Last week, I posted about “25 books every Christian should read.” Tony Jones has come up with an alternative that is more “theological,” he says. It also includes some of the authors I thought should be included.

If lists are your thing, you love Slate’s (rather premature) list of cultural items from the twenty-first century “that will stand the test of time.” Uggs? Ugh! Not to be outdone, The Guardian offers its take.

If, like me, you think one needs a little more historical distance before judging something a classic, you might appreciate Jeffrey Brenzel’s criteria for determining what constitutes a classic. One of them is “a classic requires strenuous intellectual engagement.” Well, that excludes uggs, and pretty much everything else on Slate’s list. The video down the page includes Brenzel’s reflections on some of the Christian classics and the development of the Christian tradition through the “speculation and collision” of ideas, beginning with Plato and Aristotle.

Stephen Greenblatt tells us what books he would like to have on his desert island: