I know it’s been a month since I last announced a new series, but now I’m at it again. I haven’t forgotten about Genesis, far from it. Just check out my Goodreads recent reads and you’ll see. I’ll circle back to my thoughts there as I get back into the habit of regularly writing.
As I do that, I’ve tried to think about a way to work through the reviews of books I need to publish. You know, beyond just doing it haphazardly one book at a time. Or, lumping multiple books together in a kind of rapid fire recent reads post (I’ll actually probably do that, come to think of it). I’ve read a few books that are in the same series, and some books that fit together topically well. I’ve also read more books by women than I usually do in the past 18 months.
Now here’s the part where I try to avoid the Scylla of being sexist and the Charybdis of being condescending.
Typically speaking, I don’t care about the gender of the author of the book I’m reading. I tend to pick books based on a) subject matter and b) author’s reputation. In theological and biblical studies, this often entails reading books written by men, who are generally assuming they are writing to other men, even if that has no bearing on the presentation of the material (e.g. a biblical theology of whatever). It is to a certain extent, a statistical issue. If you read a lot of books in that field, most of them will be written by men because they’re writing most of the books.
When women do publish in this arena, I the prevailing stereotype is that women write books for other women, and they are generally fluffy and emotional and other derogatory terms that male book reviewers might use. This may be because there are more books at the popular level written by women for other women (I just saw one imploring other girls to wash their face). Those books I think give the other thoughtful women who are writing books a bad rap. I mean Joel Osteen has people ghost write books for him and it doesn’t tarnish the image of other pastors who have people ghost write books for them does it?
But I digress…
Over the course of the next several Wednesday’s, I’m going to work my way through telling you about the stack of books you see pictured. These books are books I was interested in because of a) the subject matter and/or b) the author’s reputation. Some of them are first time authors, others are second and third forays into publishing. A couple are revised Ph.D dissertations and so are not fluffy, nor emotional (not that I expected either).
A few of them I have not actually read yet. But, the ones I have generally exceeded my initial expectation of a well written book that covers its subject matter and provokes me to think deeper or better about a given topic. And so, to fight the stereotype, I thought I’d make it a point to feature these fine works of biblical studies and theology. I’ve found them challenging, practical, and thought provoking, and hopefully you’ll find them the same if you choose to take and read!