Bartlett Publishing has put together several lists of books available from many various publishers which are essential reading for anyone interested in the topic. Check them out today!
You can view the articles from the blogs which preceded these at the following URLs:
Over at Ancient Hebrew Poetry there is a fascinating conversation going on about hermeneutics and the "plain sense" meaning of scripture. The context is a post about complementarianism/egalitarianism, but I found the general conversation in the comments about the "plain sense" meaning to be much more interesting.