I mentioned in a previous post how much I like Amazon.com. Well, I just noticed another thing I love about amazon, but forgot to mention. Yesterday I wrote a brief post about Dan Kimball’s book They Like Jesus But Not the Church. In that post I mentioned that I noticed some connections between They Like Jesus and UnChristian by Kinnaman and Lyons. To be honest, I was thinking to myself as I wrote it, this is pretty perceptive… way to make these astute observations (patting myself on the back as I think this)…

But this morning I brought amazon up on a tab, and noticed that They Like Jesus is the most recent book I have viewed. It said “What do customers buy after viewing this item?” 68% buy They Like Jesus But Not the Church, 16% buy UnChristian, and 6% buy Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren. I love the way amazon is constantly connecting you to other books that are out there. And it just so happens to be genius on their part because it means they are constantly encouraging (tempting?) you to buy more books! (By the way, this also was a humbling experience because it thoroughly demonstrates that connecting They Like Jesus with UnChristian is an obvious connection that many people are making. So, sorry for my banal observations yesterday…)

I love amazon.com. I know I am a pawn in their evil consumerist schemes, but I find myself using amazon.com more and more. Here are some of the things I like about amazon.com.

• Great prices on new books and if you spend more than $25 the shipping is free.
• Excellent inventory and a centralized place to find books to link to in blog posts.
• The way that you can use it as a research tool for books in an area. When you look up one book that you know is a good example of what is out there on a certain topic, amazon will list several other books that are related. Of course they do this in the hopes that you will buy even more books, and I sometimes do! But I have found it to be a very helpful way to get quick general surveys of the literature available on a certain topic.
• The ability to create a wish list to keep track of books that I want to read in the future. You can rank each book based on the priority level that you want to read it. The rationale for this is similar to the rationale for using del.icio.us, because you can have access to it anywhere you can get on a computer. Plus, other people can find your amazon wish list and buy stuff for you. If you want to see an example of a wish list, or keep up with the books that I am interesting in reading at some point you can check out my amazon wish list here.

What about you? Are there any other uses that you have found for amazon.com or sites like it?

Full disclosure: Amazon.com did not pay me any money to write this post. (But if anyone from amazon.com out there wants to send me a gift card, I would definitely be open to that!)