I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman [Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Nora Ephron (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2006

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

From Publishers Weekly

Ephron's eclectic essays about life as an older woman certainly provide humor and insight into the lives of sexagenarians who have spent most of their lives as city girls. She both mocks and embraces the lifestyle she has maintained over the past decades. Whether she is waxing poetic about the rituals of everyday life, her love-hate relationship with purses, her affinity for celebrity chefs or her obsession over her apartment, Ephron delivers this audiobook in the spirited tone of one who is at peace with the life she has lived. Her gentle comedic delivery of punch lines will evoke smiles in listeners. While her sincerity at times clashes with her sarcasm, causing the listener to pause and determine what she meant, she still produces moments where her positive energy summons up a picture of her smiling as she reads into the microphone. Ephron's writing style lends weight to these brief trysts into the personal and worldly, strange and mundane aspects of her life. But mostly, her voice evokes the image of a serene and wise woman providing her insights.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Nora Ephron, best known for her screenplays When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, and Silkwood and best sellers Heartburn and Crazy Salad, has written a sort of Ephron retrospective. Though humorously self-deprecating and poignant, critics agree that the essays, some published previously,are uneven. Readers may love "I Hate My Purse"—unless they find it outdated. Other essays came off as vain, stale, or elitist in their carefree attitude toward luxury items. Only "Considering the Alternative" received uniform praise for its generous introspection. Despite the collection's lightweight feel, Ephron still writes "like someone who has something useful and important to tell her readers" (Los Angeles Times). "When your children are teenagers," for example, "it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Random House Audio; Unabridged edition (September 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739342924
• ISBN-13: 978-1415935323
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (390 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,282,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Nora Ephron has received Academy Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, Silkwood, and Sleepless in Seattle, which she also directed. She lives in New York City with her husband, writer Nicholas Pileggi.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

79 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Witty, clever but leightweight..., December 15, 2006

By 

Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Hardcover)

Nora Ephron is witty, clever and has her finger on the pulse of American women everywhere in her delightful book, I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. My only complaint is that at 137 pages (and small pages at that), it's a rather lightweight book.

Ephron writes about so many of the problems we women face: hairstyles, maintenance routines, raising children, empty nesting, reading glasses, cooking, purses, living in New York City, aging, and the death of good friends. Some of her observations are brutally honest. She talks about how a neck is a telltale sign of aging. "The neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn't have to do that if it had a neck." She has a refreshing list of "What I Wish I'd Known" including "Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from" and "The empty nest is underrated."

I' m not real big on make-up routines, I wear glasses all the time and love my poker-straight hair. So some of her musings I found funny but didn't necessarily relate. But where Ephron and I see eye to eye is about reading. "Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person." One of my favorite chapters is "On Rapture," about the state of rapture she feels when she discovers a good book. She also lists some books that changed her life. The chapters where she discusses reading are the best in the book.

I Feel Bad About My Neck got raves from most of the book critics that reviewed this book. While I enjoyed it, I just was expecting more from Ephron.

291 of 320 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enough with denial - embrace it ;-), August 2, 2006

By 

Little Miss Cutey (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Hardcover)

I've loved Nora Ephron ever since Sleepless In Seattle and You've Got Mail. Heartburn (which she wrote) turned into a hit film, and so I knew when I saw that she wrote another book again, I thought I'd pick it up. It's a collection of amusing essays all about growing older.
She says that there are so many books out there about what to do after menopause etc, but none addressed your neck change as you age so she thought this was a cute and funny title.
She talks about maintenance being a second career because a lot of women are pre-empting age. For example, hair dying, botox etc. She talks about her husbands theory of women either being birds, muffins or horses and that is the shape of your face. If you are a muffin, you can have a zillion face lifts and be fine, but other shaped faces - not so much.
She talks more seriously about reaching 60 and start loosing friends. You have to come to grips with reality and realise that we aren't invincible and won't die - it's getting closer to being on the cards.
She also mentions things she wishes she'd known; You can't be friends with people who call after 11pm, Write everything down, Back up your files etc. She's very funny (a very dry sense of humour) and it shows through this book. It's a good read that is sometimes serious but overall will be thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. If you are a fan of her movies, you will definately love I Feel Bad About My Neck ...

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Title misnomer, November 5, 2006

By 

Eva Wardlow "seeker" (Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (Hardcover)

I was ready for some light reading and selected this title because of its allusion to how tiresome it is to put up with the "one down" role women carry in society. It turned out to be a self-centered litany of unfunny situations.