Curiously, I'd never heard of Ms. Doniger until I saw an article in the NYTimes about her involvement in a mini-controversy; some folks are apparently upset that a white woman is such an expert in Sanskrit religious texts and their interpretation. Immediately I bought a couple of her titles, and I've flown through half of The Implied Spider in two hours. Exquisitely written, witty, erudite, and unafraid to mix pop-culture references into discussions of the Bagavata Purana. She tackles big questions here: how to define myth, how to study myth, how to compare mythologies, and her examples are challenging and very enlightening.

We are always in danger of drawing our own eye, for we depict our own vision of the world when we think we are depicting the world; often when we think we are studying an other we are really studying ourselves through the narrative of the other.

--Wendy Doniger, The Implied Spider, p. 11