iMac, iPod, iTunes -- what could be next? The iNovel. With these "i"s ever-infiltrating more aspects of life, we knew it had to be coming. However, this one is no brainchild of Apple but of a rising novelist from, yep, ours truly. With The Song is You Arthur Phillips has written, as the Chicago Tribune put it, "The great American iPod novel."

Music is a sensation difficult to put into words; a feat that Phillips successfully tackles throughout all 250 pages. The novel commences on the dwindling final notes of a failed marriage and picks up speed as a young Irish songstress reignites the melody, and life, in the protagonist Julian. An unlikely courtship harmonizes through mysterious flirtations across every type of communication, except actual human-to-human contact. Phillips weaves the story in a song of witty warbles, quirky metaphor-strewn lyrics, and faulted but endearing characters.

Despite being set in New York City, The Song Is You is littered with hints of Phillips' Minnesotan beginnings -- a First Ave concert, a Jewish Jeopardy! contestant from St. Louis Park. Philips himself was born in Minneapolis in 1969 and attended the Blake School before going off to that little place called Harvard. From there he tried his hand at a slew of professions and even had some luck on Jeopardy! before finding his true calling with words. The Song Is You comes on the tail of three other highly-applauded novels: Angelica, The Egyptologist and Prague.

Joining the ranks of the Minnesota greats - Sinclair Lewis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Arthur Phillips has us thinking that his "iNovel" might be the last of the "i"s to become obsolete.