The James Logan Courier

By Jim Farber
New York Daily News (MCT)

Sustaining a pop career is like storming Normandy Beach on D-Day — all by yourself. Every time artists release some music, they're besieged by the industry's equivalent to heavily armed soldiers (i.e. unsympathetic radio programmers, fickle consumers and cutthroat competing artists), all firing bullets that could end their career at any moment.

Never is this peril greater than in the fall. That's when the heaviest guns come out (i.e., the most starry competition), making the potential for failure that much more common — and public.

Note: Each week during the school year, The Courier spotlights books newly arrived, or expected to arrive, in the James Logan Media Center.

Samurai Shortstop by Alan M. Gratz
Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Dial (May 18, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0803730756
ISBN-13: 978-0803730755

From the publisher:
Tokyo, 1890. Toyo is caught up in the competitive world of boarding school, and must prove himself to make the team in a new sport called besuboru. But he grieves for his uncle, a samurai who sacrificed himself for his beliefs, at a time when most of Japan is eager to shed ancient traditions. It’s only when his father decides to teach him the way of the samurai that Toyo grows to better understand his uncle and father. And to his surprise, the warrior training guides him to excel at baseball, a sport his father despises as yet another modern Western menace.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

Here are the best-sellers for the week that ended Saturday, Aug. 18, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

(Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by Cahners Publishing Co., a division of Reed Elsevier, USA. (c) 2007 by Reed Elsevier, USA)

HARDCOVER FICTION
1. A Thousand Splendid Suns. Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead, $25.95
Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 13
2. Play Dirty. Sandra Brown. Simon & Schuster, $26.95
Last Week: –; Weeks on List: 1
3. Force of Nature. Suzanne Brockmann. Ballantine, $21.95
Last Week: –; Weeks on List: 1
4. The Quickie. James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge. Little, Brown, $27.99
Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 7
5. The Secret Servant. Daniel Silva. Putnam, $25.95
Last Week: 5; Weeks on List: 4
6. Loving Frank. Nancy Horan. Ballantine, $23.95
Last Week: –; Weeks on List: 1
7. The Tin Roof Blowdown. James Lee Burke. Simon & Schuster, $26
Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 5
8. Sandworms of Dune. Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson. Tor, $27.95
Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 2
9. Spook Country. William Gibson. Putnam, $25.95
Last Week: 6; Weeks on List: 2
10. Devil May Cry. Sherrilyn Kenyon. St. Martin's, $19.95
Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 2

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

"BIOSHOCK"
For: Xbox 360 and PC
From: Irrational Games/2K Games
ESRB Rating: Mature (blood and gore, drug reference, intense violence, sexual themes, strong language)

"Bioshock's" supreme greatness comes down to three factors, each of which could fill this review's space and then some in its own right.

Factor No. 1: variety. In terms of weapon selection alone, "Bioshock" is a terrific first-person shooter, boasting a healthy roster of guns and drastically different ammo types for each. All weapons are upgradeable, and you can craft special ammo from junk littered throughout the game world.

By John Mark Eberhart
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)
No entertainment is so cheap as reading," British writer Lady Mary Wortley Montague wrote two centuries ago, "nor any pleasure so lasting."

Book lovers would argue nothing has changed. Reading requires no Internet connection, no cell phone, hardly a chair.

And now autumn looms, and with it the annual harvest of new books. Here are a few.

QUOTABLE FALL TITLES
"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily. Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it. My mother's core was rotten like the brackish water at the bottom of a weeks-old vase of flowers." — "The Almost Moon" by Alice Sebold, author of "The Lovely Bones." "Moon" will be published Oct. 16.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

MADDEN NFL 08
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
Also available for: Every system imaginable
From: Tiburon/EA Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone

The annual arrival of "Madden" is video gaming's answer to New Year's Day — the opening float in a parade of blockbuster games that runs, non-stop, until after the holidays.

For the first time in three years, it's also a day worth celebrating. After a pair of glitchy and/or feature-starved false starts, "Madden NFL 08" finally (mostly) delivers the kind of next-generation football that owners of next-generation hardware have wanted all along.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

"NCAA FOOTBALL 08"
Reviewed for: Xbox 360
Also available for: Playstation 3, Playstation 2, Xbox
From: Tiburon/EA Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone

When it premiered on the Xbox 360 last year, "NCAA Football 07" made waves, but for all the wrong reasons. Grievances ranged from the omission of features from last-generation versions to a framerate that was slow and occasionally prone to choppiness.

What a difference a year makes. Not only has Tiburon righted the framerate on the 360, it's perfected it — to the tune of a gorgeous (and very fast) 60 frames per second that even untrained eyes will recognize at first sight. (The Playstation 3 version runs at only 30 frames per second, but it's entirely playable, if not nearly as drool-worthy, if the 360 version isn't an option.)

Reviewed by Hassina Obaidy, Courier Staff Writer

The spy thriller trilogy which began with The Bourne Identity ends as Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) continues his journey in finding his true identity while suffering from amnesia, in The Bourne Ultimatum.

Bourne is an assassin trained by Treadstone, a codename for a government organization. While searching for answers to who he is, Bourne tracks down a journalist named Simon Ross (Padey Considine) who knows everything about Jason Bourne and Treadstone. This is rather inconvenient for U.S. govenrment official Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) who hopes to start a new organization under the codename Blackbriar, following in Treadstone's mold. Then, Vosen sends agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) to search for Bourne and Ross before they can learn the program's disturbing secrets.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

"ALL-PRO FOOTBALL 2K8"
For: Xbox 360 and Playstation 3
From: Visual Concepts/2K Sports
ESRB Rating: Everyone 10+ (mild language)

It's been a dark three years for "NFL 2K" fans, who watched their beloved game franchise die a premature death after the NFL granted exclusive licensing access to EA Sports. "NFL 2K5" remains in heavy rotation online, and many gamers cling to the hope that the NFL will change course once the exclusivity deal expires.

In the meantime, 2K has shaken off the rust and produced "All-Pro Football 2K8," which replaces the NFL license with a semi-fictional football universe that includes nearly 250 faces from the league's past.

Reviewed by Jamie Maxfield, Courier Staff Writer

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Reading level: Young Adult
Hardcover
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books; 1st edition (July 21, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0545010225
ISBN-13: 978-0545010221


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a dazzling story full of twists and turns that never end. It will have you hooked from the first page to the last word. Being the final book in the series of seven, it reveals many secrets and answers to some of the most anticipated questions throughout this epic tale.

Harry and his two companions, Ron and Hermione, make the decision not to return to Hogwarts for their final year of school. Instead they decide to embark on a dangerous mission to kill the Dark Lord, Voldemort. The fearsome Death Eaters plan to capture Harry on the night of his seventeenth birthday, the same night that Harry is supposed to leave his family, the Dursleys, and his house on Privet Drive for the last time.