Reading Nora Ephron is always so much fun. Her essays are in no way life-changing or profound, but they talk about the everyday aspects of life in a way that is so refreshing and joyful. These were a little more poignant than I expected -- Heartburn was so laugh-out-loud funny that I expected this anthology to be the same -- but that didn't make them any less wonderful.

My favorite essays: "On Maintenance" "On Rapture" "Me and JFK: Now It Can Be Told"

Tiny TW for some insensitive comments - specifically about socioeconomic status/weight. Nothing blatant, but just enough to have thrown me off a bit. Just something to keep in mind!

No mi favo pero Nora siempre bien ❤️

I wanted it to be funnier. I'm afraid I'm too low-maintenance to be in the target audience. I'm middle-aged, sure, but my neck? My neck still holds up my head, what's to fuss about? I am also economically worlds away from Ephron (who can matter-of-factly talk about rent over 10K/mo.) and my purse/backpack is so organized it only has 4 items in it, but failing to identify with an author doesn't generally keep me from entering into the spirit of a book. This one was too New York, too brittle, too precious and ultimately not funny enough for me.

Per què no havia llegit Nora Ephron fins ara? Mare meva, quina meravella!

Tinc un coll que fa pena, 2006. Editat per @laltraeditorial el juny 2023.

Aquest llibre és un recull d'articles i reflexions de l'autora envers la seva pròpia vida. I és que Ephron té un do: es riu d'ella mateixa i de la seva quotidianitat i això la fa encantadora. Els diferents relats són fruit dels seus pensaments quotidians i com que viu a Nova York et transporta constantment pels seus carrers. És una passada la facilitat amb què t'imagines a la ciutat i si, com jo, ets amant de la ciutat que mai descansa, et transportarà a cada pàgina. M'ha arrencat somriures i riallades,

Some readers may initially salivate at the prospect of essays on "Being a Woman" from the screenwriter behind "When Harry Met Sally" and "Sleepless in Seattle." But I wonder how many readers will keep on reading when they realize that Nora Ephron shared thoughts on "Being an OLDER Woman."

Of course, hers was a gentler version of being "older." When this book was published, Ephron was about 65. (She had about six years left.)

Now I'm not saying that this gracious, funny woman... whose writing glistened as though drenched in Irish butter... I'm not glad that Ms. Ephron never had a chance to write an older-older sequel. But personally, I've experienced an exponential acceleration of aging -- both good and bad -- since my own seventies began. I'd have loved to read Nora's highly entertaining preview of aiming for 80.

Some books should be read without any conjecture, especially when you feel bad about your neck.
As the neck is an important organ in reading. Reading a bulky book while sitting in the same posture for a longer duration can take hold of your neck!

How long can you keep your neck bent on a bulky book?
A light book will work as a remedy in such a case. Like this. It will have a calming effect on your reading habits and on your necks too!

"Oh the necks. There are chicken necks. There are turkey gobbler necks. There are elephant necks. There are necks with wattles and necks with creases that are on the verge of becoming wattles. There are scrawny necks and fat necks, loose necks, crepey necks, banded necks, wrinkled necks, stringy necks, saggy necks, flabby necks, mottled necks."

The book is a collection of 15 essays by the author, which are written in a light and jubilant mood.

She talks about the case of her neck in the first essay, then she says that she hates her purse and writes for women whose purses are a morass of loose Tic Tacs, solitary Advils, lipstick without tops, Chapstics of unknown vintage, and so on. Talks about her insane culinary episodes. Talks about the maintenance of hair, hairdryer, and nails. She says in one of the essays that at the lowest point of her adult life she had been rescued by a building, talking about her days when she shifted from Newyork to Washington D.C., and in one essay she writes the story of her life in less than 3500 words. She also talks about her connection with JFK.

These essays are her intimate personal account, her views, and her changing worldview with aging.

I recommend it for having a light reading experience!

Not a bad book! Keep Expectations low though, in the beginning.

I'm not a woman. Nor am I a parent or a successful screenwriter or a particularly ambitious cook. But I still found myself nodding my head over and over as I related to Ephron's insights on life. She writes plainly but with great humor and candidness about her abusive relationship with her apartment building, why parenting is more about quantity time than quality time and how something always seems to go wrong when she tries to exercise. It's the portions about New York that really got me, though. She does a better job than any writer I've read of capturing the characters, changes and charm of the city, and the magical thinking of its residents.

"New York is a very livable city. But when you move away and become a visitor, the city seems to turn against you. It's much more expensive... and much more unfriendly. Things change in New York, things change all the time. You don't mind this when you live here; when you live here, it's part of the caffeinated romance of this city that never sleep. But when you move away you experience hangs as a betrayal."

When she is eventually forced to move out of her beloved 8 bedroom apartment because the rent keeps going up, she remembers a truth that extends well beyond real estate: "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?"

The book ends on a sadder note as she grapples with the death of friends and fights against those who argue that aging is somehow a good thing. Here too she comes away with a great one-line truth:

"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."

I wish I'd read this book years ago so I could have tried to run into her on the street in the city, perhaps while getting a cabbage strudel at Andre's on the Upper East Side.

I usually don't talk about race,but this is supposed to be the musings of what it's like to be an aging woman. They forgot to say an aging ,white, wealthy woman. I don't know anyone who has had her experiences. Not in my neighborhood. It started with her obsessing about her neck and how bad it looked in her 40s. I'm well into my 40s, and my neck looks fine. I'm not stuck in turtlenecks and chokers, sorry. Then she finally decides to move out of her New York City apartment with 5 bedrooms once they raise the rent to $12,000/month. I just couldn't relate. I hated the way she described this homeless woman,whom she said she could easily turn into without "maintenance " within weeks. I have loved some of her screenplays, and I'm just super underwhelmed with this book. I've had it on my shelf since it was published, and I remembered starting it but never finished. Now, I know why. Well, it's done and off to the thrift store to find a new owner.

read this during my lunch breaks at work and actually really enjoyed it. i only know the basics about nora ephron (e.g. the films she's worked on), but i'll definitely be checking out more of her work after this. nora ephron era potentially incoming.

Meh. The last essay I liked. The rest not so much. I only finished because it was short and I can use it on a reading challenge prompt. Some diet culture bullshit, and fat phobia that I could’ve done without.

CRAP!
I am of an age that I now empathize with these stories instead of just finding them amusing.
Damnation.

Ok. I don't relate to all the stories. For instance, I don't live in an apartment in NYC, though I do completely understand having a ridiculous amount of love for one's home and community.
I don't do the personal maintenance thing. Well, except now I've started paying more attention to my neck because maybe these last few years or months of preventative measures will make a difference in that turkey waddle that suddenly manifested.

"Consider the Alternative" was hard to listen to. And sad. I mean, it's supposed to be sad, it's about death. But hearing that best friends die, that's hard. And then listening to her talk about death and her saying, "By the time you read this, I'll be..." and I thought, "Dead" because that is how it actually worked out and that is also sad.

Regardless, many of these essays made me smile either with a knowing look or with joy or with a sense of smugness. I liked this book.

P.S.
I do not recommend following this with Sister Mother Husband Dog: Etc.. Delia starts it out with the Nora's end days. I've been crying in the car for two drives, now. It's been hard to go from Nora talking about death, losing her BFF and wondering who was next - and now I know she knew she was sick when she wrote that - to Delia talking about how her sister's death impacted her, both during and after and still, I am sure. OMG, it just hurts. And it's scary. I have a sister. We don't collaborate on books, we're not famous, but I can't lose her and this part of the book is terrifying to me because I don't want to think about the surviving sister syndrome. And it's sad. So I don't recommend it as a chaser.

I am surprised at many negative comments. The book is written in an informal conversational style and totally funny. There is only one low point when Ephron describes a homeless woman on the street with the apparent lack of empathy, but the rest of it reads like 'The Catcher in the Rye" in essay form for those 40 and up. She takes you on a hilarious ride of the daily life of an aging woman, dispersed with reflections on her life through metaphors (like the chapter on her marriages that is cleverly disguised as the story of the evolution of her culinary skills & tastes). Now knowing that she was diagnosed with her (eventually fatal) illness the same year when working on this book makes the sobering finale poignant. This is a book I'll surely keep returning to many times.