Talk in Cincinnati went well, I think. Except for the poor gentleman who turned green and passed out during the talk preceding mine. They took him away, and the last report I heard was that he would be okay.

I was really glad to meet John, a sometime commentor on this blog who hails from Louisville, and TSO’Rama!! …proprietor of Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor, who chatted for far too short a time, probably so he could rush back to Columbus and pen more superb entries like this one, an account of his recent vacation.

I am reading all sorts of things these days, as noted on the side, none of them very heavy at all. I read most of the new Hahn book last night, and thought it was a good intro to the sacraments, with Hahn’s typical unique angle – with Hail, Holy Queen, for example, it was typology, and here it’s the connection between a theology of sacraments, covenant, and oath.

Blue Shoe I read, not because I’m an Anne Lamott fan (which I’m not – don’t hate her, but just think she has one or two things to say…and she’s said them), but because as I start to tear apart, rewrite and reshape, I’m thinking about what sort of novel mine is, what it’s comparable to, and how this sort of thing is done these days, not in slavish imitation, but just by way of inspiration. It occurred to me that perhaps I might be doing the same sort of thing she’s doing in her fiction. Oh, well, I hope not. Or at least I hope what I do paints a little broader and deeper picture, places the characters in a larger context – emotionally, socially, culturally and spiritually – than she seems to, at least to me. And all the quirkiness is just too self-conscious, as well.

The Know-it-All isn’t coming out until October – it’s a BEA find – about a guy who sets out to read the entire Encylopedia Brittanica in the course of a year. Just as the task would, the book gets tedious at times, although the author is a magazine writer with a light touch. He and/or his editors wisely decided to included a more compelling through-line in the book than “Can he do it?”, which is the problem of his and his wife’s apparent infertility and their struggle to get pregnant. By “L,” that was keeping me reading more than the other quest was.

And I’m still reading Top Secret stuff for work purposes, and this week I have the most awful task of reading the galleys for my Fall Loyola book. I don’t think it’s awful, but it’s still scary, in its own way.