I Feel Bad About My Neck. Finished 10-12-13, rating 3/5, non-fiction, 137 pages, pub. 2006

I thought this would be the perfect choice for the read-a-thon.  I had it on my shelves, it was short, it should be funny.  Nora Ephron has written some of my favorite movies: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail (hm, maybe it’s Meg Ryan I love?).  The good thing is that it was short, the bad thing is that I still caught myself skimming. It’s not bad, it just didn’t hold my interest.  I think I find essays like this more interesting in small doses and when I try to read them compiled in a book like this I don’t care for them.  The average or boring ones ruin the good feeling from the great ones.

This was from my favorite paragraph…

When I pass a bookshelf, I like to pick out a book from it and thumb through it.  When I see a newspaper on the couch, I like to sit down with it.  When the mail arrives, I like to rip it open.  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 was my attention deficit disorder medicates itself.  Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a was 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.  But my ability to pick something up and read it-which has gone unchecked all my life up until now-is now entirely dependent on the whereabouts of my reading glasses. (Blind as a Bat chapter)

I was going to make one funny note from each of the 15 chapters, but only made notes on 5, that’s not a positive percentage.  A few things Iearned…

1. Necks go south at 43 and there’s nothing you can do about it.  This probably struck me because I just turned 42.

2. I can buy a Metrocard bag/purse at the Transit Museum in Grand Central Station.  I want one!

3. One Away friendships do not work. (both of you having slept with the same person)

4. Don’t romanticize your home. You can make another one.

5. JFK didn’t sleep with every intern.

It was okay, nothing to get too excited about but a quick diversion.