October 3rd, 2013

Nora Ephron on Reading

I am about halfway through Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad about My Neck, which is largely a funny, silly book about things that don’t matter to me. The food essay was funny, but I don’t think she realizes how rare it is to have both the money and the leisure time to “need” twice weekly trips to the salon. But then, I’m about 20 years younger and a few hundred thou poorer than the target audience for this book, I imagine, so I’m trying to appreciate it for what it is, which is an extremely well-written book. And in passages like this, you see why:

“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 way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape: it’s a way 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.”

Just about sums it all up, doesn’t it?