Wow! What a great book: The Word in Place almost incites me to hyperbole. My copy is already marked (in pencil) in many places, with a page full of referenced notes, also in pencil, at the front. This may seem desecration to the ardent bibliophile, but I want to use and re-use the contents. Reading the book has also left me with a list of ‘must-reads’ from the bibliography – but has not equipped me with requisite ‘must-have time’… This book has many facets, but one which particularly resonated with me was the ‘reading with different eyes’ and in different ways, so that ‘polyphonic voices from past and present and different environments are heard together on equal terms’ (p.24) The chapter on reading with the Deaf church left me feeling humbled, as their very different voice seems to have been unheard, unseen and suppressed. The Bible in Contextual Readings seems freed to be looked at with fresh eyes and an informed mind, aware of ones own cultural context and the effect this will have on the reading. This comment implies ‘freed from’ and I am aware that all types of reading cannot help but be grounded in the culture of the reader, but this method seems to offer freedom from prescribed ways of reading which only value certain approaches and suppress others. This challenges assumptions which we can hold without realising that we are holding such assumptions!