Amazon offers a bewildering range of ways of plugging a book. You can write reviews, compile lists and run blogs pushing your friends and their books. Now you only have to post a review of a book, or make a list of favourite books and you are rewarded with your own Amazon homepage. It is a formidable way of taking people who are looking at one book by the elbow and conducting them towards another one.
Most academics have better things to do than thinking out book lists for Amazon, but I don’t, and I found Al Kimel (Pontifications) and David Yeago (Pro Ecclesia luminary) offering very useful lists of recommendations for students there. Al Kimel is a Jenson and Torrance fan, though he keeps Pontifications readers on a diet of J H Newman. David Yeago offers Readings in the Christian Theological Tradition and Personal Enthusiasms in 20 Century Theology.
Telford Work is also very good at book lists. His site is a model of what can be done to help students find the right titles and learn what is expected of them. His pep talks to students about reading, learning, writing essays and plagiarism are so good I would copy them without qualm, were it not that I know he would catch me.
But I am encouraging poor habits in you. Get back to your books. Whether late at night or first thing in the morning, it is for reading the bible, not skimming the internet.
