2013 Books of the Year!

Winner for Best Book of the year...





This is Bryan M.'s 3rd Book of the Year win (Cat's Cradle and Me Talk Pretty One Day)

The winner for Worst Book of the Year goes to...

This is Erica S.'s 2nd Worst Book of the Year win (People of the Book)

atari.com/arcade

enjoy.

Atari Files For Bankruptcy

Surprisingly this story is from 2013 and not 1985

via CNN Money:

The U.S. arm of Atari, the iconic video game company that created "Pong," filed for bankruptcy on Monday.

But Atari will live on. The move is aimed at breaking the American branch away from its unprofitable French parent company.

In particular, Atari U.S. is looking to "secure independent capital for future growth, primarily in the areas of digital and mobile games," the company said in a written statement.

Over the next three to four months, Atari U.S. will seek buyers for some of its assets, including the Atari logo and the company's games catalog. Atari as a whole owns or manages more than 200 games and franchises.

The gaming landscape has changed dramatically since Atari was founded in 1972. Atari scored hits with groundbreaking gaming consoles and classic titles like "Pong," "Centipede" and "Asteroid," but later lost its dominance to rivals like Nintendo. The brand has bounced around through several different owners.

France's Infogrames Entertainment acquired a stake in Atari in 2000, then bought out the company in 2008 and changed its name to Atari S.A.

Since then, the rise of casual gaming on PCs and mobile devices has cut into the video game industry as a whole. Atari S.A. has been unprofitable for years, and warned just last month that it will book a "significant loss" for its fiscal year 2013.

The biggest headache for Atari S.A. is the suspension of its credit line with BlueBay Asset Management. Atari owes 21 million euro ($27 million) to BlueBay, with the balance due on March 31. The company says it is "starved for funds" and hasn't found another principal creditor to take BlueBay's place.

The New York-based U.S. arm wants to be free of its French baggage. Atari U.S. said it will "conduct its normal business operations" during the bankruptcy proceedings, and it's been approved for $5 million in debtor-in-possession financing from Tenor Capital, a firm that specializes in distressed lending.

January Book of the Month: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

After two previous appearances on Book of the Month ballots (losing out to Ender's Game and Bitter Seeds) Ready Player One has finally been chosen as the Book of the Month!



Description via goodreads.com:

It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune--and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved--that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt--among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life--and love--in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

Chat With Ernest Cline: Author of Ready Player One

The following is a chat held on goodreads.com with author Ernest Cline. Cline has gained recent notoriety for his novel Ready Player One (which has become a favorite of many PHBC members). From time to time goodreads will hold interactive chats with various authors. To see upcoming author chats you can go to their blog at http://www.goodreads.com/blog.

Watch live streaming video from goodreads at livestream.com