Book Review: I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron

I Feel Bad About My Neck is Nora Ephron's mini rant on the anguish of old age. In the title essay. She mentions how the neck is the first thing to go, around the age of 42, and it totally kills any "anti-aging" you try to do to your face. She laments her friends suddenly always wearing turtle necks and mandarin collars. From the neck issue, she talks about other issues with aging such as failing eye sight, increased personal maintenance routines, how awful purses are, and the loss of close friends. She talks quite a bit about her fantastic apartments in New York City, as well as other New York amazingness such as Hungarian bakeries and being able to order anything at any time and have it delivered to your door. Overall, the book was an insider's take on getting older, but without the "put a cheerful spin on it" that most other authors choose to take. She pulls no punches and tells it like it is, which is really refreshing.

I went into this expecting the humor of some of my favorite films (When Harry Met Sally, You;ve Got Mail, Sleepless In Seattle), but kind of felt a bit let down. Nora is certainly amusing, and she's a very good writer, but this just wasn't as quaintly funny as her writing in her movies. I can't deny though that reading this book made me wish I was in New York - a very dangerous things since I've always loved that city and wished I made the jump to live there when I was younger. There's nothing like reading how much a long time resident loves that city to make you wish you were there. Plus I've been to a Hungarian bakery in New York and it was a magical experience. I can only imagine how amazing it would be to have that at my disposal all the time, lol. Also, I enjoyed her chapter about books that have affected her deeply in her life, and I've now added a few books to my own list of "to reads" because of this book. All in all, it was a good, quick read. I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.