I Feel Bad About My Neck

I Feel Bad About My Neck, Nora Ephron

For much of this book, I thought Nora Ephron and my friend Chrystal had very similar styles of writing, but in fact Chrystal is much funnier. Judge for yourself.

Chrystal:

The next big challenge is the sopa pearlas con cerdos, or “pearls for swine” soup. I made a big pot of lentil and vegetable soup last Friday that “he who travels with a personal chef” simply refuses to eat. Every time I say “we can have some soup for lunch…..” Geoff says “let’s go out to eat”. I refuse to throw it out. We are at a soup impass.

(you can find her whole post here)

Nora:

It’s served with soup, or with a main course like pot roast or roast pheasant (not that I’ve ever made roast pheasant, but no question cabbage strudel would be delicious with it). It has a buttery, flaky, crispy strudel crust made of phyllo (the art of which I plan to master in my next life, when I will also read Proust past the first chapter), the a moist filling of sauteed cabbage that’s simultaneously sweet, savory, and completely unexpected, like all good things.

Her book (Nora’s, not Chrystal’s. Chrystal doesn’t have a book (but she should)) is enjoyable but not uproariously hilarious, which is what I was looking for at the particular moment when I selected it. To be totally fair, it’s possible that some extremely bad recent events made it hard for me to see the humour in it. But wait, that’s not it! Other things have made me laugh, so I am sticking with my first instinct.  Mildly funny in parts, at best.

It also get less funny as she goes along. The second last chapter contains a rueful list of things she wished she’d known, some of which are just plain wrong. Such as:

Take more pictures. Wrong! Please, people, take fewer pictures! Especially in art galleries, for god’s sake. In fact, let me clear something up for you right now. That picture you are taking of the Da Vinci is going to look like crap, and there’s probably a better looking postcard of it in the gift shop. So just quit it.

There’s no point in making piecrust from scratch. If you think this is true, then you are invited to my house for pie.

Her last chapter, the most melancholy, talks about facing death and simultaneously avoiding facing it. She talks about her friend who died horribly at 66 and wonders how she should be living her life, being 64 herself. I read that and thought 64 is not that old and maybe she’s being melodramatic. Then I turn to the last page of the book, the “about the author” section, and was shocked to read that she died in 2012, when she was 71. I am saddened by that. And now if you’ll excuse me I’m just going to pop into the kitchen and make some pie.

Rating: This is still just a borrow book for me. I have no plans to read it again.