I just finished reading Graham Greene's A Burnt-Out Case. It runs along the same grooves as the typical Greene novel--a cynical ex-Catholic at the end of his emotional rope flees Europe to live out his days disengaged in some remote tropical locale, but cannot escape involvement with other people or obsession with his lost faith. Still, I never seem to get tired of the formula, perhaps because I was never able to have the relentlessly optimistic religiosity that is expected in American evangelicalism. And since I'm always finding hardback copies of his books at thrift stores and library sales for a quarter or two, the entertainment value is hard to beat.