The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted (2008)

In one story of Elizabeth Berg's funny and occasionally heartbreaking collection, she writes of women laughing at a party: ''This was T-shirt and jeans laughter, not cocktail dress laughter.'' The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted can be similarly described. It's comfortable and well-worn (especially ''Rain,'' about a complex relationship with an old friend who lives in the sticks and dies of a brain tumor), and Berg doesn't bother to gussy up her characters. There may be too many stories about Weight Watchers, but it's hard to resist her descriptions of the 7-step process of making toast while not dieting. B+