When is a book not a book?

I have to admit I'm a little confused. The Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association announced their 2008 Christian book of the year. There are six categories, and one is declared to be the Christian book of the year, based on "editorial excellence and sales achievement." And the winner is...

The Bible.

No problems there, you think (although it might make the acceptance speech very boring (if you privilege human authorship - no one would turn up) or very exciting (if you privilege divine authorship - maybe a podium that burned but was not consumed?)). But it's not the fact that the Bible won that confused me (although you'd probably think it should win every year if the award is based on 'editorial excellence and sales achievement'. It was the type of Bible that won. For it wasn't any normal Bible, but an audio Bible. You can buy/see it here.

My confusion is that a book didn't win the Christian book of the year award. A CD did. Now of course I'm all for talking Bibles - I've given them away, I've listened to them myself. But I just wonder what it's saying about the state of Christian publishing, and an overall attitude to books and their place in the Christian's life, when a book doesn't win the book of the year award.

But it does open up some possibilities. Maybe Church Dogmatics on CD (for insomniacs). The difficulty would be finding a good Swiss/German accent: ''Dogmatics iz a theological discipline..."

Dead Sexy

I know this isn't going to float many of your boats, but Ben Myers has just reviewed Barth's Church Dogmatics digital edition. Find it here. That's right - digital edition. With this bad boy the latin and german phrases are translated (but who really needs that!); you can annotate the text and make your own comments; and the dogmatics are fully integrated into the Logos software system - that means you can cross reference Barth with himself (where else he mentions a certain text), with significant commentaries, the TDNT, etc. as well as searching the 6 million words themselves for where Barth mentions regula fidei, etc. And at a pre-publication price of only US$500, its worth the kidney that you'd have to give up for it. This is hot. Smokin' hot. Hotter than extra tobasco on a Nelson's special hot. So hot it, well, you get the picture.