"read nora" is always the answer
and guess what here's an extra little incentive to do so
If Nora Ephron grew up with what she called a “Dorothy Parker problem”—that is, dreaming of the day she’d be a sharp and successful New York woman, the kind who “made her living by her wit” and always said the funny thing at the party—then I grew up with a Nora Ephron problem. Growing up, I drank her words up with giddy delight, developing a taste for their vinegar flavor and hoping it would seep into my own sensibilities. I loved that she could sometimes be kind of awful, and you still loved her anyway, because she said exactly what you were thinking—she was just brave enough to actually say it. She was who I wanted to become.1 If I’m being honest, she still is.
Friends, readers, and social media followers: it’s no secret that I love Nora Ephron’s work. For what would have been her 82nd birthday, Tertulia—a great new site and app for book lovers that personalizes the book buying process in the best kind of browse-encouraging way—asked me to share my favorites of Nora’s books and essays. Here, you can read about why I love the inside-baseball collection of essays on media—where she absolutely ethers People Magazine saying, among other things, that reading it makes her “feel that I have just spent four days in Los Angeles” (derogatory)—the time she called Julie Nixon “a chocolate covered spider,” the essay about her hatred of egg whites, and more.
There’s a scene in You’ve Got Mail where Joe Fox explains to Kathleen Kelly what it is about men and The Godfather: “The Godfather is the I Ching. The Godfather is the sum of all wisdom. The Godfather is the answer to any question.” I’ve written about this before, but Nora Ephron is my Godfather. When you need an answer to almost anything (or, on a few occasions, need reassurance that no one—I mean no one—has the answer), read Nora.
If you need to update your library shelves, right now you can get 15% off your first Tertulia order (or 25% and free shipping if you sign up for a membership) when you enter the code BEDCRUMBS at checkout. Pick out a Nora book and read it! Go for a deep cut! Or don’t! But read Nora! It’s the answer to everything!
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okay that's it that's the end thanks bye
(Really: When my brief flirtation with a film major in college ended after my freshman year, I had no issue returning to my first love of journalism. “Nora Ephron was a journalist first,” I told myself. “And that never stopped her from making movies.”)