Cheryl Strayed

Random House had its corporate Christmas party on Wednesday night in New York, and word is that Santa likes bondage. A lot.

Markus Dohle, the chief executive of Random House, promised employees — from top editors to warehouse workers — a $5,000 bonus to celebrate a profitable year. The cheering went on for minutes, according to people in attendance.

Call it 5,000 shades of green.

The first Dear Sugar letter I read was from a woman who called herself Stuck. She had had a miscarriage when she was six months pregnant. Her doctor told her the pregnancy might have failed in part because she was overweight. She was caught in a spiral of grief and blame, and wrote to Sugar, the advice columnist at TheRumpus.net, to ask how she could stop feeling so ashamed and alone. The letter was heartbreaking, and so was Sugar’s response, which used her signature method of telling stories from her life to illuminate the