I saw this over at engadget and Geekologie and the more I think about it, the more impressed I am by this technology. In the video they talk about saving space with mobile devices, so this interface is a way of expanding your teeny gadget to a useable size. Which will be great, once it doesn’t require a big honkin’ armband with a baby octopus of wires attached to it.

Aside from the novelty aspects of controlling your iPod without touching it directly, I’m extremely interested to see where this goes in terms of people with physical disabilities. So far the programs are using various points in the arms and hands that produce distinct bio-sounds, but it stands to reason that the rest of the body could be mapped as well. People with limited motor function could have controls mapped to their range of motion that correspond not only to their music player, but their phone and computer as well.

It’s just a thought, and it’s a lot of work ahead, but I think this is definitely some tech to keep an eye out for in the future. I just have to learn to quit drumming my hands when I rock out, or I’ll accidentally dial my mother.

At the beginning of the year I took a trip to a used bookstore of local fame. Chamblin’s Bookmine is a veritable labyrinth of used books, and it’s extremely easy to come out penniless. Trust me, I’ve done it. Anyway, my haul this visit contained a number of young adult titles and some more grown-up material on the state and history of China. Guess which ones I’m reading first?

There was one book I went back for at the last minute - Avalon High, by Meg Cabot. My copy is bright pink and very girly, a category which does not exist in my library. It gets as girly as the Georgia Nicholson novels, and those books at least have the decency to put on a green plaid every now and then. Yes, I’m judging a book by it’s cover here. Its color, in fact. I might be a little bit book-racist.

Pink or no pink, I was pulled back to it because it’s a modern re-telling of the Arthurian legend. Ever since I landed in an Arthurian studies class my freshman year of college, I have had quite the soft spot for all tales Arthurian. I had actually forgotten that the book was hiding on my shelf until Merlin showed up on Hulu and I tried to give it a watch. (That’s going to be another post in itself, I can feel it.) I couldn’t stop thinking about Cabot’s book, so I turned Merlin off and spenth several hours last night devouring Avalon High.

It’s not a lengthy, detailed novel. It’s fairly superficial in places, but we are talking about the author of The Princess Diaries. This is not a slam. I like a good fluffy read more often than I’ll admit, and this one absolutely did the trick. In fact, I may actually pick up The Princess Diaries because of this book, pink covers and all.

The premise behind Avalon High is that a teenager, named Elaine, begins at a new school and finds herself in the middle of what seems to be a modern version of the Arthurian story. There’s Lance, Jennifer, A. William Wagner, Marco and Mr. Morton, all playing out their historic roles as Lancelot, Guinevere, Arthur, Mordred and Merlin. Except that these replays have never yet resulted in the true re-emergence of the sleeping King Arthur, and its looking pretty bleak. Of course, its up to our protagonist to save the day.

It’s pretty cheesey that Elaine’s mom is conveniently an Arthurian scholar, but I’ve known at least two in my life, so I guess I’d be just as prepared should I find myself in a surreal repeat of history. What I do love about this, though, is that her mom’s interests lie with the Lady Elaine of Astolat, or the Lady of Shalott. Elaine struggles with having a suicide as her namesake even before she arrives at Avalon High, and when all this starts unfolding she refuses to be cast as the Lily Maid. It’s a perspective I’ve never come across, and all the hokey moments add up to a truly spectacular whole.

And while we’re on the subject of cheesey done right, I’d like to add that Meg Cabot references things like iPods and Starbucks in this novel and I don’t want to set her on fire for it. She uses the references when they actually add something to the situation, and the whole premise of this book relies on readers knowing approximately what decade we’re in. There is a solid reason for confining the story the way she does, and Michael Scott needs to take note.

(By the way, I’m still stuck on page 50 of The Alchemyst. Ugh.)

Also, this book inspired me to dig out all my old Loreena McKennit albums. I had quite a thing for her version of The Lady of Shalott back around the time I was in that Arthurian class. That, and The Mysts of Avalon film, but lets just all agree we were weirdos in college. It was a nice bout of reminiscing.

Which led me to Peter David’s Knight Life. Again, not somethingg I’ve encountered since that fateful class, but still a book I’d recommend. Another modern-day take on Arthur, but with adult players and a more political setting. Vey humorous too, if I recall, and I fully intend to grab the sequel in the not-so-distant future.

Lucky for you, I save just about everything I’ve ever typed up for a class. This is from my handout on the book in the Spring of 2005:

Knight Life - Peter David
Merlin slowly shook his head. “Someone is going to have to talk to you, long and hard, about slang.”

THESIS:
No matter what era the Arthurian legend is set in or what era it’s rewritten in, good triumphs over evil. However, in more modern takes on the legend, women play a more prominent role – in both the good and the evil. The character representing Guinevere takes in into her own hands to hunt down and fight Morgan Le Fey while Arthur is busy elsewhere, and Morgan Le Fey cannot count on Modred to work for her, so she does much of the work herself.

SYNOPSIS:
King Arthur and Merlin have both been freed from their respective caves of imprisonment and are now in modern-day New York City. Rather than declare himself king, Arthur Penn does what any rational centuries-old man of royalty does when he finds himself in a completely different world than what he is used to – he runs for mayor.

I can’t remember what the quote about Merlin is in direct reference to, but now I want to reread it and find out. Also, it would appear we have a theme here, what with female-hero driven Arthurian tales. It would be an interesting genre to explore, if there are more to be found. Sadly, I think they fell out of print. Hm.

Back to the Bookmine!

I have been reluctant to jump on the J. J. Abrams bandwagon. I have yet to watch a single episode of Lost. I didn’t see Cloverfield. I haven’t purposefully been avoiding him, mind you, I just wasn’t really interested. If anything, my allegiance lies with Joss Whedon. I did, however, see the new Star Trek movie and I loved it, iBridge and all. I mean, Simon Pegg? FatHands? Does it get better?

Peter, Walter, and Olivia

I digress. A few months ago I was encouraged - nay, ordered - to start watching Fringe. I was hooked immediately. Not only is our leading lady a badass (in a relateable way), but her sidekicks are a father-son team comprised of scruffyness and insanity. At some point in the series we find out that Jacksonville plays a pretty big role in Olivia’s life, and in the most recent episode they took a little trip to my hometown.

Except for the part where they didn’t. Despite the rest of the show being a crazy chase of paranormal activity all over New York and Boston and other such places with fantastic establishing shots, their roadtrip to the south was without visual credibility. They arrived at their destination - an abandoned daycare on a closed naval base - to find a small nondescript building with the word ‘”Jacksonville” in the name. The rest of their trip played out in interiors.

I understand it. Budgets and soundstages and all that. But I suppose Jacksonville isn’t big enough to exist in stock footage just yet. I was excited just to hear us get mentioned. We’ve arrived! Television has informed the world that we do, indeed, exist! A nice, wide establishing shot would have been awesome, but I’ll let it go for you, Fringe. I find your closed naval base in my backyard completely believable. This town is lousy with them.

It’s easy to write about big cities and sneak stuff in. All kinds of things can happen in TV New York because it’s so huge - who can argue? When you get to smaller cities (okay, we’re pretty huge landwise) it gets harder to sneak stuff in. A Chinese drug ring operating in New York City? Sure! In Jacksonville? Yeah, no. Maybe some Wellfare scams. Lots of shootings. That’s about as exciting as it gets here, and COPS pretty much has the market cornered on television episodes that cover those aspects of this town.

If all that wasn’t exciting enough, Jacksonville got mentioned again the next week in an episode of Past Life. They “visited” the glaringly fictitious Sunflower Apartments hoping to find clues to a murder. Really? Sunflower? The state flower of Kansas? Just because the word has ’sun’ in it does not mean it’s appropriate. Down here we name things after alligators, native Indians, the beach, and citrus. Take your pick. But they were spot-on with the senseless murder, so we’ll just take what we can get.

Whats-Her-Face, Angry Cop Guy and some other people from Past Life

It feels like Past Life is being touted as some sort of Fringe Lite while Fringe is away. Blonde lady lead with her reluctant backup, chasing the weirdness, blah blah blah. Except that Past Life is so distressingly bland and dull that I can’t be bothered to remember anyone’s name of care for them in the slightest. On top of that, they’ve forever pigeon-holed themselves whereas Fringe gets to deal with the entire spectrum of strange. And Fringe may have, like, twenty-some episodes on Past Life, but that’s no excuse for a sadass premise.

I’m intrigued to see if this trend continues. Are more references going to be made to Jacksonville? Will we someday be a TV hometown? True, we lack a distinct personality, but there’s got to be potential hidden in this sad, vacuous pit somewhere, right? We had the Superbowl that one time. We’ve got the military. We have colleges without being a college town. We have beaches. We have a horrifying lack of culture. We have gang violence and sub-par public transportation and thirteen malls. We’ll get there.

The moral of this post is: Watch Fringe. It is good and Walter is a delightful crazyperson.

I started to write this post when I was seven pages into Michael Scott’s The Alchemyst. I set it aside and decided to wait, since seven pages seemed too hasty. A book needs to make a great first impression, but I’m willing to give a second. Or third. I’m a forgiving sort of lady when it comes to my teen fantasy, since series are long and the two of us might need to compromise a bit like any good couple. (We never do.)

I am on page thirty-six.

I am on page thirty-six, and I am in an abusive relationship. This book is beating me with its stupid.

As a reader of fantasy, I bring with me a certain set of expectations when I read a fantasy novel. Because of the fantastic element, I wholly believe that these stories should border on timeless. The mundane aspects ought to be kept generic to achieve this. A sentence like “she got into her 2001 silver Saturn and blasted the new Modest Mouse single Float On” makes the mundane entirely too specific and unless it’s completely relevant to the plot¹, I don’t want to hear it. Just tell me she got into her car.

Okay, yes, I know that “car” brings with it a specific time period. That time period is an eon compared to the span of weeks that “Float On” was considered new. Getting into a plain old car is something we can change easily with our imagination, updating the setting to fit our (futuristic) needs. She got into her hover-car? Bam. She got into her 2146 AstroCar Plus and blared- Yeah, my brain is tired already. I’m sure future-rock is terrible anyway.²

My point is, the more pop-culture references that get dropped, the harder it is to budge a story out of a specific date. And this is the way Michael Scott writes. I’ve already heard about iPods, earbuds, Bluetooth headsets (the ear doodads are ALWAYS specified), The Simpsons, Quake, Doom, and the male protagonist’s inability to navigate Myst.³ Michael Scott, I don’t care.

Am I supposed to care? Am I supposed to be fourteen and hugely impressed that these teen-aged twins have similar interests as myself? Assuming I’m a fourteen year-old reader of books (which I was, at one point), these kids have already been painted as non-readers, so I’ve already failed to connect. So, maybe this is to encourage the non-readers out there that books can be fun! They can involve non-readers just like you, out there playing football and video games and not reading. Wait, what?

To reign in my tangent: Pop culture kills. It’s distracting. Harry Potter mentioned the Playstation about halfway through the series and I’m still seeking counseling for that colossal mood-killer. This is a fantasy book - quit tying the fictional mundane to my real world. It isn’t cute. And also, stereotypical teen know-nothing airhead protagonists make me sad. But that’s a rant for another day.

More importantly, there is a gaping plot-hole at this point. It has been slightly acknowledged by our dear Nicholas Flamel (cleverly hiding behind the name ‘Nick Fleming’) so I really hope it’s tended to in the future. Like, in the next ten pages would be great.

The titular ‘Alchemyst’, Nick, has had in his possession a book for the last, oh, seven hundred years or so. This is where all of his secrets and spells and whatever-ma-jiggers are - you know, where the immortal life, disease-killing, youth-forever, awesome Philosopher Stone-type secrets are. And it’s finally been snagged by his big bad arch nemesis who has been after it for almost five-hundred years.

John Dee has been after the secret of immortality. For five hundred years. Yep.

…

There has to be a reason, right? Because I’m pretty sure he’s already figured out the hard parts. Is there a fantastic casserole recipe in the back? OH, and speaking of the back, our weeny teen boy managed to pull two pages out. They are, of course, the two most important pages in the entire book.⁴

Sigh.

I really hope this book gets its act together.

1. I think I just challenged myself. Now I have to write a novel where the big bad wizard is destroyed only by blaring “Float On”. I apologize.
2. You kids get off my space-lawn!
3. Has he never heard of Google? Come on, Michael Scott, don’t you want to drop that name too? Maybe give us even more irrelevant drivel about this kid?
4. They are not a casserole recipe.

In my own tiny, sad homage to Nick Hornby’s old monthly contribution to The Believer magazine, I present the Stuff I’ve Been Reading. I haven’t really settled on a schedule, and I’m almost afraid to list the books that I’ve bought so far this month (it’s a lot), but I’m ready to go.

Earlier this month I read Ji-li Jiang’s Red Scarf Girl, a memoir about her life as a twelve year-old girl in China during the Cultural Revolution. It was sitting near the old middle-school classic Farewell to Manzanar, and the blossoming Commie China buff in me was intrigued. (I say this after reading, what, three books about Communist China? Maybe?) It’s definitely at the YA level, but I’ll admit that if I hadn’t worked my way through Jung Chang’s Wild Swans last year, I wouldn’t have fully appreciated what was going on. The extent of what occurred with Mao pre-Cultural Revolution, as well as some general background on China, are almost essential. I suppose my point here is that this is definitely a teaching book, and needs to be put in context with discussions. It also deals with some pretty heavy issues, what with families being violently torn apart by Red Guards and all.

Aside from the needed supplements, it’s a really great read. It paints a quick, vivid picture of life at the time, at that age. It’s probably best suited for kids around thirteen, as the narrator is at their level. You get the good lessons about standing up for what’s morally right and being as true to yourself as you can be under a fascist government hellbent on destroying you for the crimes of your ancestors. Hm. Cheery.

In slightly happier, if not lighter reading, I’ve been listening to the audiobooks for Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy while I work on my projects. They’re books I’ve read before and really love, so the audiobooks are a great way for me to relive them. Simon Jones is an absolutely fantastic narrator, capturing the snark and smarm of Bartimaeus the djinn and his copious footnotes brilliantly. Sadly, the footnotes lose their oomph when you don’t know what words are coming from where, but the seamless integration is pretty impressive. Good on you, Mr. Jones.

These books are about, of course, Bartimaeus. He’s a djinn from the Other Place and is summoned into an alternate version of London where magicians have taken over as the government. The true source of the magicians’ power, unbeknown to the commoners, are spirits of various levels from the Other Place. Bartimaeus falls somewhere in the middle.

Parts of the books are narrated by Bartimaeus, others by his child-magician summoner, Nathaniel. (Magician name, John. Oh, I see what you did there, Jonathan. I’m on to you.) They have quite an unusual relationship, as any good odd couple does, both being a bit snippy and petulant in their own way. They both know the real name of the other, which is the most powerful weapon when it comes to magic, so neither is fully in command of the other. The tug-of-war is pretty hilarious.

But their main struggle is against the mysterious Resistance, perpetrated by commoners. Possibly children. Oh the political intrigue! No, actually, it’s quite well-done. This alternate London and its mechanics are well thought-out and the requisite cliches are dressed up so nice that you just don’t care.

Okay, yes, I love that it’s drowning in sarcasm. But how can you not?

Side note - I am truly saddened by the lack of love for this book. And the lack of fanart. Because we all know that fanart is the true measure of popularity. (We’re pretending fanfiction doesn’t exist. It takes far too much effort for me to evaluate.) Truly, these books are underrated. Go read them. Right now.

I picked up a number of other possibly promising YA books while at the bookmine this month. Things like Magyk and The Alchemyst and whatever other books feel the need to substitute in a y for some vowel that was doing a perfectly good job on its own, but we have to make they tytle look catchy and wytchy because that’s the rage, ryght? (Boy oh boy, if only they’d ban ME from schools, then I’D get popular too! I mean, it worked for Harry Potter.) Sound logic, everyone. Well done.

No, I’m sure they’re perfectly delightful. But I’ll let you know.