The podcast is after the jump. As part of the rollout they also have a book giveaway for one of the 4 new books featured on this month’s show – Rosanne Cash’s Composed, Maile Meloy’s Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, Doug Dorst’s The Surf Guru or Sloane Crosley’s How Did You Get This Number.

So let’s keep this simple.  Leave a comment below and tell me why you want to read one of the four books listed. I will pick a comment using the random number generator and announce the winner. Please leave a comment by Thursday.

Publishers Weekly

A serviceable hero and plot propel this largely workmanlike thriller from Larsen (Stealing Trinity). Tough, uncompromising National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jammer Davis attempts to uncover the cause of a mysterious crash of the brand new CargoAir C-500, a flying-wing cargo plane operating under fly-by-wire technology. Meanwhile, a series of terrorist suicide attacks threatens oil facilities around the world. Jammer, aided by his semi-love interest, CIA agent Anna Sorensen, will stop at nothing as he bulls his way through bureaucratic obstruction, inept and corrupt officials, hired killers, and problems at home with his teenage daughter, Jenny. Eventually, he gets on the trail of a far larger plot involving a cabal of international businessmen out for economic gain. Larsen ties up all his loose ends nicely, and a nail-biter conclusion finally heats up the action.

Publishers Weekly

Some twists and turns in Hoffman’s stand-alone thriller may leave readers scratching their heads, but the suspense ratchets up to such a high pitch that most will keep flipping pages till the end. Coincidentally, the 16-year-old daughter of Bobby Dees, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) special agent supervisor, a leading expert on discovering the fate of missing children, has been gone without a trace for almost a year. But that doesn’t keep Bobby from being one of the best at his job. His immediate concern is the fate of 13-year-old Lainey Emerson, who’s in the hands of a sadistic serial kidnapper known as “Picasso” for his bizarre depictions of his victims delivered to TV reporter Mark Felding. While Picasso taunts Bobby, Felding turns up the media heat on the investigation. Hoffman (Plea of Insanity) paints a scary picture of sexual predators, vulnerable teens, and the shared hunting ground/playground that the Internet provides.

During the summer our church has a Sunday school class that consists of various members presenting book reviews.  It is a good way to deal with vacations and yet still present good material and engender discussion.

One of the books covered was The Barbarian Way: Unleash the Untamed Faith Within by Erwin Raphael McManus. Knowing this was the case when I saw it at Half-Price Books I grabbed a copy.

It was a quick read and an interesting perspective. But despite some good insights and a lively style the book never really delivers the punch I expected.

Here is the publisher’s blurb:

Erwin McManus wasn’t raised in a Christian home, so when he came to Christ as a college student, he didn’t know the rules of the “religious club.” He didn’t do well in Shakespeare courses, so he didn’t really understand the KJV Bible he was given either. But he did understand that prayer was a conversation, and he learned to talk to God and wait for answers. Erwin’s way was passionate and rough around the edges-a sincere, barbaric journey to Christ.

Barbaric Christians see Jesus differently than civilized Christians. They see disciples differently, and they see Christ’s mission differently. The Barbarian Way is a call to escape “civilized” Christianity and become original, powerful, untamed Christians-just as Christ intended.

The problem I had was that reading that second paragraph basically covers the book. I never felt like McManus took it deeper. He made a good case that human nature always steers toward safety, complacency, and rationalization – and that this is the opposite of what it means to be a Christian.

But what he doesn’t do very well to my mind, is flush out more deeply how this plays itself day to day in your life. The attitude and perspective is there but the insight into what that means below the surface isn’t. Granted it is a 150 page book but I was still looking for a little more.

Still, Christians and churches would do well to think about whether their faith calls them to comfort and safety or whether it calls them to a life of radical commitment that eschews comfort for sacrifice and rejects safety for dependence on God.

Publishers Weekly

Hoffman’s middling debut explores the darker side of open adoption, as seen through the eyes of Chloe Pinter, a young social worker at a Portland, Ore., adoption agency. Juggling the insecurities of the wealthy and infertile Francie and John McAdoo with the increasingly strident demands of the contracted and impoverished birth parents, Penny and Jason, Chloe starts to question her own beliefs and motivations. When Chloe sees that Penny has bought a basinet, she warns the McAdoos that the adoption might not go through, inadvertently setting off a chain of events that eventually puts a newborn in danger’s path. Hoffman seems to want the reader to understand the dilemma of birth parents confronted with the need to give up a child, but Penny and Jason and their family are too damaged and destructive to elicit any empathy, and the McAdoos, on the other end of the class spectrum, never fail to fall into stereotype. There is a whisper of a solid story about the way poverty, yearning, opportunity, and loss can play out, but with characters so weakly realized, it’s tough to see this as anything more than a good-intentioned but inexpert exercise.

Publishers Weekly

Insects are social creatures, perhaps even more social—in the strict scientific sense—than humans since they lack such socially obstructing attributes as ego, personality, and opinion. Miller, senior editor at National Geographic, examines hives, mounds, colonies, and swarms, whose complex systems of engagement and collective decision making have catalyzed innovations in engineering and can suggest solutions to such problems as climate change. The sophisticated system of decentralized interdependence exhibited by termites invites a lesson on how to respond to emergencies, while the chemical-based communications among African ants helped officials at Southwest Airlines define their seating policy. Insects, birds, and fish variously demonstrate the plausibility and success of disorganization leading to self-organization and leaderless processes. Adding understanding to the dark side of group dynamics and, inevitably, mob behavior is the study of locusts, innocuous until they become part of a crowd. Miller informs, engages, entertains, and even surprises in this thought-provoking study of problem making and problem solving, and through the comparison of human and insect scenarios, shows how social cues and signals can either bring about social cooperation or destruction.

Publishers Weekly

McFarland’s less than assured debut introduces TV camerawoman Lilly Hawkins, who knows her job at KJAY in Bakersfield, Calif., could hinge on how she covers a middle-of-the-night murder. What she doesn’t realize until all the rough stuff starts is that her life might depend on it as well. That the tape she took at the crime scene appears to be blank doesn’t deter the bad guys from vying to get their hands on it–or, failing that, Lilly herself. Among them are the pair of crooked cops she suspects may be working for Leland Warner, megabucks owner of the orchard where the victim was found, and Tom Sinclair, Warner’s scuzzy son-in-law. McFarland, herself a former “shooter” for a Bakersfield TV station, nails the newsroom as well as her feisty, funny accidental sleuth, but she’s less adept at pacing. One hopes she’ll rely less on exposition and more on action to tell her story in Lilly’s next outing.