BLOOMING!

Bittersweet ruminations, in a faint Anne Lindbergh voice, on what it means to be an adult, a woman, a person. The observations are grouped by six themes, but there is considerable overlapping. The six ""choices"" women are encouraged to embrace? To believe in their own power, to treat themselves royally, to reach out to others, to stop fooling themselves, to take risks, and to forget their age (if she went back to age 20, Davis feels, she'd be forfeiting something in wisdom, experience, and serenity). This voyage into self-discovery by a poet/writer/editor frequently succumbs to the poetic clichÉ (""The moments we push ourselves least are the moments our creativity has the most room to flourish""). Sometimes it even descends to the desperate levels of programmed self-help (a quiz that asks, among other things, which of ten song titles--from ""What Kind of Fool Am I"" to ""I've Got to Be Me""--best describes our current view of life), or relies on an anecdote or quote from inspirational literature. (Some of Davis' most Gibran-like pronouncements are immortalized in a calandar contrived for just this purpose.) A greeting-card approach to life's hard choices--but there will presumably be buyers.