With three thousand books published daily—daily—in the U.S., there’s a lot of sand to sift in the hunt for gold. Last week Publishers Weekly chose 150 titles from the 6,000 it reviewed in 2007 (in print and online) and named them the top books for the year. (See “PW’s Best Books of the Year” by Staff, 11/5/07 ).

The PW categories were fiction, poetry, nonfiction, comics, religion, lifestyle and children’s. In the religion nonfiction category, Rob Bell’s Sex God (Zondervan) was one of 15 books chosen and the only book from an evangelical publisher (although Virginia Stem Owens, an evangelical, is also named for her Caring for Mother: A Daughter’s Long Good-Bye from Westminster John Knox). In the religious fiction category, Feeling for Bones by Bethany Pierce (Moody) and Quaker Summer by Lisa Samson (Thomas Nelson) got the nod.

 

Here are the titles from those two categories: 

Religious Nonfiction

After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the

 

Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow (Princeton)

 

American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion by Paul M. Barrett (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

 

Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy by Donald B. Kraybill, Steven

M. Nolt and David L. Weaver-Zercher (Jossey-Bass)

 

Caring for Mother: A Daughter’s Long Good-Bye by Virginia Stem Owens (Westminster John Knox)

 

Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite by D. Michael Lindsay (Oxford)

 

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now by James Kugel (Free Press)

 

The Integral Vision: A Very Short Introduction to the Revolutionary Integral

 

Approach to Life, God, the Universe and Everything by Ken Wilber (Shambhala)

 

A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas, and Life’s Big Questions by James Martin (Loyola)

 

The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus by Amy-Jill Levine (HarperOne)

 

Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know by Stephen Prothero (HarperOne)

 

A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (Harvard)

 

Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality by

Rob Bell (Zondervan)

 

The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West by Mark Lilla (Knopf)

 

Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Superbowl by Craig Harline (Doubleday)

 

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs (Simon & Schuster)

Religious Fiction

Feeling for Bones by Bethany Pierce (Moody)

 

Quaker Summer by Lisa Samson (Thomas Nelson)

 

Saving Erasmus by Steven Cleaver (Paraclete)

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