I'm working on a variety of things these days: It's good, because it's work, but the problem lies in my apparent present inability to keep all of these writing obligations straight in my head from day to day. I think I'll blame it on the baby. I've got several OSV pieces to write: A regular book column on Tolkein, and then features on: a) heroes, b) Oprah, and c) The Corrections by Jonathon Franzen. Plus, the regular columns.

In terms of books, I have Prove It: Prayer to finish in the next few weeks, sidebars for a coffee-table book on Catholicism, then the beginnings of projects on: a) the Parables of Jesus, b) a sequel to the Loyola Kids' Book of Saints, and an Advent family devotional for Creative Communications for the Parish.

As a result, most of my reading these days is work-oriented. Reading about prayer and parables, reading about heroes.

Read about Mary for an OSV piece: Scott Hahn's latest,(which was okay in using a typological approach to demonstrating the logic and truth of Catholic Marian doctrines, but in the process leaves the human Mary behind, the Mary whom we look to because she is the first disciple, a most powerful model of faith. The strange thing about the book is that it uses the exact same cover art and almost the identical design as Meditations on Mary by Kathleen Norris, published two years ago ) plus a couple of coffee-table books, one awfully pretty, but achingly PC, full of earth mother/goddess commentary along with the Botticellis,) the other a very nice book on Marian shrines in Europe.. I did check out a novel called Quakertown from the library. I've read the first page.