Even the fact that I was reading many of these letters for the second or third time didn't stop me from tearing up at them all over again. Sugar (Cheryl) is profound and profane, compassionate and incapable of platitudes. It should be inappropriate and egotistical to learn so much about the advice-giver as part of the advice, but she has a gift for finding exactly the right insight in every story she tells, and applying it beautifully and in unexpected ways to the problem at hand. Every letter is like a little homily.

(I don't really recommend the foreword, though. Sugar's awesomeness doesn't need to be offset against Steve Almond's comments about the cesspool-like nature of the Internet and how it makes us all lonely. I was unimpressed.)