I forgot to add: BMG is an slippery, deceptive music service. They informed me today that my wonderful four-CD Stevie Wonder box set was on sale and so does not qualify as a "qualifying selection" -- e.g., one that allows me to get the advertised three free CDs. I'm not sure whether to keep fighting the Bertelsmann Man(n), to return the said supposedly free CDs (though I've already opened one of them, and love it -- John Mayer's Room for Squares, nice bubbly acoustipop), or to give up and pay my invoice.

On the other hand, the letter also says I am entitled to one free single selection, so what the heck -- if I can get seven CDs for the price of four bought in-store, I can live with that.

Cheryl, An Introduction:

Children's book editor, narrative addict, trivia hound, Harry Potter expert, Jane Austen disciple, Scrabble hobbyist, film junkie, Brooklyn (N.Y.) resident, Peculiar (Mo.) girl, mean sugar-cookie baker, Metrocard artist, daughter, sister, friend, American, countrywoman, copyeditor, listmaker, long-walker, collagist, blonde.

Employee of Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Press; magna cum laude graduate of Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., with a degree in English, class of 2000, and Raymore-Peculiar High School, Peculiar, Mo., class of 1996; leasor (?) of an apartment in the beautiful Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn; other roles upon request.

Last night I finished Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Excellent beginning, page-turning first half, and then they committed the murder and the whole thing became Guilt, Drugs, Fighting, Rinse, Repeat. Certainly this was the first big so-what of my 2003 reading year. But today I finished Hilary McKay's The Exiles at Home, which I loved even more than The Exiles and nearly as much as Saffy's Angel -- I laughed out loud three times on the F train, which earned me weird looks and furtive glances at the title of my book. Good. If more adults read children's books, this world would be a more joyful and interesting place. I'm now happily embarking on The Exiles in Love, and also continuing with Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers (as completed by Marion Mainwaring, I must note with trepidation).

Resolutions for 2003:

Live deeply, joyfully, passionately, and well.

Discipline
Hang up clothes before getting in bed.
Go to the gym twice a week.
Do Core-Strengthening Exercises nightly.
Save a thousand dollars.
Let no food go bad.
Learn discretion.
Floss.

Experience
Have a dinner party.
Walk the Queensboro and Bronx bridges. (There are at least four of them, plus the Triborough, and the Bronx is the borough I know the least -- it'll be my New World for 2003.)
Go to the American Museum of Natural History.
Attend a rock concert and a cabaret.
Get drunk.
Go clubbing.
Write and submit something for publication.
Bake a cheesecake and sourdough bread.
The Unexpected.

Read
Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, and Italo Calvino
Moby Dick
Villette
A Passage to India
Lolita
Midnight’s Children

Other suggestions -- for books, at least -- cheerfully accepted.