There are some amazing women in my life. Smart, strong, confident … they bless my life in many ways. I especially admire women with the strength to laugh at themselves. To me that indicates a deep assurance.

So I wanted to like A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master” by Rachel Held Evans because I admire her blog so much. She’s witty, self-deprecating, and very smart. Besides, the idea behind the book — to live as the Bible commands women to live — sounded hilarious. I’ve long said to D’Aun that one reason I find men funnier than woman is that men are quick to make fun of themselves. I knew Evans would do the same, and she did, and it was very funny.

Unfortunately, I thought the book focused too much on that. It was too long on narrative and too short on substance. Evans was strong on humor and telling the stories, strong on making fun of herself as she struggled with recipes and attitudes, and strong on making fun of others who have a different viewpoint on womanhood.

But after a year of doing all kinds of crazy things, her conclusions seemed shallow and (to me) obvious. When a writer puts themselves out the way Evans did for a book, I expect the author to share something from the experience that will teach me. I want to know how it impacted her spiritually, how it changed her viewpoints, and how it altered her relationships. The book was weak on those points.

That’s not to say the book isn’t amusing and fun. Evans has a wicked wit, a clever way with words, and is an excellent writer. But all of that grows weary after several chapters because it is so laced with a self centered perspective. Like stringing a series of blog entries together, the redundancy grows old because it’s more about the writer than the lessons learned. It seemed a bit like reading a whole book of old Erma Bombeck columns.

All that said, I’m not a woman and I don’t suffer the indignity that Evans and other women do. Especially the indignity within organized religion. But I’m also not a single focus person, and neither are the women I know and love. Evans has written a book about one topic and only one topic: what it is like to be a young woman in the South from an Evangelical background.

What I wanted to hear in the book was more than the humorous stories of her struggling with ancient recipes or dressing in extremely modest clothing or sleeping in a tent during her period. What I wanted to hear is what she learned from the experience, how it impacts her view of the world around her, and how it must impact the lives of millions (billions?) of women around the world who HAVE to live this way. Tiny glimpses of that came through in the book — and when they did it was powerful. Sadly, they were infrequent.