I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

by Nora Ephron Narrated by Nora Ephron

Overview

With her disarming, intimate, completely accessible voice, and dry sense of humor, Nora Ephron shares with us her ups and downs in I Feel Bad About My Neck, a candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests, and life itself.
The woman who brought us When Harry Met Sally . . . 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, but mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.
Utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, I Feel Bad About My Neck is an audiobook of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat.

Editorial Reviews

Janet Maslin

This brief, long-overdue book is for readers still willing to buy into Ms. Ephron’s familiar writing persona: that of a sharp, funny, theatrically domesticated New Yorker who can throw both arrows and good money at the petty things that plague her. When she says that she can trace the history of the last 40 years through changing trends in lettuce, she isn’t kidding.
ק The New York Times

Bunny Crumpacker

Despite the elegiac tone of this collection, it would be nice to think that we'll have Nora Ephron around for a long time. She's always good for an amusing line, a wry smile, and sometimes an abashed grin of recognition as she homes in on one of our own dubious obsessions.
— The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

A disparate assortment of sharp and funny pieces revealing the private anguishes, quirks and passions of a woman on the brink of senior citizenhood. Ephron, whose screenwriting credits include Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally and Silkwood, has brought together 15 essays, most of them previously published in the New York Times, the New Yorker or assorted women's/fashion magazines. She explores the woes of aging with honesty-hair-coloring and Botox are standard treatments, as is getting a mustache wax-but maintaining a 60-plus body is only her starting point. Ephron includes breezy accounts of her culinary misadventures, her search for the perfect cabbage strudel and her dissatisfaction with women's purses. An essay on her love affair and eventual disenchantment with the Apthorp apartment building on Manhattan's West Side deftly captures both the changes in New York City and in her own life. There's an unusual pairing of presidential pieces: A lighthearted piece on her non-encounter with Kennedy when she was a White House intern in the 1960s is followed by a fiercely astringent one on the failings of Bill Clinton. Some of the pieces, such as her essay on parenting, seem tentative, and two, "The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less" and "What I Wish I'd Known," read like works in progress, suggesting that they may have been rushed into print to fill the pages of a too-small book. One doesn't need to be a post-menopausal New Yorker with a liberal outlook and comfortable income to enjoy Ephron's take on life, but those who fit the profile will surely relish it most. First printing of 60,000

From the Publisher

Wickedly witty ... Crackling sharp ... Fireworks shoot out [of this collection].” —The Boston Globe

“Long-overdue ... Executed with sharpness and panache ... [Nora Ephron] retains an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are ... It's good to know that Ms. Ephron's wry, knowing X-ray vision is one of them." —The New York Times

“Women who find themselves somewhere between the arrival of their first wrinkle and death have to hear only the title to get the message." —Los Angeles Times

“Wry and amusing.... Marvelous." —The Washington Post Book World

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169378856
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	10/24/2006
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

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.

Excerpted from I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron Copyright © 2006 by Nora Ephron. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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