Favorite Books

I Feel Bad About My Neck

And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

by

Nora Ephron

“Within hours of moving in, I was home.  I was astonished.  I was amazed.  Most of all, I was mortified.  I hadn’t been so mortified since the end of my second marriage, and a great many of the things went through my head apropos of that marriage went through my head now: Why hadn’t I left at the first whiff of the other woman’s perfume?  Why hadn’t I realized how much of what I thought of as love was simply my own highly developed gift for making lemonade?  What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again?”

I loved this little book, which foolishly surprised me, as I have long been a fan of Ms. Ephron’s writing.  Yearly, I look forward to screening You’ve Got Mail, one of her gems, as my unofficial launch of autumn, my favorite time of the year.  Why would I not enjoy her essays?

I Feel Bad About My Neck is a collection of essays on life, with an emphasis on what the author has learned having lived to reach that certain age.  This very quick read, actually had me laughing aloud.  She candidly writes about being “Blind as a Bat” and “What I Wish I had Known” reflecting on her life lessons and on how much self – maintenance is required to continue to function.  In praise of hair dye she says:

“Think about it.  Fifty years ago, women of certain age almost never wore black.  Black was for widows, specifically Italian war widows, and even Gloria Steinem might concede that the average Italian war widow made you believe that sixty was the new seventy-five.  If you have gray hair, black makes you look not just older but sadder.  But black looks great on older women with dark hair – so great, in fact, that even younger women with dark hair now wear black.  Even blondes wear black.  Even women in L.A. wear black.  Most everyone wears black – except for anchorwomen, United States senators, and residents of Texas, and I feel really bad for them.  I mean, black makes your life so much simpler.  Everything matches black, especially black.”

Her chapter on “parenting” which she says has been elevated to a sacrament was hilarious; and while I do not “hate my purse” I so understood where she was going with her own frustrations.  This was a very pleasant book, and the author’s honesty was refreshing.  Discussing her mother’s death and her loss of her best friend, Ephron tenderly shares her feelings, on what she says no one wants to talk about – our own mortality.  Getting older forces us to deal with the loss of the people we have loved, and the fact that time is catching up with us.

This book comments on so much that has defined the last fifty years of life in America – politics, feminisms, exercise, money, food, divorce, happiness – it is a long list of what we experience, in life, and must decipher.  I highly recommend the read.

“Whenever I read a book I love, I start to remember all the other books that have sent me into rapture, and I can remember where I was living and the couch I was sitting on when I read them.”  So true!  That is all for now.

Tags: Nora Ephron

This entry was posted on August 24, 2011 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Favorite Books, SlideShow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.