I Feel Bad About my Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

 I Feel Bad About my Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

is a sunny and funny books on ageing and more. 

I returned yesterday at the emporium of Umbertide Books for Dogs; as always I found beautiful readings, but the one captured me the most was this one; I love and love and love and immensely love all the writings by Nora. 

Once returned home, I read it in few hours, involving my mother; we both smiled and laughed thinking at the fact that Nora is completely right regarding age, and necks, and faces plenty of botox telling lies and necks telling truths and that ageing is not beauty at all, and that maybe it would be better to be still young than not wise.

A New Yorker's addicted, Nora loved and loved immensely cooking every sorta of food. She took it seriously. Her mother presented her a sort of Bible on cooking, and with the time she fell in love for many other authors, one of them brought in the big screen; have you seen Julie&Julia? Right!

Married several times, the second marriage ended pretty badly; the husband went to bed with someone else while she was still pregnant; but Nora was a woman of big resources and temperament. She defines herself someone absolutely undiscreet and maybe that's why to her point of view, someone like John Kennedy, a man addicted for women didn't go to bed with her (the only stagist he didn't "pass"); she would have told this to everyone! 

A chapter I loved was the one of purses; one day Angela a british lady said me that the purse I had was too big for her. "My husband said me once: don't keep a purse where, for searching an object, you spend wagons of time like an old lady." I start to believe that it is true. Nora didn't love purses. When she was a freelancer, she didn't need a purse, because the place she loved to visit the most was heh kitchen; she just brought with her 20 dollars, a credit card just in case, if in the evening she decided to immerse herself in the NYC's atmosphere.

Sure, later she bought a purse, in particular when she wasn't anymore a freelancer; and here start a trip in the world of purses that Nora would have avoided with all herself; whatever she picked up wasn't OK for her; too big, too small, too expensive; the good occasion for losing things is a purse; you'll laugh when you'll read that part of the tale! 

After the experience with a friend in Paris who bought a second hand Hermes purse, once returned home she bought a 26 dollar bag! A MetroCard bag.

An hilarious chapter the one of maintanance,  from hair to unwanted hair passing through skin and every possible lotions bought for killing the time and having a good skin.

You'll laugh when she will write on clothes, skirts, shirts that unfortunately women can't wear anymore, because here and there start to develop imperfections. 

Why 60 years worried Nora? Well, ageing apart, because it's in this part of the existence that we start to lose friends and dear ones and we feel what it means mortality. 

Nora was a beautiful, intellectually honest person, of great rarety and simply she wrote what she thought. Enchanting. As always.

This reading has been for sure a joyous one!

Always recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori 

Johnny Depp and his passion for books and reading

  Discovering one of the most powerful passions of Johnny Depp: books 

One of the main passions of Johnny Depp, maybe his biggest one, movies and music apart are books.

Several years ago during an interview with me he confessed talking  of school and books:

"I was bored with school thats why I dropped out.   I learnt things outwith school and I was always reading something in the house. I still do read a lot and pack quite a few books when I am traveling". 

Johnny Depp loves used and old books. He falls in love for editions at time very inexpensive, just 99 cents. He said several times he loves to smelling old books.

It's possible to find pictures of a very young Johnny Depp of just 20 years close to a pile of books, proud and cheerful because he would have read them all and they would have made him happy. A real powerful lover born of and for literature. Thanks to his position as actor he also pick up always books he falls in love with for re-creating the world contained in that pages on the screen. And this is simply stunning. Most of Johnny' Depp's  movies are based in fact on books he has read and appreciated a lot. 

Daniel Depp, his brother is a novelist. With Dan Depp he wrote the documentary: "The Brave".

Who are the authors Johnny Depp love the most?

Well many. Being an avid reader, I guess that this questions wouldn't find a precise answer. Maybe one of the most important writers touched directly his soul in profundity and Johnny knew  in person was Hunter S.Thompson.

 Johnny discovered this writer from Louisville Kentucky, his same State, (Depp was born in Owensboro) when he was very young sharing a lot of time with him and living with him amazing adventures. Johnny was enthusiastic of this man. An anarchic and anti-conformist soul.

 He said in later 2006 in the preface of Gonzo by Thompson
in a limited Edition of Three Thousand Numbered Copies released December 2006

 ‎:  "Thinking of Hunter, I am overcome by a great deluge of memories".  

Johnny describes Hunter:

 " His nature was to observe and dissect any and all situations, so observe and dissect he did with an inexorable fervor. He lived it, breathed it, and celebrated it, all of it. And if you were lucky enough to prowl alongside him on any of his escapades, so did you, to the absolute hilt.Every document, scrap of paper, newspaper clipping, cocktail napkin and photograph were sacred to Hunter".

He loves Hunter's books so badly.  He was so convinced of these books to put on screen directed by Terry Gilliam  Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and later The Rum Diary.


 Jack Kerouac is another Johnny's passions and it couldn't be differently. He takes so seriously the passion for Kerouac. He has had the chance to meet Kerouac's brother-in-law John Sampas. John Sampas was so glad to sharing with Johnny Depp, Jack Kerouac's world, locals and written stuff.

Johnny own a first edition of On the road, a lot of other material involving Kerouac and his last typewriter.

Other writers Johnny Depp loves so badly? Edgar Allen Poe, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, a poet, Verlain, Rimbaud, TS Eliot.

In The Tourist they filmed in the suite where Marcel Proust and Honorè de Balzac stayed during their trips to Venice.


In many cases Johnny has the original manuscripts of the works of the writers he loves the most and other ones as well. This is simply impressive.


Recently Johnny Depp launched a personal house publishing continuing at the same time to present to us beautiful movies born firstly by the mind of a writer and later chosen by him for being put on screen. 

                                                                Anna Maria Polidori