I have to say I'm a little baffled by Nora Ephron. She was in intern in the JFK White House and had a free pass to roam its halls. She was a reporter at Newsweek in the 1960's, before they even had female reporters. She's been married three times. One of her husbands was Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein of the Watergate scandal. And when he had an affair it wasn't just with any old woman, but with the wife of the British ambassador to the United States. She's been nominated for three academy awards for screenwriting (Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle). She also directed those films.

Her accomplishments are staggering. Impressive for any woman of any era, but harder for her certainly, in those times. The sexism alone she must have faced -- at a hard NY newspaper, in the even harder boys club of Hollywood -- had to have been outrageous.

Then why are her essays so flip and shallow? So elitist? Ephron has a dry wit that I find quite pleasing. But the topics? "I Hate my Purse." "I Feel Bad about my Neck." Gah! Vapid and trivial.

I mean, this woman should have some shit to say! Too bad she didn't say any of it.

For most of you who are my Goodreads friends, you will be too young to really appreciate the humor in this book -- after all, you still have firm, unwrinkled necks which you have probably never even given a single thought. BUT take my word for it, someday you will. And then, you should run right out and find a copy of this book. (Perhaps you can find one cheap in the garage sales that members of my generation will be having as we downsize into assisted living apartments!) Anyway, when it comes to the realities of middle-age, it's always better to laugh than to cry, and this book will make you LOL. (There, I'm using a texting acronym. Do I seem younger now?)

Nora Ephron is, hands-down, one of the funniest women in America. Her novels, movies, and essay collections have brought me to tears by way of laughter more than once. That's why I was a bit disappointed by this collection of essays, loosely tied around the topic of aging.

The essays on aging were amusing, but not particularly funny or fresh. It was like eating a day-old doughnut -- still tasty, but probably not worth all the calories. The weird thing -- her non-age-related essays were brilliant. The piece on her love affair with her apartment was a treasure, as was the one about her life in 3500 words or less. I almost felt like her agent or publisher told her she needed to write about getting old, so she did lip service to the topic but snuck in "other stuff" that in actuality is the best part of the book.

If you're an Ephron fan, check it out. Not as great as "Scribble Scribble," but still worth a read.

Siempre es interesante leer a Nora Ephron y sus reflexiones, sobre todo con la perspectiva de los años alrededor de sus ideas y, de forma secundaria, el indudable interés que genera sobre el Nueva York de diferentes momentos del siglo XX. Se lee en un par de horas (o menos) y deja un buen sabor de boca.

A bit of a rocky start, because to be honest I never think about my neck, despite her assertion that all women my age are obsessed with how our aging necks betray us. Why would I feel bad about such an inoffensive and useful body part? It nicely connects my head to my shoulders and that's that. The mid-century modern female body self-hatred was honest and witty, but made me rather sad for her, and for myself for having grown up around a certain amount of that. I'd rather not revisit it unmediated.

However, Ephron's voice is so readable that I still enjoyed this collection of essays, particularly the last few. I think my favourite was 'On Rapture,' which was about the reading experience, describing it in perfect, recognizable terms. In 'What I Wish I'd Known,' I felt an unexpected thrill to see a piece of advice I've been giving friends and my daughter for years - "Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from." (in our house, that comes out as 'when you're picking a partner, be sure to pick someone who'd make a good ex.'). The final essay, 'Considering the Alternative,' was a poignant, if ever-witty, reflection on mortality. This is the first time I've read Ephron and I would read more.

Reread for my book club. Open it anywhere and you will find humor. But my favorite chapter was probably the last one in which Ephron talked about death. She didn't know she only had six more years to live. I hope she was generous with the bath oil.

I love Nora Ephron and wish that she was still alive so that I could continue to enjoy her witty and funny style of writing. Funny is something that I seem to crave these days. This is only her second book that I’ve read. It’s a quick read and a particularly enjoyable one.

Every parent should read her chapter “Parent in Three Stages”. I desperately needed that!

Catching up…

Believe it or not, this was a Library Book Discussion selection. Normally, I don’t like to select short stories as a discussion book, because the “short” story can come and go so quickly in our memory, as we read and move on to the next ones.

And…When we are in a discussion group, the idea is to be ready to discuss the big picture – which typically is the “whole” story – the novel, itself.

But…Nora Ephron was such a genius with her writing. She touched a realness in all of us.

Each story reflected so much about how we feel or think about things – our lives – our relationships – even though it is what has happened in her life…

It felt so…Relatable to any of us.

In her short story, “I feel bad about my neck,” she doesn’t like it when her friends ask her how they look. Especially, when asked about the neck. She says, “the neck is a dead giveaway.”

How often do we bite our tongue, when someone asks, “do I look fat in this?” Yikes!

Please…Don’t ask me!

This book hits on all the issues that she was dealing with on her own…

Aging. Menopause. Her purse. Food she cooked. The end of her marriage. Her hair.

Even…Wondering if the book would be different if it were written by a man.

She also addresses the various stages of parenting, including parents facing the empty nest syndrome, and how she believes it is “underrated.”

There is even her love affair with an apartment building and the experience of moving on.

So much of her life story is funny, enjoyable, profound, and as mentioned earlier, relatable.

And…This book was truly…Such a great discussion book.

With her passing, her talents have been greatly missed.

On reflection 2 stars seems kind of generous... down to 1 star it goes.

I have to say I totally agree with other reviews on here which call this collection trivial and self-aggrandising. It's also, frankly, pretty boring. The essays were not funny or witty, weren't insightful and read like rejected columns from a newspaper supplement or women's magazine in the 90s. Mercifully, the book is a quick read. I think I'll stick to her movies in the future.

ازونجایی که عاشق خوندن روایت‌های آدمام- روایت‌های شغلی، والدگری، زندگی، دانش‌آموزی/دانشجویی، زنانه،مردانه

I listened to the audio book on CD, which is read by the author. That was not the way to go with this one. She has odd inflections and an unnatural reading cadence. For example, she might read like this:

We lived (pause)
in a white house (pause)
and I didn't (pause)
like it.

Partly because of her reading style and partly because of the content, I had trouble getting into it. It's supposed to be funny but isn't especially. She describes all the "maintenance" older women do to keep up their appearances at great length and talks about these things as if they are mandatory, when in fact, they are not. She is not a person that a poor, blue-collar woman like me who shops at Target can well relate to. At least not at first. For instance, she talks about the agony of sitting at the beauty parlor all day to get her hair colored and how she spends more money on it each year than her first car cost. And I compose an imaginary email to her in my head where I turn her on to the beauty aisle at Long's Drug Store where you can buy a box of color that takes less than half an hour to use for less than $10.

Later in the book, however, she rather wins me over. She describes the raptures of getting engrossed in a great novel in a way that I (or you, I bet) could totally relate to. The real world is tedious and seems unreal when you're dying to get back to your book. When she's not talking about shopping, she and I do seem to inhabit the same planet and I can see that she has some wisdom to impart.

And I admire her honesty. She mentions all the upbeat chicken-soup-for-the-soul type of books that are out there for older women and says they're full of crap. Being old isn't that great. In this day and age where everyone pretends that whatever age they're at is the new 25, it's refreshing.

This might appeal to a woman who is looking for some light nonfiction to read. Do NOT get the audio version, though. I really think it would have been a totally different experience to read it and I probably would have taken to it much more quickly.

Funny
Intimate
Entertaining
Loved it
The life of a woman in NYC