
