Era la loca que se reía sola en el metro mientras leía este libro

3.5
Ephron had a very interesting life, she was quite accomplished.

I liked this collection of essays. Certain aspects about ageing, purses and a few other things were very on point.
Some essays were more mundane. I occasionally cringed when she bemoaned having to go shopping by herself wondering how do people who have to do it all the time accomplish anything.

This was what I call an "untaxing" read, which is what I was after. I expected it to be slightly funnier.

It's been a rough couple years...I mean days. I grabbed this book off the shelf in the library and sat behind my son as he played some cartoony anatomy game wherein he places organs in the correct spot on a very happy looking skeleton (even though I have noted several key organs are simply not there...but I digress.). Anyway, I really had to leave the library because I was cracking up. This collection of essays includes some that are very funny and some that are less so but I had several laugh out loud moments in the few hours it took to read this book. There were some seriously funny comments and that is about all I was looking for. My favorite feeling is when my stomach hurts from laughing. Mission accomplished! A light, fun read. 3.5 stars

Update: I have thought of this book so often over the past few months...mainly because I seem to have "tech neck," which is the deep groove from always looking down at phones & iPads. I insist mine is from reading books, but nonetheless lately I can truly relate!

E ovo definitivno nije bilo za mene. Sama sam kriva što se nisam malo bolje informirala o knjizi jer ju je Ephron pisala u poodmaklim godinama zadržavajući se na nekim (ženskim) problemima koji su meni još uvijek daleki. Neke stvari na kojima se zaustavljala bile su mi blesave i općenito me uopće nije zainteresirala za ono što ima reći. Mjesta koja su, čini se, trebala biti duhovita, kod mene nisu izmamila ni smiješak.

This little essay collection is ever-so-slightly disdainful, but Nora Ephron’s wry sense of humour keeps it grounded, relatable, and charming. It reads just like her films, and you can almost hear Meg Ryan reading it out loud. Above all else, it’s hilarious, and a wonderful ode to New York City, even when she isn't really writing about New York City.

I highly recommend listening to the audiobook version of this, narrated by Nora Ephron herself; her voice lends a real conversational tone to each essay, which would simply be missed on the page.

And a side note: the last chapter is extremely anxiety-inducing, as it deals with the topic of death, and can be safely skipped if this is something you don’t have the wherewithal to approach. Other than that, the rest of this book is pretty trivial and mostly upbeat.

This book made me laugh and by laugh I mean the title itself. Although I couldn't relate to half of the stuff in the book I managed to get a glimpse into Nora's life that I wouldn't have known. This book was recommended in my book club and towards the end of chapter 2 did the excitement come around. I had no idea that Nora worked with President Reagan. Also other stuff that I won't mention here. Otherwise, good book for advice on life and I rate it 5 stars!

I first picked up I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron on a Sunday afternoon at our annual local library’s used book sale. I had been meaning to read her work for some time and now seemed as good a time as any.
She’s a very accomplished writer with a really firm grasp of the english language. She infuses her writing with wit and humor as well as feeling and depth and all this happens within the span of a single sentence.
Her essay “Parenting in Three Stages” was interesting, in it she wonders exactly when and why parenting became an infinitive and blames the women’s movement for turning the idea of raising children into a gender-neutral concept. She rally’s for the good old days when children’s personalities were something other than the handiwork of ambitious adults. Kids were allowed to become who it was they were supposed to become, that’s how it was for me, and I try to emulate that same style of parenting.
The fact that she was 65 when she wrote this book gives Ms. Ephron a plethora of unavoidable subjects for contemplation: age, loss and vanity. None are automatically delightful. But she retains an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, or really, to me, like an older aunt, even when she is describing the death of one her own best friends in a sobering piece called “Considering the Alternative.” Which is a humorous and poignant reflection on becoming that age where your best friends all start to die. She tells of the passing of her best friend, Judy and another friend Henry. It’s clear to her, and to me, that no matter how much we have or don’t have in our lives, everyone feels the death of a friend as a punch in the gut and Ephron’s reaction isnt any different, but perhaps maybe it is more eloquent than most of us would be able to articulate let alone write an essay about.
This is a charming book, which is why I picked it up in the first place. I wanted to hear her voice and I wanted to experience the world from her perspective. I wanted her to charm me, and I wanted to be seduced by the writing, that’s really the only reason I read anything at all come to think of it.

It’s almost like Nora was eavesdropping on some conversations I’ve had with friends and my same-age co-workers. Seriously, just a couple days before I picked this up, we had a whole bitch session about the neck thing. And female maintenance issues— so true; why do we do this stuff? I realize these are real first-world problems and have seen criticisms of this book for its “shallowness,” but to that I say people need to lighten up. Everything doesn’t have to be about world peace and similar weighty issues. Getting older mostly sucks and I’m with Nora in that it’s a you-have-to-laugh-to-avoid-crying situation.

There are some sections of this book that didn’t totally resonate with me because —let’s face it— Nora’s income level was well above my own; and also, I don’t have the passion for cooking that she does. So I don’t necessarily relate to her situation with her New York apartment, but totally appreciated her technique of rationalizing exorbitant expenditures by thinking of a way their long-term value could be equated to the cost of a Starbucks drink. And there’s no way I’m ever going to cook my way through a famous chef’s cookbooks while inviting my friends and the chef over to eat the meals, but I torture myself in other ways.

The section at the end of the book is about facing the reality and imminence of death. It was especially poignant knowing that Nora died a few years after writing this book. She talks about the death of a friend and how hard and incomprehensible that was to come to grips with. That’s another you-have-to-laugh-to-avoid-crying situation.

This book made me laugh. And I feel like Nora and I could have been homies.

Edit: My thoughts upon the second reading pretty much mirror my thoughts from the first time. I'm a couple of years older now, so some of it might have resonated even more. It was worth the second read -- this time I listened to the audiobook.

So I bought this book thinking it was going to be full of humor about what happens to women when they reach that "certain age". I was expecting to relate to and be amused by her musings about getting older. And that did happen... certain chapters really made me smile, and I could relate to more than I would like to admit! But for about half the chapters, the only people who might relate to it would be rich, famous, New York socialites. That obviously doesn't describe me, so even though her writing was engaging, I'm not quite sure why she put it in this particular book. I did however, love her chapter on the "rapture" she feels with a good book. The chapter on "cabbage strudel" I could have lived without...

I took a break last night from reading about conservation, zoos, and How to Save the Wild to read this delightful collection of essays by Nora Ephron (whom you may recognize as the woman who co-wrote When Harry Met Sally). She writes about the agony of aging, especially the terrible things that happen to your neck, but also shares the fruits of aging, in her pearls of wisdom and wonderful, witty stories from her life. She writes about falling into (and then slowly out of) love with her apartment, her culinary capriciousness, her daily beauty regimens, and (in my very favorite essay) her purse.

In fact, the purse essay was the best part of the whole book for me. It made me feel better about my own personal purse, which is frequently mistaken for a utilitarian bag containing either a camera or a GPS. Thanks to this essay, I think I'm going to embrace my purse. Perhaps people will think I'm a (rather incompetent) spy!

But, regardless of whether you personally have purse issues, this is a fun, light read with a streak of the melancholy. Perfect for a cozy evening in, and a break from (perhaps too many) Deep Thoughts.

Lo peor de leer a Nora Ephron es que cada vez me quedan menos cosas por leer de Nora Ephron.

Award-winning journalist and screenwriter Nora Ephron spills about her daily life, her battle with aging and how she and her friends ward off the passage of time, children and parenting in an age of ever more parental involvement, and other nuggets of wisdom she accumulated along the way.

I'm afraid that saying how unrelatable Ephron's daily life is to me is admitting how low-maintenance I really am. Honestly, I spent this entire book wondering how she ever actually got anything done.

She writes candidly about her beauty regimen which seemed to consist of several hours every week at one salon or another in addition to a couple of hours of daily at home with various moisturizers, creams, lotions, and oils. On top of this, she often spent hours in the kitchen trying the latest cooking fad, and more hours pouring through parenting books and practicing what the current gurus told her she should be doing on that front as well.

I was exhausted just reading about her routine. There were funny moments, but it seemed more sad overall. I was glad the book was short because I don't think I could have taken more than those 137 pages of the author doggedly following the latest fads for every aspect of her life. I hope she was exaggerating, but I got the feeling she was not. I can't help but look at this book as a cautionary tale of how not to live one's life.