Here is an excerpt from each:
1. Anagrams (Lorrie Moore)
When I told my husband I hated him, we hadn't been married long at all. It was when he was taking my picture with his new camera, narrowing his eyes, adjusting the shutter speed, posing me at various angles until my smile felt aching and absurd. We were in the living room. He had asked me to take my shirt off and I'd obliged. I'd been standing there by the mantel awhile and it was getting cold, the hairs on my arms standing on end, my nipples erect. "Got your high beams on," said my husband, like a college kid, camera to his face. Finally he pulled the camera away from his eyes. "Light's bad," he mumbled and walked off without taking the shot. Stunned and topless, I followed him into the dining room where he began taking pictures of the porcelain monkey-head lamp my Aunt Wyn had sent us for our wedding. "The light's hitting this great," said my husband. "The reading's perfect." His camera was clicking away. (P. 113)2. Skin Cleanse (Adina Grigore)
Let me say, as clearly as I can, your diet is the most essential tool you have to getting great skin. You cannot eat crap and have clear skin. Period. You could ignore everything else in this book and just cut out sugar or drink more water, and your skin would get better. But the problem these days is that almost all of us are putting too much stock in what we're being told to eat by people who don't know us, and we're not listening enough to what our bodies really need. We are all individuals. In the same way that all of the factors in your background and lifestyle affect your overall health, they also affect how you should be eating. Your diet changes throughout your life, and it is greatly impacted by your state of mind. (P. 37)3. Dear Life: Stories (Alice Munro)
'To Reach Japan'4. Yes Please (Amy Poehler)
She sent her letter to him there, at the newspaper. She could not be sure that he opened his mail and she thought that putting Private on the envelope was asking for trouble, so she wrote only the day of her arrival and the time of the train, after the bit about the bottle. No name. She thought that whoever opened the envelope might think of an elderly relative given to whimsical turns of phrase. Nothing to implicate him, even supposing such peculiar mail did get sent home and his wife opened it, being now out of the hospital. (P. 15)
The only thing we can depend on in life is that everything changes. The seasons, our partners, what we want and need. We hold hands with our high school friends and swear to never lose touch, and then we do. We scrape ice off our cars and feel like winter will never end, and it does. We stand in the bathroom and look at our face and say, "Stop getting old, face. I command you!" and it doesn't listen. Change is the only constant. Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier. Maybe I should have called this book Surf Your Life. The cover could feature a picture of me on a giant wave wearing a wizard hat. I wonder if it's too late. I'll make a call. (P. 279)
