Jonathan Savory (Bogata)
While I have by no means listed to all 77 hours of the McLean NIV audio Bible, I am confident that the quality and consistency are there to make this a product I will use freqently, year after year.

Pros: For the price of a hard-cover Bible, one can listen to every word, discovering new insight and truth from an oral teaching of the Bible. This audio bible can be very helpful in exposing oneself to difficult or more obscure books, psalms or passages. The orator is clear-speaking, well-paced and uses dramatic emphasis only where truly fitting. The layout of the disks makes finding the desired passage easy. Gentle backgound music is mixed at the correct volume and does not distract from the Word.

Cons: Although I am surprised at how much I enjoy the background music, a purist would surely find it unwelcome. There are very minor editing flaws such as repeated passages (I’ve only heard one, but been told of others). The audio quality (MP3 @ 64kbps, 22khz) is not perfect, but very good considering the limitations. Any translation of the Bible has its critics, the NIV not withstanding. Very breif introductions to the history and themes of each book would be very welcome but are missing.

I enjoy this product deeply, and cherish it as much as my favorite paper and ink copy of the Bible. I enjoy the ability to play the MP3s on any of my MP3-enabled devices, allowing for a new and very diverse range of times and places for Bible study. As the tagline says, it is simple in presentation, easy to use, and the production is not encumbered by melodrama, campy music or any other awkward artifice.

Jeannette Walls’s father always called her “Mountain Goat” and there’s perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents–Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls’s childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls’ removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents’ knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them–despite their overwhelming self-absorption–resonates from cover to cover. –Brangien Davis –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Nothing is clear–neither when the deaths occurred, nor where. Was the skull brought to the cellar or was the girl murdered there? Why is the boy’s body remarkably well preserved? Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans. They begin a witch hunt, intent on seeking revenge.

Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan–”five-five, feisty, and forty-plus”–is called in to investigate, and a complex and gripping tale unfolds in this, Kathy Reichs’s eleventh taut, always surprising, scientifically fascinating mystery.

With a popular series on Fox–now in its third season and in full syndication–Kathy Reichs has established herself as the dominant talent in forensic mystery writing. Devil Bones features Reichs’s signature blend of forensic descriptions that “chill to the bone” (Entertainment Weekly) and the surprising plot twists that have made her books phenomenal bestsellers in the United States and around the world.

Hunter Maxwell has suffered from the savagery of outlaws and the faithlessness of a woman. And he will trust no female – nor will he rest until the raiders who destroyed his family pay for their crimes.

A woman in need, a man in pain, in fury and fire they must now stand as one – to fight for something cherished, something lost…and for a passion neither dreamed could live.

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