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I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Unavailable
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Unavailable
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
Audiobook3 hours

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

Written by Nora Ephron

Narrated by Nora Ephron

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

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.


From the Compact Disc edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 24, 2006
ISBN9780739342930
Unavailable
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

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Reviews for I Feel Bad About My Neck

Rating: 3.8395061728395063 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm middle aged and I have the feeling that some fragments have been written for me. The book has a slight pessimistic tone, but life is not always cheerful.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I recommend this book to all my friends of a certain age. Ten years ago, probably wouldn't have identified with so much of it so closely. There are portions that are familiar to any woman of any age. She goes off on handbags and I hurt my neck by nodding in agreement so vigorously. I mean, really, when these women make the statement "THIS is the best handbag ever," seriously, what makes it the BEST ever and what qualifications do they have to make the pronouncements. I have never found a handbag that I ever liked, let alone vowed to spend the rest of my life with. But I digress. Lots of thought-provoking tales and lots of fun.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    another simply marvelous collection of essays with insight from Nora Ephron, proving once again how important laughter is on this journey we call life!

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I recommend this book to all my friends of a certain age. Ten years ago, probably wouldn't have identified with so much of it so closely. There are portions that are familiar to any woman of any age. She goes off on handbags and I hurt my neck by nodding in agreement so vigorously. I mean, really, when these women make the statement "THIS is the best handbag ever," seriously, what makes it the BEST ever and what qualifications do they have to make the pronouncements. I have never found a handbag that I ever liked, let alone vowed to spend the rest of my life with. But I digress. Lots of thought-provoking tales and lots of fun.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A collection of wry essays about life and womanhood. Light as a meringue, poignant in places, a wonderfully easy read. I loved Nora Ephron especially when I found she was an online Scrabble addict. These essays endear her even more, especially the one about the joy of books. Sadly missed, she died this year.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    These are humorous essays about all sorts of things that had to do with Ephron's life after she became a senior citizen. Many of them were looking back on such topics as failed marriages, parenting, food (cabbage strudel, in particular), aging, female body maintenance and so forth. My only disappointment was that she ended with an essay on illness and death. That was a rough ending to this otherwise entertaining book for this 65-year-old reader.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Nora Ephron has been an occasional guilty pleasure for many years. I remember reading CRAZY SALAD some years ago, chortling quietly to myself. And I loved her screenplays too. So I'm not surprised that I so enjoyed I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK, a collection of essays that had me at times laughing so hard I began to cough and wheeze ("On Maintenance" and "The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words or Less" and the title piece), and at other times causing me to reflect soberly on the fragility of life ("Considering the Alternative"). But probably my favorite piece is "On Rapture," which is all about loving books and the worlds they can take you to. I'm glad I read this slim collection. What I fell bad about now, however, is that Nora Ephron, with her marvelous sense of irony and cockeyed humor, is no longer with us.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A blurb from The New York Review calls this collection of 15 essays a "funny, sisterly collection." I didn't find it laugh-out-loud funny, although it was often smile-worthy--but there certainly were plenty of moments of identification for me to feel I found a sister in Nora Ephron. Hard to imagine a woman who wouldn't recognize herself in "On Maintenance" about all the things women put themselves through to retain a look of youth and beauty: hair washed, blown-dry, dyed and body and facial hair bleached, tweezed, waxed and threaded, nails manicured, skin regimens and creams, exercise routines. And many of us I'm sure could see ourselves in her mini-bio through cookbooks in "Serial Monogamy: A Memoir." I felt as if I had found a sister indeed in her essay on reading books in "On Rapture" when she spoke of reading Chabon's Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and her love of things Jane Austen. And then there's how we both feel about New York City--from "Where I Live:"Someone I know once wisely said that the expression "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" is completely wrong where New York is concerned; the opposite is true. New York is a very livable city.Neither of us could imagine living anywhere else. She even lived for ten years on the Upper West Side very close to where I lived from childhood. Her landmarks are mine: Zabars, La Caridad Chinese and Cuban Restaurant, H & H Bagels (sadly closed some months ago in the economic downturn after being part of the neighborhood for decades), Gray's Papaya. I don't know that I can say I felt sympathy for her lamentations about the end of luxury rental stabilization causing her to move out from the landmark Apthorp building. The dirty secret about New York City rent control and stabilization is how it helps the wealthy and privileged above all. (Don't believe me? Google Congressman Charles Rangel and "rent control" and then get back to me.) Ephron seemed to me to completely miss the connection between how run down her building had been and rent control. But her ode of adoration to my neighborhood in "Moving On"? Right there with her. I loved "The Story of My Life in 3,500 Words" and especially having gotten to know her in this book, I found the final essay on aging and dying "Considering the Alternative" so very sad, even terrifying. All the more knowing she died this year. The collection left me wishing I had known her--but then through this book I almost feel as if I had.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I learned that Nora Ephron died, I didn't know much about her. But as I read some obituaries and articles about her, I became more interested. I read her essay A Few Words about Breasts and I knew I had to read more.When I picked up this book from the library, the librarian told me I was to young to be reading it. Of course, I look younger than I am. I told her I had read the breasts essay and thought it was hilarious. She apparently really liked her writing.So I started the book with high expectations and at first, I was a bit let down. I didn't really identify with the first few essays (they didn't have much to do with age at that point). But I continued on, hoping it would get better.It actually did. About a third or halfway through the book, maybe around the essay Moving On, I started to enjoy it. I thought the later essays were poignant, well written, and humorous at times. And of course, I really liked her thoughts on reading.Ironically, it was the last essay, Consider the Alternative, wherein Ephron talks about getting old and dealing with death, that I enjoyed the most. Though I feel old, I'm nowhere near the age she was when writing it (64). Yet, I still identify with what she wrote and connected with it. It also made me think of my parents and in-laws, who are approaching that age, and what will happen as the years go by.It was also really poignant considering she died recently.Because of the latter half of the book, I'm bumping this up to 3.5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Funny and insightful (and not just about women and their necks). There are wonderful bits in this book about the love of reading. One chapter called "On Rapture" is about the joy of being completely immersed in great books. And this quote appears in another chapter: "Reading is one of the main things I do. Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates myself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed this as a quick read. A nice break between some of the fantasy, mystery and nonfiction I've been reading of late. The essays are amusing. I can't say that I could identify with many of them, never having been a career woman, or lived in a city or cared much about my looks or clothing, but I could see the humor of it. I could certainly identify with her imaginary conversations with the writers of cookbooks. Where the author caught me and won my admiration was on her chapter about parenting. It was bang on. Where she won my friendship was in the chapter titled, "Rapture." About her love and relationship with books. I will certainly read more of her work, since she is the creator of many of my favorite movies, as well.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I was deceived. I'd read a raving review on some blog, and bought it straight away. Only when I opened it on my Kindle did I see the subtitel "And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman". As a male with almost exclusively male friends, "thoughts on being a woman" would not be one of my chosen topics. On the positive, I enjoyed the writing style, the bits about NYC and some incidental fragments. On the other hand, it really felt like this book was scraped together from a few dinner party conversations. Female grooming ranks a bit too high on the list of vapid topics - no one cares that much about an author's manicure frequency or hairdresser regime, let alone more intimate matters. Looking back, what bugged me most was the overarching baby boomer's egocentricity and sense of entitlement that transpires from every page. There is humour in the book, but for me it was insufficient to counter the flaws. I guess it's an OK book to take to the beach/pool and finish in one sitting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Agatha purred for the first time while reading this book. I like to read essay collections to Agatha, books with a good rhythm for reading aloud and this one fit the bill. Ephron is amusing no doubt - some of the pieces work better than others. I particularly liked the chapter where she determined the amount of time she needed to put into her appearance so as not to appear homeless - I can relate. Agatha purred during the reading of the chapter, Rapture, about the ability to be lost in a book, which I found very fitting.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Unfortunately, this was not as funny for me as I'd hoped for or expected. I actually think a large part of this is because I listened to the audio book instead of reading it, and was annoyed and distracted by Nora Ephron's reading of the book. Somehow her reading was annoying and completely unfunny to me. A so-so book, with some funny parts (purses), and others not very original(Maintenance) or boring (cooking).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quick, hilarious, written with all the right words and attitudes and emotions. This book is about being a women, being a less-than-perfect woman, aging, writing, New York, aging in New York, and rent control.The screenwriter of movies ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ ‘You’ve Got Mail,’ and more- Ephron is the funniest woman in her generation, and possibly in any. Oh, I just saw this title made the best seller list this week– New York Times, I think. Bravo.Available at Teton County Library, call number 814.54 Ephron
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I listened to Ephron reading this--so damn funny!
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I had never read Nora Ephron or heard of her. She wrote the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally...which I never saw. But I'm pretty sure she was on The Colbert Report when this book came out and somehow the title stuck.Unfortunately, the title is so good the rest of the book falls short in comparison.A collection of humorist essays on being a woman is not new. Nor does Ephron review the subject in new light. Her writing is brief and extremely simple. Each essay begins and ends without substance. I didn't laugh, but I blame Erma Bombeck for this. Some female humorists are just too classic to compete with.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lord preserve us from whiny, self absorbed rich people - which is all Nora Ephron is for the first half of this book. After she stops kvetching about her NYC apartment problems the essays do get better, and the last one about death and aging is wonderful. I wish the rest of the book had lived up to it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Observations after reading "Neck".Per word, it may be the most expensive book I've ever bought.Thank God I'm a male.Not sure what the chapter about the apartment had to do with "Neck"Ephron has written some very interesting, amusing, poignant.......screenplays.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I looked forward to reading this book for quite a while. I was not disappointed when I got to it. Although I am not of the age where I feel that I have to hide my neck, the book was humorous and poignant (where it should be) and a slice of life for a New Yorker. I enjoyed it very much. Any woman who is not in her early twenties could "get" this book and find quite a few laughs in Ms. Ephron's words and wisdom.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Reading this, I honestly did not know who the author was and what her other works were. It seems this book was aimed towards the older demographic, but I found it enjoyable to read. I loved her essay "On Maintenance" as I realized and appreciated how I do not feel the need to go to the salon and get my nails done, etc and spend endless amounts of money on things we don't need to survive. Wise and witty, the essays were entertaining and insightful. Three and a half out of five.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Quite an enjoyable collection of essays on women, aging, home, and food. I particularly liked the essays that discussed being a reader : )
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This collection of essays is written by Ephron, who is the mastermind behind beloved movies like When Harry Met Sally and most recently, Julie & Julia. She waxes philosophical about everything from purses to parenting. She is honest about the frustrating aspects of being a woman, like constantly having hair removed. In one essay she says she saw an unkempt homeless woman on the street and thinks that she would look exactly like that in very little time if she let her "maintenance" regime go and stopped dying her hair, exercising, etc. I really loved her essay called "Moving On" when she discusses how New York City is very livable, it's when you leave and try to visit that it feels foreign. I felt that way about London. Loved it, but when you visit later that pub is closed, that restaurant moved and you somehow feel your nostalgia has been betrayed. Her essay "On Rapture" was probably my favorite. She talks about the rapture you feel after reading an amazing book. The feeling of being so enthralled by it that all you want to do is disappear into its pages. I think we can all relate to that. It was a fun quick read, but didn't leave me thinking anything too deep.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is a personal, heartwarming and funny collection of stories. Some sad, some sweet, all creatively written. Though I am not yet at the age where I feel bad about my neck, I appreciated Ephron's insight into aging and the array of issues surrounding it. Most surprising were the chapters about her personal heartache and discussion of death. I laughed and I cried. What more could you ask for?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I remember I enjoyed this. Read it in one sitting (as much because it was due as because it was engrossing). But 6 months later, I don't remember any specifics. It was cute/fun. A fair amount is specific to life in NYC. I'd appreciate more if I were older and/or had kids.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Mildly amusing. Maybe good for taking to a doctor's appointment for something to read in the waiting room.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I came across this book as I was investigating and testing our library’s downloadable audio books, and man am I glad I did! It might have taken me awhile to read it, what with putting it down to finish laundry or working out or something, but I was able to do all those things while listening to it on my mp3 player, and I had it done it just about 4 hours. I’ve never finished a book so fast in my life!Nora Ephron (also known for writing and directing You’ve Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle, and writing When Harry Met Sally, among other things) has written a very funny book about women and the insufferable quirks tied to our gender. Why do we need purses to match every outfit? We can’t find the things we put in them anyway, and probably didn’t need them to begin with. Ephron’s solution is to buy a bag that is taxi-cab yellow and couldn’t possibly match anything, and therefore, in some weird way, matches everything. She also discusses the need to wash your hair every day. Not only is this unneccesary, Ephron says, but it takes too much time and money. And yet, picking up a copy of Vogue one day at the hair salon cost her $20,000.Matching wit with wisdom, Ephron has produced a book that can be enjoyed by women of all ages. While some of the jokes may not be as funny to those of us under 30 (or even 50), it gives us something to look forward to. Her humor is just my style – sarcastic, cynical, and yet somehow optimistic. She tells you that aging is nothing to cheer about, but at the same time, it’s got its up sides. She’s got advice in her section titled “What I Wish I’d Known,” and her stories of her experience as a White House intern are hilarious.3 out of 5 stars, mainly because I just don’t think I’m old enough to fully appreciate all the content in this book. I do, however, appreciate Ephron’s wit and wisdom, and I found myself knowing that when the aging process really begins to weigh me down, I won’t be alone.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A few good chuckles.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I humorous collection of anecdotes about aging and living in New York. I imagine those who are the author's contemporaries would probably get the biggest kick out of this.