现在我有很强的焦虑感。我总觉得世界末日快到了，我得赶紧处理我屋里的破烂。我希望最后能够让我屋里像一个旅馆，只有几件随身带的行李。当然，这是做不到的，但是这是我理想的目标。现在我一点点地把从外面拿回来的东西再扔回去，包括书。
然而书是最难扔的。需要甄别，而时间又不够。于是我上班之前随手从车库书架上拿起一本书，只要是不认识的作者，只要不是1900年以前的书，我觉得都可以扔掉。
这次我拿起了一本Crazy Salad, Some Things About Women，作者是Nora Ephron。 首先这个标题就不是那么吸引人。精装书的防尘书皮没有了，所以外表上看起来也很平平。 我会毫不犹豫地把这本书丢给图书馆。
我带着这本书坐上公交车。从住处到学校要开半个多小时。我就用这本书消磨路上的时光，准备到了学校后，就在去图书馆的时候把书放在免费书架上任谁拿走。前几天我已经丢掉几本，包括一本女权主义文评。
手头上这本书也是关于女人的。本来准备带出来那天丢掉，可是现在已经过去三天了，我还在车上读。这好比喝茶，刚一开始没什么感觉，后
来则是“才喝出点味来”。
此书收入作者25篇关于女性的散文。我是随便跳着看的。看的第一篇是关于女性除味剂的，乍读起来就像商业文章。介绍下体除味喷剂的生产历史。如果不是硬着头皮看下去，就不会有后来的感觉。
后来一查作者，敢情还是《西雅图不眠夜》和《你有电邮》那两个电影的编剧，导演，制片人，并且是多产作家。难怪，这样的人写的书，不会没有看头吧。有的读者评论这本书说，读完此书，对女性了解会大为增进。在goodreads.com， 对此书可以说是好评如潮。艾芙蓉的散文特别受女性读者的欢迎，因为她写女性的感受，让很多人认同。
网上对这本散文集的描述是说它属于幽默小品一类的。此言不假。读者看了第一篇之后就知道作者的幽默何在了。
https://penusa.org/sites/default/files/Ephron.pdf
我没有耐心看英文小说，因为我不太关心内容。我更多的是关注作者表达思想的方式和所用的词语和句子。散文能给我更多的机会欣赏我所欣赏的东西。
此文集的第一篇据说是她最有名的一篇，艾芙蓉从一个平胸女人的角度写女人对胸的发育的感受，既诙谐又真切。
谈乳房对确立女性身份的重要：I wanted desperately not to be that way, not to be a mixture of both things,
but instead just one, a girl, a definite indisputable girl. As soft and as pink as a nursery. And nothing
would do that for me, I felt, but breasts. (大意：我只希望自己的身份确信无疑，那就是说，我是个女的，而要做到这一点，没有什么比乳房更能胜任的了）
满心希望自己会发育起来，结果却不是那么一回事： I would sit in the bathtub and look down at my breasts and know that any day now, any second now, they would start growing like everyone else's. They didn't。
看到一个夏天没见面的闺蜜身材发育后对自己的冲击：
It is September, just before school begins. I am eleven years old, about to enter the seventh grade, and Diana and I have not seen each other all summer. I have been to camp and she has been somewhere like Banff with her parents. We are meeting, as we often do, on the street midway between our two houses, and We will walk back to Diana's and eat junk and talk about what has happened to each of us that summer. I am walking down Walden Drive in my jeans and my father's shirt hanging out and my old red loafers with the socks falling into them and coming toward me is... I take a deep breath.., a young woman. Diana. Her hair is curled and she has a waist and hips and a bust and she is wearing a straight skirt, an article of clothing I have been repeatedly told I will be unable to wear until I have the hips to hold it up. My jaw drops, and suddenly I am crying, crying hysterically, can't catch my breath sobbing. My best friend has betrayed me. She has gone ahead without me and done it. She has shaped up.
写第一次去商店买胸罩：
I started with a 28 AA bra. I don't think they made them any smaller in those days, although I gather that now you can buy bras for five-year-olds that don't have any cups whatsoever in them; trainer bras they are called. My first brassiere came from Robinson's Department Store in Beverly Hills. I went there alone, shaking, positive they would look me over and smile and tell me to come back next year. An actual fitter took me into the dressing room and stood over me while I took off my blouse and tried the first one on. The little puffs stood out on my chest. "Lean over," said the fitter. (To this day, I am not sure what fitters in bra departments do except to tell you to lean over.) I leaned over, with the fleeting hope that my breasts would miraculously fall out of my body and into the puffs. Nothing.
为了表示自己是个女人，只好戴加垫胸罩。这里的描写也很好笑：Ultimately, I resigned myself to a bad toss and began to wear padded bras. I think about them now, think about all those years in high school that I went around in them, my three padded bras, every single one of them with different-sized breasts. Each time I changed bras I changed sizes: one week nice perky but
not too obtrusive breasts, the next medium-sized slightly pointy ones, the next week knockers, true
knockers; all the time, whatever size I was, carrying around this rubberized appendage on my chest that
occasionally crashed into a wall and was poked inward and had to be poked outward-I think about all
that and wonder how anyone kept a straight face through it. My parents, who normally had no restraints
about needling me-why did they say nothing as they watched my chest go up and down?
结尾处，作者说因为自己平胸，总是难以摆脱一种缺陷感。她说不管男人在乎不在乎，反正她在乎，因此，她特别反感那些有胸的女人明里抱怨大乳如何是个负担，暗里却是在炫耀资本。她们在她面前喋喋不休地说大乳如何让她们的生活一塌糊涂。文胸带上课的时候断了呀，不能趴着睡觉呀，地理课上一提到高山，众目就盯向她们呀。她们告诉作者，别生在福中不知福了。作者写道：我考虑过她们的话，也想设身处地地理解她们，可是我觉得她们都是在放屁。
