The day before the election I needed something funny and I found it in Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck (published in 2008).  This woman is hysterical and right up my alley, with her love for the Upper West Side (Manhattan), and Wilkie Collins (one of my all-time favorite authors), and her utter mystification with the item known as “PURSE”.  I can totally identify with her purse problem: if only all my coats had such deep pockets that I never, ever needed a purse.  Or if I could have a personal valet to carry all my stuff (books, date book, chapsticks, tinted and plain, receipts for stuff bought two years ago and yet I cannot find the receipt for the shirt I bought yesterday for my son that was too small, what was I thinking?, train schedules, gum wrappers, pens without tops, broken pencils, and wallet), anyway, someone to drag all that stuff around and do the grocery shopping and of course cook all that stuff.. Now that I have my kids cleaning up after dinner I could finally relax if only I had a purse toter/shopper/cook.  (Let’s not talk about laundry  – I once wrote a poem claiming to enjoy the folding of laundry but those halcyon days are over).

The first three essays in I Feel Bad About My Neck are the best but they are all funny.  You don’t have to be a woman of any certain age to laugh out loud; you don’t have to be a woman at all to find this woman funny.  Enjoy and don’t forget to VOTE.