Technology, Dystopia and Young Adults II

This list has been updated: a newer, expanded version can be found at  http://richardshakeshaft.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/young-adult-fiction-technology-reading.html 17 February, 2017

At the end of last October, in response to an enquiry, I blogged with a list of the YA novels I had been reading recently as part of my academic research. A week ago, at the NCRCL conference, I was asked the same question. This is therefore a list of the primary texts I have read in the intervening six months which are connected by the common thread of incorporating technology within their plots. In the main they have all been published in the last two years, so this is - at present - an remarkably up-to-date list of current YA novels in this genre. While my Amazon account has some yet-to-be-published novels listed in the current orders, I will doubtless list these at some point in the future.


The list is in no particular order and I have included only the briefest of descriptions against each title, but each image links to Amazon where fuller descriptions and reviews can be found (along with the obvious ability to do some shopping!)

	Soul Beach - Kate Harrison (2011) When the heroine receives an e-mail from her dead sister she assumes it is a sick practical joke, but then she receives an invitation to join an idyllic virtual reality world where she is able to talk to her sister again but discovers it is only inhabited by the young, the beautiful and the dead.
	Starters - Lissa Price (2012) Callie lost her parents when a virus attacked the Earth and then she lost what to her was home. In desperation she tried to raise money by participating in an illicit scheme whereby teenager bodies are leased to wealthy, but aged, renters. Finally, she loses her body too but she is determined to get it back.
	Monster Republic - Ben Horton (2010) An explosion in a nuclear power plant leads to a class of visiting teenagers being patched up with scavenged body parts and bionic implants to create an army of superhuman soldiers.
	The Future of Us - Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler (2011) Set in 1996, two teenagers access the Internet and discover a site called Facebook which shows them what their life will be like fifteen years in the future; they are duly able to see the implications of their teenage decisions on their adult lives.
	Unwind - Neal Shusterman (2008) Unwinding means the end of a teenager's life, but such unwanted individuals are kept alive for their body parts. Three runaways fight the system and for their right to their life.
	Gamerunner - B R Collins (2011) The Maze is a virtual reality game but one game does not allow the player to start again when they lose.
	Cinder - Marissa Meyer (2012) A retelling of the Cinderella story in which the eponymous Cinder is a gifted mechanic and cyborg.
	Matched - Ally Condie (2010) A dystopian society is controlled by technology and people's seventeenth birthday sees them given their perfect partner as dictated by society. Cassia's allotted partner turns out not to be the perfect match that society demands.
	0.4 - Mike Lancaster (2011) A teenager's account of a life-changing event has been transcribed from audio tapes and appear to reveal the history of a world in which technological obsolescence becomes personal.
	brainjack - Brian Falkner (2011) An extraordinarily skilled teenage hacker becomes involved in a world of espionage, intrigue and cybercrime when a remarkable hack grabs the attention of a secret government agency.

Pancakes and seventeenth-century music

Supermarkets and today’s secular culture make much of Pancake Day and it was doubtless celebrated with higher sales of sugar and lemon in the commercial world, and an array of experimental toppings in households up and down the country. I would like to think that lots of the pancake eaters know that they are really celebrating Shrove Tuesday, and that the pancakes offer them a simple way to use up foodstuffs which would not form part of the Christian’s Lenten fast that starts the following day.

Ash Wednesday now appears to be the poor relation of Pancake Day, even though there are people who continue to choose to give something up – often luxuries such as chocolate, cake or alcohol – between then and Easter in lieu of Jesus’ forty days’ fasting in the Wilderness. However, when all of the self-righteous abstemiousness is forgotten and the religious celebration of Ash Wednesday is considered, there is only one name on the lips of anyone who knows anything about cathedral music.

Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652) was a singer in the Papal Chapel for the final twenty or so years of his life, but he is only remembered for his setting of Psalm 51, the Miserere, which people know for containing a top C (two octaves above middle C) for a treble or soprano soloist. The composition is surrounded by mystique as rumour tells it was only performed in the Sistine Chapel and the ornamentation of the soloist’s part (in which the top C occurs), or abbellimenti, was never written down but passed from generation to generation of soloists. The other famous story that frequently accompanies the work is that Mozart supposedly wrote down the entire piece from memory having heard it sung at its annual performance in Rome; there is, apparently, no copy surviving in his hand though.

Although the top C is unlikely ever to have been written by Allegri, it is now firmly part of the piece’s mythology, and every year top Cs flood out of cathedral services up and down the country on Ash Wednesday. While those who know will expect to hear the Miserere sung, few are likely to give much of a thought to the soloist.

In the majority of the cathedral choirs, the top C will be sung by a young boy, probably aged around 11 or 12. Their chorister colleagues – probably numbering a further 17 at most – will speak about him doing the solo in reverent whispers, but his other contemporaries at school will have little idea what pressure has been placed upon him. The solo is technically and physically demanding and cannot readily be performed well by just anyone. To the soloist, this is equivalent to shooting the deciding penalty in a football match or a Masterchef contestant cooking a dish for a roomful or Michelin-starred chefs. But the soloist has to do it five times during the course of the piece.

A recent sound snippet of a rehearsal at Truro Cathedral indicates that their performance included a top E, and the edition we used at Lichfield Cathedral extended to a top D. The recording and I can testify that both instances were, respectively, achieved gracefully by the young singers.

Two hours before the service, the soloists would appear typical carefree youngsters, possibly out playing football, or stuck in lessons at school, but in the services they are living up to the demands of continuing a tradition and upholding the Miserere’s mystique some 400 years after it was written.

As a postscript, I must add that I know many other performances will have been given in which the soloist was a soprano. There is no way in which I want to undermine the work they will have had to put into their rendition, but I do feel there is a marked difference between a professional soprano (who has probably been an Oxbridge choral scholar and studied singing at music collage) and an eleven year old living up to the demands of the piece, and this should not be forgotten.

For people interested more detail about the Miserere, an excellent essay can be found at http://ancientgroove.co.uk/essays/AllegriBook.pdf. There is also a variety of performances available on YouTube for anyone who does not know the work.

Visiting Granada (in Spain, not the motorway services)

I wrote this blog post last summer after returning from Granada but never published it. Having just been asked by a friend about what to do in Granada, I felt I could do worse than sharing it in case anyone else is planning a trip there soon. Unlike TripAdvisor, these are all my own genuine and trustworthy opinions.

Rather than keeping receipts and scraps of paper, I thought a blog entry about Granada would be a helpful – for me at least – means of keeping the information about a visit which we certainly hope to repeat and which we would encourage anyone else to try too.

Having flown to Malaga we had a car booked with http://www.malagacarhire.com/, for whom it was necessary to take sterling to pay in cash, which worked out smoothly and only felt slightly dodgy. The drive to Granada took about 90 minutes, and it was only in the single-car’s-width one way streets that navigation and driving became a little more hectic.

However, we located our hotel - http://www.hotelalmenas.com/ - and its car park, and found a delightful family run hotel. The husband could speak very little English, but tried very hard and was very helpful, and the wife spoke less English than I do Spanish. Despite this, they could not have been more helpful throughout our stay and the room, costing just €50 (plus €14 for car parking) per night, was lovely; our booking was apparently upgraded, meaning we had a terrace.

As a self-confessed foodie, discovering Tapas bars was high on the agenda. However, it soon transpired that finding bars which serve free tapas with drinks (as is traditional) is not as easy as it should be. The only way in which it seemed possible to find out whether free tapas would be served is to go into the bar, order drinks and see what happens. Sadly, this makes for a dangerous game when you don’t strike lucky.

On the same road as Hotel Almenas, we found Casa Enrique which is a lovely old bar, but where, sadly, the tapas (and a super range of hams were on offer) is only sold. Nevertheless, the range of sherries and watching the barman work out our bill by writing the cost of each drink and the tapas we ordered in chalk on the bar and totalling it up (all upside down) helped make this an entertaining bar and worthy of a visit.

In our couple of nights there, the tapas bars we found which did serve free tapas (and I would suggest going in and sitting at the bar where you will find air-conditioned, smoke-free environments, unlike outside where you will be charged more for the privilege of sitting in the smoggy sun with other tourists) include Restaurante El Deseo (forget their menu, especially the daily specials), and Restaurante Oliver which are both close to the Cathedral; however, do not be taken in by the establishment a couple of doors down from Oliver offering the ‘finest homemade traditional tapas’: we could not leave there quickly enough.

The Cathedral is worth a quick visit even if just to marvel at the large print sixteenth century part books, or the head of John the Baptist sculpture. However, in the Cathedral’s environs, avoid the old women trying to thrust springs of rosemary into your hands: they are fortune tellers and should you not cross their palms with enough euros they will curse you. Knowing this made it quite cruelly entertaining to sit for a while watching people get accosted...

One tradition worth exploring is the teterías, or tea shops, in the El Albaicín area of the city. While wholly unlike the English tea shops, the Moorish tea shops offer a variety of aromatic herbal teas (the Pakistani tea with milk is the closest to an English cup of tea, and I use ‘close’ in the most generous sense of the word), and hookahs for their patrons’ delight.

Continuing the Arabic theme is the Hamman Baths (http://www.granada.hammamspain.com) which offer a very pleasant couple of hours’ soaking in your choice of hot, warm and cold water, a cooking in a steam room, and – should you choose the ‘Anadalus Ritual’ – a thorough exfoliation and massage given by people for whom the employer’s insurance liability (considering the range of water-related health and safety issues) must be gigantic.

A visit to the Alhambra is included as a must in all the guidebooks and while it is clearly a worthy attraction it is, by its very nature, very touristy. However, lots of the queuing can be avoided by booking tickets in advance at http://www.servicaixa.com/nav/en/mucho_mas/granada/recintos.html#recinto_09OZ where, for a general daytime visit, you pick morning or afternoon and within that specify a time to visit the Nasrid’s Palace. However, make sure you pick your tickets up at a la Caixa terminal (cash point) in town before you head to the Alhambra. It is simply a case of inserting the card with which you booked tickets and following the instructions. It is possible to walk to the Alhambra from town and going through the El Albaicin area of the city lets you discover some lovely churches and plazas, Spanish guitar players busking, and the mosque (if you time your arrival with their siesta driven opening times), but it is quite a long and uphill trek! There are some lovely views on the way, but the 30 or 32 bus from the Cathedral area at just €1.20 for a single felt the much more relaxed option.

The areas of the city we visited all had a lovely atmosphere; the people we spoke to were all friendly, the places we visited were all good, and we are already looking forward to facing the narrow one way streets with more confidence next time.

A Week in the Life: Saturday

Waking at 7.30am is a sure sign of it being half term. While my internal body clock seems to think six and a half hours' sleep is sufficient my brain does not want to agree. Nevertheless, after trying to get back to sleep I give up and have a pot of tea at 8.15am.

Sorting out the washing, checking e-mails, setting the video timer for the next week, eating a bowl of cereal, and generally pottering around takes me until 10.00am.

I seem to fill the morning with odd little bits of faffing until our friends arrive at 12.10pm. We have coffee and then at about 1.45pm we go out shopping for comestibles (including a sneaky lunchtime scotch egg from the butcher's) while our wives go to enjoy a massage in town.

We are home by 3.00pm having shopped leisurely at the butcher's and Waitrose, and duly spend a pleasant hour chatting about our lives, current affairs and some of those things that keep us pre-occupied in our working lives. Wives duly arrive home shortly before 4.00pm, and my wife then dives out to the Cathedral to sing as the Cathedral School's half term means that her choir is on duty.

We start preparing dinner at about 4.20pm and then leave home to walk down to the Cathedral to listen to Evensong shortly after 5.00pm. I always find it a little odd to be in the congregation for any act of worship, but there is also something more relaxing about feeling no responsibility for any part of the service.

Home after the service for gin, and a relatively simple supper of scallops with celeriac purée and black pudding, rack of lamb with dauphinois potatoes, and sticky toffee pudding.

A lovely evening of conversation, conviviality and cookery ensues, and as 12.30am rolls around, it is generally decided that it is bedtime. It is at this moment that I realise that I have to write today's blog.

1.00am appears and I have written and checked today's post; considering the five bottles that I put in the recycling bin a couple of hours ago, I acknowledge that it might still not be completely error free. While I know it is a shorter entry that the past few days, today has been a quieter, and more relaxed day, and I go to bed hoping not to wake before 9.00am.

A Week in the Life: Friday

After having turned my light off at 12.05am, it was somewhat annoying to wake at 6.06am and not be able to enjoy returning to any form of sleep before Jim Naughtie started discussing snow and football. The alarm duly went off and the morning routine fell into its usual pattern. Strange snow/ice combination on the car needed scraping, but relatively light traffic meant an 8.15am arrival at school.

8.50am - Registration: Year 12 Tutor Group. No notices today, but lovely to be able to congratulate a handful of students whose teachers felt that they had made an improvement since their report at the end of last term; thanks go to colleagues who did not just delete my e-mails asking for an update on my tutees' progress.

9.15am - Period 1: Year 11 English. The second of two lessons re-attempting another controlled assessment. During the hour I managed to mark three from last week and then collect in a further 27 to mark. I made it very clear that there was no way in which the essays would be marked by next week as my posthuman essay hangs in a Damoclean manner.

10.35am - Period 2: Year 8 English. In a moment of weakness, I had booked the hall for this lesson and the students have the opportunity to recreate an updated version of the Mechanicals' first appearance in A Midsummer Night's Dream. There were some fantastic performances (and my opinion was seconded by the Drama teacher who came in towards the end of the lesson to prepare for his next lesson).

11.35am - Period 3: Free. Marking another small sample of last week's controlled assessments. Also check with friends whether they will be arriving tonight (as was the original plan) or whether the weather has changed anything; they will now be with us for coffee tomorrow.

I manage to have lunch at 12.40pm and at 1.00pm I return to my room in an unsuccessful bid to tidy my desk. I do not refuse when offered a slice of birthday cake by one of the friends of a form member lunching there.

1.35pm - Period 4: Year 10 English Literature. We discuss a Vernon Scannell's Nettles which the group had been reviewing for homework and then spend time making connections between it and Simon Armitage's Nettles.

2.35pm - Period 5: NQT Meeting. We usually bring cakes to help us through our meeting, but my mentee is not in school this afternoon, so I take advantage of the staff (and sixth form) privilege of being able to leave at the end of period 4 and head home.

I arrive home at 3.10pm having had the second of the bi-weekly hands-free parental conversations and sit down with a cup of tea, Facebook, e-mails and little blog writing until 4.30pm when I feel compelled to open my posthuman essay and consider the next section.

I quickly realise that a Friday afternoon after work is not the best time to be trying to write. I therefore read through what I have written so far, making corrections and developing a couple of ideas which now seem to be presented in a somewhat brusque manner. My wife arrives home at 5.15pm; we have a cup of tea and then I return to the proofreading at 5.30pm.

At 5.45pm it is time to get ready to head to the Cathedral for tonight's recording instalment and I am charged with picking up fish and chips on the way home at 9.00pm.

The recording session is hard work and by 8.20pm everyone is flagging. Nevertheless, we somehow manage to get through to 9.00pm by which time we have apparently recorded enough to make a CD.

I eventually escape from the Cathedral and stop on the way home to pick up food, encountering an eight minute delay while the fish is cooked for us, and arrive home shortly before 9.30pm.

We enjoy supper and a bottle of wine to the accompaniment of some more television from weeks ago.

Washing up completed, bed calls at 11.30pm, with the tacet reminder that friends will be arriving in eleven hours' time.

A Week in the Life: Thursday

Radio. Alarm. Routine. At school at 8.05am.

In a manner not dissimilar to Tuesday, this morning's timings are all slightly altered to allow for this term's extended lunch during which a range of charity events will be held.

8.50am - Registration: Year 12 Tutor Group. Two notices this morning and then catching up with a couple of people before the bell.

9.00am - Period 1: Year 10 English. I model the planning process for their creative writing controlled assessment and speak to every student about their ideas for their piece. Official planning sheets all completed in preparation for the hour's writing straight after half-term..

10.15am - Period 2: Year 13 English Literature. Continuing work with the poetry collection and we hear mini-presentations on Browning, Dickinson and Rossetti.

Thursdays are the days on which I have all my frees timetabled in order to allow me to go to Cambridge for PhD seminars. However, because of tonight's recording I am obliged to save myself driving a two hundred mile round trip, and I have the opportunity to do some reading and add a few words to my posthumanism essay.

By 4.30pm my essay stands at some 2,740 words and my brain feels as if it has been clubbed with a hard club-shaped clubby thing (even helpful similes escape me), so it is clearly time for a break and a cup of tea. And the first bit of blog writing today.

Back to the computer at 4.55pm until my wife arrives home at 5.20pm. We get to catch up for a few minutes before I have to head out to the Cathedral for the recording session at 6.00pm.

From 6.00pm to 9.00pm we are in the Cathedral recording the first half of a CD that is intended to be a fund-raiser when it is released. It all seems to go well, but recording it a tiring process, both mentally and physically.

As the recording finishes, the Directors of Music kindly invite people to their house for food: having not eaten this evening, I gratefully receive a ladleful of beef stew and a glass of red wine.

I am back home at 9.55pm at which point I finish today's blog, check Facebook and e-mails and decide that I have finished for the day.

Bed and a book beckon at 10.10pm.

A Week in the Life: Wednesday

Today programme. Alarm. Usual morning routine. No ice and lighter traffic so at school at 8.10am enabling me to photocopy some bits and pieces for the next couple of days.

8.50am - Registration: Year 12 Tutor Group. Just one notice today and then Year 12 assembly. The headteacher surprises the assembled crowd by apparently eating cat food in a bid to make them consider the fact it is not what the outside looks like, but what is inside that counts. Doubtless the detail that they will remember is that the headteacher ate cat food and then wonder why.

9.15am - Period 1: Year 12 English Language and Literature. Finish reading The History Boys and start exploring character. Due to the smallness of the group, I find myself completing the sheet for the character I was reading in which will be photocopied along with all the students' for their notes.

10.35am - Period 2: Year 7 English. We finish the section in the text book (see yesterday) and then assess leaflets that Year 8 have created for which the target audience was Year 7; a range of marks and critical comments duly awarded to their seniors.

11.35am - Period 3: Year 11 English. The first of two lessons in which students have the opportunity to re-try writing the second of their controlled assessments. I watch in the sad knowledge that it will result in a further 27 essays for me to mark.

Lunch starts promptly at 12.35pm and sandwiches and chatting abound (as it is preferable to marking the controlled assessments which I am still carrying around with me and probably will continue to do so).

1.35pm - Period 4: Year 10 English Literature. We continue working on essay writing technique and looking at how to approach the comparative examination question. Lots of good feedback and practice paragraphs fill me with some confidence.

2.35pm - Period 5: Year 9 English. A quick round of You Say, We Pay (courtesy of Richard and Judy) starts the lesson in a fun way before we return to Romeo and Juliet's initial sonnet and consider the physicality of their words; from there we look at Juliet's prophetic closing lines. Five headlines to summarise the events of each scene in Act I and character profiles show that everyone has taken something away from the past three lessons.

At 3.35pm I leave school promptly and remember I need to get some petrol on the way home. Some £70 later, I get home, wade through the post, manage a cup of tea, and check e-mails and Facebook.

Evensong tonight is replaced by a rehearsal for the forthcoming recording, so I head to the Cathedral for 5.00pm and we have a 75 minute session dealing with some of the minutiae that is usually forgotten in the daily routine of having to sing a service.

After the rehearsal, mention of a quick drink is made. Having been very organised this week, I accept and enjoy a pint with three colleagues. Back home for 7.30pm, cook supper, wash up and at the computer for 8.45pm.

I download and print a work-in-progress paper by a member of the PhD group which I may end up critiquing tomorrow and turn to writing the bulk of today's blog. Then, before reading the paper, I sort out books in preparation for writing some more posthuman essay tomorrow afternoon and remember I agreed to copy a few tracks from a recording of a concert for someone. Sadly, the CD is not where I expect to find it. Nevertheless, I eventually find it and set about ripping the relevant tracks and creating a new CD.

At 10.05pm, when the CD is burnt, books organised, papers in slightly more organised piles and today's blog finished and checked, I decide it is time for a fractionally earlier night (or at least opportunity to read for a little longer in bed tonight).