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DescriptionFrom the screenwriter who brought us When Harry Met Sally comes a hilarious, candid look at issues that concern women. With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron discusses everything—from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can’t stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there’s no quick fix for that. Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent in an audiobook that is utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling. ExcerptsFrom the book ...What I Wish I'd Known
People have only one way to be. Buy, don't rent. Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from. Don't cover a couch with anything that isn't more or less beige. Don't buy anything that is 100 percent wool even if it seems to be very soft and not particularly itchy when you try it on in the store. You can't be friends with people who call after 11 p.m. Block everyone on your instant mail. The world's greatest babysitter burns out after two and a half years. You never know. The last four years of psychoanalysis are a waste of money. The plane is not going to crash. Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty- five. At the age of fifty-five you will get a saggy roll just above your waist even if you are painfully thin. This saggy roll just above your waist will be especially visible from the back and will force you to reevaluate half the clothes in your closet, especially the white shirts. Write everything down. Keep a journal. Take more pictures. The empty nest is underrated. You can order more than one dessert. You can't own too many black turtleneck sweaters. If the shoe doesn't fit in the shoe store, it's never going to fit. When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you. Back up your files. Overinsure everything. Whenever someone says the words "Our friendship is more important than this," watch out, because it almost never is. There's no point in making piecrust from scratch. The reason you're waking up in the middle of the night is the second glass of wine. The minute you decide to get divorced, go see a lawyer and file the papers. Overtip. Never let them know. If only one third of your clothes are mistakes, you're ahead of the game. If friends ask you to be their child's guardian in case they die in a plane crash, you can say no. There are no secrets. From the Hardcover edition. Reviews ...Fifteen essays written by the wonderful Nora Ephron about what it's like to be a woman over 60 are funny, sweet, sad, distressing, and dead honest. Ephron reads the way she writes--with a wry, witty candor that is engaging. It's a little like talking to a friend who won't let you lie to yourself about your aging body and the forces of gravity. In time, everything sags. With spirit and intelligence, Ephron's conversational tone keeps heads nodding and grins widening as she recalls her attempts at solutions to pre- and post-menopausal problems. She deals with hair dyes, skin creams, manicures, and pedicures, but by the book's conclusion she finally declares what most women of a certain age know anyway: Trying to stop the clock simply doesn't work. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
Emily Toth, Women's Review of Books ...
"Nora Ephron, 65 years old in I Feel Bad About My Neck, pokes fun at her own eccentricities and finds herself writing about 'lunch with my girlfriends--I got that far into the sentence and caught myself. I suppose I mean my women friends. We are no longer girls and have not been for forty years.' But [I Feel Bad About My Neck is a] girlfriend book, and in the best way. . . . Ephron, who is a great wit, has made a career out of women's body anxieties. The magazine piece that made her famous in the 1970s, 'A Few Words about Breasts,' is a long kvetch about her flat chest . . . Now, though, Ephron kvetches about her wrinkled neck, the one part of a woman's aging body that can't be resurfaced. She and the ladies who lunch with her all wear scarves or turtlenecks to hide their 'shame.' . . . Ephron [is] unfailingly clever and often pokes fun at our preoccupations while sharing them. . . . I Feel Bad About My Neck has everything I want in an entertaining read: a breezy pace, wry musings, copious doses of gossip, humor, and new information. . . . Ephron produces perfect vignettes. . . . [When I finished I Feel Bad About My Neck, I] felt the 'rapture' that Ephron says you feel on completing a great book. . . . [Books] have always been faithful pals, and [this one is] among the best. . . . [Get] your friends of a certain age together, rent Silkwood (which I think is Ephron's best film), read [her book] together, and argue and laugh and cry. That's my prescription." Easy Living magazine (UK)...
"The subtitle to this book of autobiographical essays by the pithy, witty Ephron--'and other thoughts on being a woman'--says it all. Chapters include brilliant, biting essays on such things as wrinkly necks, bad handbags, and being a parent. You'll laugh out loud at her spot-on observations, but there's something wonderfully poignant about Ephron's list of things worth knowing, and how to live out one's life feeling satisfied. A heartwarming little book."
Christopher Goodwin, The Sunday Times (UK)...
"What's refreshing about Ephron is that she refuses to entertain any illusions about the terrible fate that awaits us. What's great about her is that she makes the truth about life so funny when it should be so grim."
U.S. News & World Report ...
"Ephron's laugh-out-loud collection tells the truth about aging--it's not fun--and 'she does it with humor and satire and perspective,' says [Roxanne Coady of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn.]. With blithe charm, Ephron exposes all the vain ploys that she--and we--would rather not admit we use to stave off another telltale wrinkle or gray hair. Read her book as an antidote to despair."
People magazine, Top 10 Books of 2006...
"Now 65, the humorist offers a bracing take on aging in 15 memorable essays. Her finely honed wit is as fresh as ever."
Ladies Home Journal...
"As if wrinkles and belly flab weren't enough, women of a certain age have to fret about their turkey necks, too--so says the sage, dry, and hilarious Nora Ephron . . . Her droll take on traditionally gooey topics like motherhood and marriage makes the tender observations that much more unexpected . . . [A] sparkling series of essays."
Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books...
"Delightful . . . [A] funny, sisterly collection . . . Where books written for seniors are apt to be full of unconvincing cheer, Ephron's charming book of self-questioning, confession, and resolve faces the reality that she's sixty-five, dyes her hair, and is not happy about her neck, her purse, her failure at ambitious exercise programs, and other personal failures shared by many of us . . . None of these confrontations with mortality is arcane, all are universal, and people of either sex can relate to them . . . Many readers of I Feel Bad About My Neck will be familiar already with Ephron the accomplished human being . . . She's one of only a few American essayists with a public persona--one thinks of Will Rogers, or Calvin Trillin, maybe Benjamin Franklin, Steve Martin, and Woody Allen . . . [She has] a talent for incisive compression and accessibility confided in a sort of plainspoken Will Rogers manner . . . . The hapless character Ephron has presented over the years may be the real Ephron, or not. The actual Ephron is praised by friends as smart, a perfect housekeeper, much prettier than the person she began depicting in Wallflower at the Orgy, her essays from the Seventies, a wonderful cook, etc., etc. It's sound rhetorical strategy. Of all the ways to be funny, self-deprecation is more endearing than satire . . . . All in all, this funny book offers the pleasures of recognition; in an anxious world, her epigrams have a serious, consoling utility."
Dan Smith, Blue Ridge Business Journal...
"OK, so Nora Ephron is 65 now. Not to me, she's not. She's still that young smartass who used to rule the pages of Esquire . . . That was entertainment. She's still entertaining . . . Ephron's new look-back is a delight of a book that you can inhale in a single sitting . . . . When she's funny, as she is in I Feel Bad About My Neck, she becomes a [writer] who won't give her readers a rest from the bellowing laughter. Sixty-five ain't old when you're Nora Ephron."
Elizabeth Pezzulo, The Free Lance-Star...
"I like short books. In fact, when I'm at the bookstore, I tilt my head to the right and scan the shelves for books with the skinniest spines. I Feel Bad About My Neck was one I wished were longer. Ephron, journalist, novelist and screenwriter, bemoans getting old and all the maintenance needed just to tread water. But she does it in her inimitable, witty style. You don't come away depressed as much as invigorated . . . [She] brings [her] funny but serious approach to this latest work."
Juliette Rossant, SuperChefBlog...
"You might think that I Feel Bad About My Neck is not a book for foodies. You would think wrong. I Feel Bad About My Neck is so witty and so much about food in our lives, that every Foodie should read it. This is the kind of book that will make you laugh out loud on the Amtrak train to the chagrin of other passengers buried deep in The Wall Street Journal. You may have to force yourself not to wave it under their noses, shouting, 'Get this book!' . . . . It rings funny and true at the same time."
April Austin, Christian Science Monitor ...
"Clever . . . . [I Feel Bad About My Neck is] laced with wry observations, told in an intimate style that makes Ephron seem like a close friend spilling details about her life . . . [Ephron] has punctured many a bubble of conformity and made audiences laugh in recognition . . . [She] will keep you entertained."
Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Time...
"Maybe Nora Ephron has become timeless . . . Certainly she writes, for all her funny commentary on modern life, like someone who has something useful and important to tell her readers . . . She's figured something out that she wants to let you in on, and to make it palatable she'll make you laugh."
Digital Rights Information
© 2009 New Hampshire State Library Grant funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act administered by the New Hampshire State Librarian. Powered by OverDrive® Digital Library Reserve™ |
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