Sukey's Favorite

I Feel Bad About My Neck
By Nora Ephron
Random House, $29.95
4 hours unabridged, CD
ISBN 9780739342923

Buy or borrow this book!

Support your local independent bookseller

Find it in a WorldCat library

Compare prices at major online bookstores

There's a lot of navel contemplating in the first month of a new year and if aging (gracefully or otherwise) is part of your pondering, be sure to listen to Nora Ephron's latest, I Feel Bad About My Neck. Ephron is a successful screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally), novelist and a quintessentially smart, savvy New Yorker of a certain age, who can move from stinging self-surveillance to elegiac poignancy in a New York nanosecond. She not only feels bad about her neck, she feels bad about not finding the cabbage strudel of her dreams, spending hours maintaining her 60-plus façade, not being able to read without reading glasses which always do a disappearing act, and a long list of other all-too-valid complaints. She dispenses her wonderfully candid, wickedly witty worldly wisdom in snippets that serve as a staccato bio, including her many marriages and abiding love for her city. Ephron performs like a pro, making the whole package even more delicious—but maybe not as delicious as the cabbage strudel.

Headline

REVIEWS BY SUKEY HOWARD

In The Mission Song, John le Carré is again the interpreter of African maladies, back in the heart of darkness with a powerful tale of love and betrayal that explores the byzantine complexities of the resource-rich Eastern Congo, sickened by decades of genocidal war, nightmarish political corruption and plagued once more by neocolonial greed in the guise of proffered stability. Le Carré interprets through an interpreter, Salvo—the illegitimate son of an Irish missionary priest and a Congolese mother—a gifted translator of many African languages. When he uncovers a plot for a "small coup," Salvo, believing naively in the high-minded motives of his British employers, goes to the very people he shouldn't trust, then finds himself battling alone for his beloved country. David Oyelowo offers a splendid, nuanced reading, getting a range of accents from Kinshasa to the House of Lords just right.


Standing up for herself

Paula Poundstone's brand of humor may be an acquired taste, but one well worth acquiring. Her first book, There's Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say, is a Paula-perfect monologue, delivered as only she can—rambling, revealing and fabulously funny. Paula describes her stand-up style as "observational humor." Mostly, she observes herself, as a comic and as a single mother of three adopted children living with nine cats, a determinedly dumb dog and an aging rabbit. Somehow she mingles her personal musings, including problems with alcohol and an epic stay in rehab, with idiosyncratic takes on Joan of Arc, Beethoven, Lincoln, Helen Keller and other unlikely bedfellows. Whatever Paula meant to say, this will do just fine.


Smart listening The Dummies series has gone gangbusters, with everything from auto repair to algebra, puppies to PowerPoint, sex to selling. Just in time for the New Year, new-you motif, we have three Dummies selections on audio, each written by Eric Tyson and read by Brett Barry in a pleasant, no-nonsense style. The 5th Edition of Personal Finance for Dummies offers the concise info that allows you to straighten out your finances, get the right insurance coverage and prepare for economic swings. Investing for Dummies, 4th Edition gives you the skinny on identifying your goals, developing and managing a portfolio, reading financial reports and more. OK, your finances are under control, your investments are bringing home the bacon, it's time to check out Home Buying for Dummies, 3rd Edition, written with Ray Brown, so you can buy your dream house at the best possible price.


© 2007 ProMotion, inc.