The James Logan Courier

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

Black Swan Green: A Novel by David Mitchell
Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Random House (April 11, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400063795
ISBN-13: 978-1400063796

From RandomHouse.com:
From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

Black Swan tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran Lps, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

By Rick LaPlante, New Haven Schools Public Information Officer

The Board of Education on Tuesday night received a presentation explaining how test results are being used to guide and direct instructional practices and to help answer the critical question: “How will we know when students have learned what we want them to know?”

Alberto Solorzano, principal at Cesar Chavez Middle School, discussed his school’s plan to create SMART goals: strategic and specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented and time-bound. CCMS teacher and curriculum leader Amity Defaii told the Board how she and fellow teachers work in collaboration to use the California Standards Test Planning Guide to pinpoint student needs.

LUNCH: Cheeseburger, Milk, Fresh Fruit, Fun Chips

ACTIVITIES:
Jostens will be here tomorrow at lunch in Colt Court and Saturday from 9-ll am in front of the school.

Are you an Honors student? Want to be a lawyer? Come to the UOP Pre-Law presentation on Friday, October 12. Sign up in the Career Center.

Open Field for boys soccer is on Tuesdays after school on the North Fields. See Coach Sills in Room 73 for more information.

By Stevenson Swanson
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

NEW YORK — The story seemed like a surefire hit for children. A pair of penguins take care of an egg that isn't theirs and then raise the baby penguin, after it hatches, as their own.

How heartwarming. And who doesn't love penguins?

Plenty of parents, it turns out, when both penguin parents are male.

That plot twist earned "And Tango Makes Three" the distinction of being the most-challenged book of 2006, according to the Chicago-based American Library Association, which compiles an annual list of titles that have been the subject of efforts to have them removed from public and school libraries.

By Karen Mui, Courier Staff Writer

New World Literature Teacher Nhan Trinh is settling in to his new job and adjusting to a high school that's not much like his alma mater in Kansas.

As a World Literature teacher for seniors, Trinh's teaching schedule consists of three classes a day: 1st, 2nd, and 4th periods. Though he is a new teacher here at Logan, he certainly is not a novice at what he does.

Starting in about 1994, he has taught on-and-off for about 13 years in total. During these years, he has taught World Literature, American Literature, Poetry, Vietnamese Translation, as well as various other classes involved with the English language.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service (MCT)

Here are the best-sellers for the week that ended Saturday, Sept. 22, 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 NONFICTION
1. The Age of Turbulence. Alan Greenspan. Penguin Press, $35
Last Week: -; Weeks on List: 1
2. If I Did It. The Goldman Family. Beaufort Books, $24.95
Last Week: 8; Weeks on List: 2
3. The Secret. Rhonda Byrne. Atria/Beyond Words, $23.95
Last Week: 2; Weeks on List: 38
4. Louder Than Words. Jenny McCarthy. Dutton, $23.95
Last Week: -; Weeks on List: 1
5. Power to the People. Laura Ingraham. Regnery, $27.95
Last Week: 3; Weeks on List: 2
6. Giving. Bill Clinton. Knopf, $24.95
Last Week: 1; Weeks on List: 3
7. The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About. Kevin Trudeau. Alliance Publishing, $24.95
Last Week: 4; Weeks on List: 16
8. The Nine. Jeffrey Toobin. Doubleday, $27.95
Last Week: -; Weeks on List: 1
9. The Heroin Diaries. Nikki Sixx. Pocket, $32.50
Last Week: -; Weeks on List: 1
10. The War. Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns. Knopf, $50
Last Week: 7; Weeks on List: 2

By Wendy Solomon
The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) (MCT)

A gritty urban landscape peopled with gangstas, prostitutes and ex-cons has been fodder for much of rapper 50 Cent's music career, from his record-breaking debut album "Get Rich or Die Tryin," and "The Massacre" to last week's release, "Curtis."

But now the rapper is mining the same fertile underworld as he tries his hand at fiction and book publishing in a controversial genre called street lit.

The rapper's imprint, G Unit Books, in cooperation with MTV/Pocket Books, has recently published novels bearing titles such as "Harlem Heat," "Derelict" and "Blow." His next book, "Heaven's Fury," co-written by Meta Smith, is due out in November.

From wikipedia:
Langley Collyer (October 3, 1885 – March 1947) and Homer Lusk Collyer (November 6, 1881 – March 21, 1947) and were two American brothers who became famous because of their snobbish nature, filth in their homes, and compulsive hoarding.

The brothers are often cited as an example of compulsive hoarding associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as disposophobia or Collyer brothers syndrome, a fear of throwing anything away. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely-seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue (at the corner of 128th Street), in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items, with booby-traps set up in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders.

Both were eventually found dead in the Harlem brownstone where they had lived as hermits, surrounded by over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades.

http://www.squalorsurvivors.com/stories/famous.shtml