Better late than never. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT by Judy Blume

“Miri Ammerman and her best friend, Natalie Osner, were sprawled on their bellies on the thick, tweedy wall-to-wall carpet of Natalie’s den, waiting for the first-ever televised lighting of the famous Christmas tree. The den was Miri’s favorite room in Natalie’s house, not least because of the seventeen-inch Zenith, inside a pale wood cabinet, the biggest television Miri had ever seen.”

 

THE WIFE by Meg Wolitzer

“The men would long for armored writing, protected writing, writing that was muscle-bound and never ceased flexing itself.”

 

RARE AS THE KOTUKU by Camille Norvaisas

“Outside the morning window, the pine limbs

are weighted with snow, like punished schoolboys,

arms parallel to the floor, dictionary upon each palm…”

 

A SMALL INDISCRETION by Jan Ellison

“Each scarf cost a pound, and I bought them from an Indian woman who kept a stall in the tube station at Victoria, where I caught my train to work. They were thin, crinkled things, not the sort of scarves that ought to be worn to work in an office or that offered any protection against the cold…The money I spent on them, and the habit I adopted of wearing a different one each day, seems to me now a haphazard indulgence, an attempt to prove that I was the kind of girl capable of throwing herself headlong into an affair with her boss–a married man twice her age–and escaping without consequence.”

 

WONDER BOYS by Michael Chabon

“That’s a big trunk…It fits a tuba, three suitcases, a dead body, and a garment bag almost perfectly.”