Something just happened to me similar to something Queen Victoria is said to have experienced! Really?

There’s a famous story involving Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland. His real name was Charles Dodgson, a mathematician. Here’s a paragraph from his bio on Wikipedia:

The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson’s life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego “Lewis Carroll” soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice in Wonderland so much that she commanded that he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.

This story may not be true, but something similar just happened to me. I read (on Kindle, of course) a marvelous book on creation by John Lennox:

John Carson Lennox (born 7 November 1943) is a Northern Irish mathematician, philosopher of science, Christian apologist, and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford University. He is also Pastoral Advisor of Green Templeton College and Fellow of Wycliffe Hall. – From the author’s bio on Amazon.

John’s book Seven Days that Divide the World is a marvel. I highly recommend, especially if you’re wondering if someone strongly committed to the authority of scripture can avoid getting caught up in “young earth”/”old earth” controversy and whether or not God created the world in six 24-hour days.

Not long after I read the book, when I opened my Kindle, it presented me, as it always does, with a recommendation for a book it thinks I might like:

The Theory of Infinite Soluble Groups by…you guessed it, John Lennox. Now I am a mathematician, and I know what “groups” are, but I don’t know and don’t care to know anything about “infinite soluble groups.” By the way, Dr. Lennox has written other books that I would be interested in. For example, Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix?, but Kindle didn’t recommend any of those.

Is there a point? Maybe this harmless recommendation from Amazon reminds us that these predictive marketing algorithms have flaws. That I don’t have to read everything that’s recommended to me. That in an age of endless distractions, I have to choose wisely what I do with my time and money.

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5.15 – 16, NIV)