'Monk' gets Thrill

"In The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On, Ms. Eden (a 30 something Jewish convert to Catholicism) takes on the destructive elements of the Sex and the City/Match.com speed-dating culture, mainly through her courage to reveal her own past as a willing player of today's dating game. Written from a female perspective, it actually took me a while to finish, because I painfully saw a little too much of myself in it - as me thinks most of this generation also will (I've already given out over a dozen copies).

"Utilizing her own life, she lays a hopeful GPS map for marriage minded women, revealing all the pitfalls, pitbulls, and boobie traps along the way (bad pun, I know). Quotes from Carole King to John Paul II, help keep the book as trendy as it is traditional, with a firm grasp on both.

"While it is on the one hand a relationship guide, I tend to see it more as the story of the healing of a heart . . .or more to the point, the renewing of a heart."

— The Wacky Wannabe Musical Monk (actually layman and "ex-long-haired rocker" Michael Kevin Rose McCleary), from his review of my book. The full review notes "three small points that were not fully addressed" — and I must say I agree with him on all three. (Rest assured that I was absolved of past ciabatta violations when I made my first confession.)