The James Logan Courier

By Yari Nieves-Rivera, Courier Book Editor

Imagine being separated from the only life you’ve known. Your brother, who was to accompany you, dies on the trip to your new lives, and leaves you alone to deal with the consequences. Imagine your mother leaving you because she’s afraid for your well being, with a couple you’ve never even heard of. Now, imagine that this was all happening in Nazi Germany.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak follows young Liesel, a girl who’s parents were communists; something you didn’t want to reveal in the days of Nazi Germany. At the age of ten, she’s taken to Molching, Germany, to stay with a foster family for the remainder of the war. There she meets unlikely friends. A boy who’s the perfect example of the Aryan race and wants to be like Jessie Owens, an African-American man who won the Olympics in running. She also makes an unlikely friend through her father’s need to help people, a boxer who would certainly be dead if found.

Forlorn little Liesel finds comfort in one thing: books. Any book. It all began on the day of her brother’s burial. She found a book in the snow as she walked away from his grave, and took it with her so that she would always remember her brother. Unfortunately, Liesel had never learned how to read or write. When her new papa finds the book under her mattress, he decides to teach Liesel how to read and write.

By Steve Giegerich
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MCT)

Warning: By Page 7 of the prologue, you may wish "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" were fiction and not, as it happens, a vividly real account of unimaginable squalor, deprivation and tragedy.
Keep reading, and don't be deterred.

Exquisite in every detail, this book about a slum in India informs the mind, elevates the soul and will leave you invested in the lives chronicled by one of the premier journalists of our time.
Hardscrabble represents upward mobility for the lives unfolding in Annawadi. A slum perched on the edge of the Mumbai airport, its trees' leaves are grayed by dust from a nearby concrete plant.

Its "lake" is putrid and contaminated.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Even when it was brand new, Sony's Playstation Portable left something to be desired. With the Nintendo DS finally coming into its own, the merits of having a touchscreen were plain to see. And for a system attempting to distill the console experience onto a handheld with nothing lost, the lack of a second analog stick crippled the PSP from day one.

Until technology comes along that allows us to control games with our minds, the Playstation Vita has no such problem. It supports the tried and true, with a full complement of buttons and two analog sticks. It has a capactive, multitouch-capable touchscreen that vastly outclasses Nintendo's resistive screen. It has an accelerometer for tilt control, a microphone for voice control and front and rear cameras for augmented reality. There's Internet via Wi-Fi and, optionally, 3G. With a capactive touch panel adorning the back of the device, there's even something brand new.

By Jack Bragg, Courier Editor-in-Chief

Every now and then an indie band will come along and break through to mainstream success. New Zealand Rockers, The Naked and Famous, have done just that with their debut album Passive Me, Aggressive You. The album utilizes a fantastic mix of synths, guitars, and eccentric rhythms that bring a unique and accessible feel to every song. All the while the band revolves around a male/female harmony in the vocals that lend an entirely unique sound to the album.

The album was recorded entirely in home studios and a local New Zealand studio called The Lab. The band consists of singers Thorn Powers (who also plays guitar for the group) and Alisa Xayalith (who also plays keys). The electronics are provided by Aaron Short who also produced the album. Drums and bass are covered by Jesse Wood and David Beadle respectively.

The leading track, “All of This” gives the album a good introduction, with a building sound that showcases the band’s male/female vocalist dynamic. “Punching in a Dream” can be heard on many local alternative rock stations and helps to highlight that bands heavy use of electronic sounds to make their music.

By Yari Nieves-Rivera, Courier Book Editor

This year, we were graced with yet another marvelous novel by author John Green. The Fault in Our Stars is a heart-wrenching story from the beginning, as it follows the sad life story of a terminal cancer patient, Hazel.

At the age of sixteen, and after three years of having thyroid cancer (that spread to her lungs, she meets and falls in love with a cancer survivor. Terminally ill, she has a bleak outlook on life. She sees herself as a grenade to those she loves, waiting to explode and destroy the lives of those around her. She only wishes that she doesn’t leave a scar on the world, one that would be too big and to bad to handle.

Then, Augustus waters arrives into her world, and tries to make things better for her. Continuously, he finds ways to make her feel about their situation. Since he had his leg amputated, he knows how hard it must be for her to always walk around with an oxygen tank. Both only teenagers, their parents can’t even begin to comprehend the pain that they go through every day. Even so, they find ways to make the situation optimistic for not only themselves, but those around them.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Though certainly a first-person shooter at its core, "The Darkness" may be remembered most fondly for the unique ways it applied thick layers of stealth, adventure gaming and a bold devotion to sink-or-swim immersion that no game since has quite captured. Playing "The Darkness" often felt like being a tourist in a new town — albeit one where a disproportionate percentage of the locals wanted to kill you.

Playing "The Darkness II," by contrast, feels like passing through as Godzilla. Jackie Estacado (that's you) is more powerful, the powers ingrained in him by the enigmatic force known as The Darkness are considerably nastier, and the game — set two years later and produced by a new developer — sheds most of those layers in favor of a straight sprint that's exhilarating and potentially dispiriting all at once.

By Candace Laxamana, Courier News Editor

Burger Urge is a burger joint located on Haight Street between Clayton and Ashbury Street in San Francisco. The ambiance of the restaurant is very spacious, clean and comfy. This place is usually packed during lunch because of the lunch type food they have, and on weekend mornings because they serve brunch.

It was my first time at Burger Urge. I stumbled upon it while taking a stroll down Haight Street. Once you walk in you notice how spacious and open the restaurant is. The windows cover about three fourths of the restaurant. You walk up to the clerk and make an order.

By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — Not surprisingly, the public's appetite for Whitney Houston's music erupted in the hours after she died Saturday in Beverly Hills, as more than 100,000 albums and nearly 900,000 individual tracks sold in a little over 24 hours.

The Nielsen SoundScan retail sales monitoring service reported that 91,000 digital albums and another 10,000 physical albums along with 887,000 digital tracks were sold by the close of the reporting period that ended Sunday night. Those numbers and new Billboard chart positions will be released on Wednesday.

By Yari Nieves-Rivera, Courier Staff Writer

In this dystopian novel, Divergent by Veronica Roth, the population of the city of Chicago is split into five factions. They all stand for the five human morals-- Dauntless (the Courageous), Abnegation (the Selfless), Candor ( the Honest), Amity (the Peaceful), and Euridite (the Intelligent). The novel begins in the point of view of Beatrice, a member of the Abnegation, going to take a test that will change the rest of her life. At the age of sixteen, citizens of Chicago are sent to take a ‘simulation test’ where they are given a choice--whether to stay in their faction, or move on to another one. Beatrice is given a choice like no other--whether to stay or to go to another faction and betray her family.

The novel bases itself around the life of this young girl, as she tries to overcome the limits that had been set to her before. She had been taught from a very young age to be selfless, to give to others instead of herself, and to not think about her own needs. Beatrice from the beginning knew that she didn’t belong in her faction, and had waited for the day of her test where they would tell her where she truly belongs. Sadly, it only makes her decision worse. With more options than the other people, she has to outweigh the consequences--to either leave her family, or move on to where she belongs--the Dauntless.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

After Capcom insulted 3DS owners last year with the laughably shallow and overpriced "Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D," you'd be forgiven for dismissing "Resident Evil: Revelations" as yet another thoughtless cash-in.

You'd be wrong, but you'd be forgiven.

To the contrary, and staggeringly so, "Revelations" is the real deal — a console-quality "Resident Evil" game that arguably surpasses the series' excellent recent console efforts, and a showcase piece for a system that may be more powerful than you'd figured.

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By Paul Tran, Courier Staff Writer

The fourth and final book of Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle, commonly known as the Eragon series, appropriately titled Inheritance, was recently released in November of 2011. As a fan and long-time follower of the series, it was an instant read for me.

With colorful descriptions of exciting action scenes and suspenseful plot twists, it was fairly decent as far as fantasy novels go. The book was tediously thick,a whopping 839 pages from the first book’s 528. It was also disappointing to Eragon fans in many areas, it unfortunately wasn't a satisfying book.

A large problem, and one of my pet peeves, was the book’s the long periods of dull and boring conflict. Until approaching combat with the almighty Galbatorix, no major battles occur between any of the characters. Much of the fighting consists of pages describing the senseless slaughter of common soldiers. Though another “boss” exists in the form of Eragon’s half brother Murtagh, direct battle, though it constantly feels imminent, never commences.