The Most of Nora Ephron by Nora Ephron

The Most of Nora Ephron Reviews

• 
  Elyse Walters

  I wanted to give this book 5+++++ STARS 'now'....
  
  but.....Its a book I'm *still* reading. I haven't finished 'everything' in it yet.
  
  I'm enjoying it soooooooo much.
  
  I'm having fun reading it not only to myself ----but sharing it with my husband (in bed).
  
  Yes---its one of THOSE type of books. We snuggle up together --and 'pick' a short story to read to each other.
  
  I'm only sorry I had NOT read Nora Ephron's work until now. I KNEW of her work of course. (saw all her movies --about 3 and 4 times each)....
  but what an treat to have this book!
  
  It does NOT have to be read in one sitting. From the 'egg-white' Omelette" --to "White Men".....etc. etc etc. ---I loved that "occasionally she 'herself' would read a paper that made her wonder if a reporter was a schizophrenic. lol Example? (is there such a thing as a LITTLE lie while reporting?) ..........hm???........
  
  This woman was AMAZING!!!!
• 
  Kaethe

  The Most of Nora Ephron - Nora Ephron I love Ephron’s writing, so reading this is a pure delight. But after having reread Crazy Salad, I’m really sorry that there weren’t more feminism pieces in it. Those pieces are often now unspeakably dated, but we have to remember the past, and remember that equal rights aren’t something anyone is ever given, that we have to fight and keep fighting.
   
  Yet another buddy read with a child. I'm doing much more of that than I realized
  
  library copy
• 
  Michael Livingston

  My advice: just read Heartburn. It's a smart, pithy and hilarious portrait of a marriage breaking down, loaded up with Ephron's trademark wit and some stylishly sharp writing. The script and reflection on When Harry Met Sally is also worthwhile, but the rest of this is pretty inessential - mean-spirited profiled of minor US celebrities of the 1970s, reproduced blog posts from the mid 2000s and a whole bunch of writing on modern-day etiquette (purses, dinner parties etc etc). The writing is always breezy and Ephron knows how to hit her punchlines, but a lot of the pieces in here felt disposable and unnecessary to me.
• 
  Roz Warren

  The World According to Nora Ephron
  
  Thank God for Nora Ephron. Before she came along, the primary role model for a smart, wise-cracking female writer was Dorothy Parker, known both her sharp wit and her unenviable life. (After too much drinking and too many bad relationships; she died a famous but unhappy woman.)
  
  Nora, thankfully, provided the witty woman writer with a much better template. You can be female and funny, and you can soar, both personally and professionally. Not without challenges, of course, but Nora showed us how to navigate those as well. When hubby Carl Bernstein betrayed her, for instance, Ephron turned his betrayal into the best-selling “Heartburn,” then went on to find lasting love with writer Nicholas Peggi.
  
  Nora, apparently, had it all.
  
  Except, alas, a good long run. Ephron died in 2012 at just 71. Now “The Most Of Nora Ephron,” collects the best of her work across many genres. Essays, Articles. A novel. Both a play and a screenplay. Even blog posts! At a whopping 576 pages, is this too much of a good thing? Absolutely not. I just hope somebody is working on a collection of Ephron’s letters. I’d love to read those too.
  
  Even if you‘re a long time fan like me, there will be work here that you’ve missed. I own all of Ephron’s book, but had never read her blog. I’d also missed a lot of her early reporting about politics and journalism for venues like “The New York Post” and “Esquire”
  
  Will you love every page? Probably not. I skimmed the essays about soufflés and omlettes and the perfect pastrami sandwich (nothing puts me to sleep faster than food writing). And I quickly lost interest in “Lucky Guy,” her play about journalist Mike McAlary (published here for the first time). But I breezed happily through the rest, taking great pleasure in the terrific writing, and the many funny lines Ephron is famous for:
  
  “If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.”
  
  “Beware of men who cry. It’s true that men who cry are sensitive and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own.”
  
  “When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”
  
  I particularly enjoyed Ephron’s magazine journalism from the 1970s, especially her articles about the dawn of the Women‘s Movement, which vividly evoke the sense of possibility, solidarity and excitement (not to mention the petty infighting and rivalries) of those early days.
  
  Ephron herself seems destined to have become a feminist. One of four daughters of Henry and Phoebe Ephron, a successful screening-writing team (responsible for movie classics like “Desk Set”) Nora was raised both to write and to make a good living at it by an uber- successful career woman who famously advised her daughter, on her own death bed: “take notes.”
  
  Ephron, in turn, gave this good advice to the graduating class at Wellesley, her own alma mater, in 1996:
  
  “I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some ways to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.”
  
  The irony, of course, is that Ephron herself was (due, in part to her own Wellesley education) very much a lady. When she did rock the boat (and she achieved many ground-breaking “firsts“ in her career) she did it with wit, and without raising her voice. Feminist but also deeply feminine, Ephon was a firm believer in the classic paradigm of wedding Mr. Right, then becoming a wife, mother and home maker. She was a best-selling writer who also prided herself on her ability to give a fabulous dinner party. (In the essay “About Having People to Dinner” she shares her dinner party secrets, including “It is absolutely essential to have a round table.”)
  
  Ephron’s work appeals to so many because she was a feminist, but a feminist with a deep fondness for the opposite sex, who believed in romance and happy endings. In other words, an optimist. What, after all, is the underlying message of her hit movie “When Harry Met Sally?“ Men and women, inevitably, misunderstand each other. And lie to each other. (The evidence? That famous faked orgasm.) Clearly, making love work is an impossible challenge. So? Let’s fall in love anyway.
  
  When I asked friends and fellow writers how they felt about Ephron, the response was 100% positive.
  
  “I loved her writing.”
  “I wanted to be like her.”
  “I wanted to write like her.“
  “I always wanted to meet her.”
  “I had a huge crush on her.”
  “Those essays. Those movies… what’s not to love?”
  
  There were no dissenting voices. Everyone felt good about Nora.
  
  And me? I’m just one of the many writers who aspire to hit the mark that Nora achieved. I want to be honest and smart and funny, and, at the end of my run, to be able to look back on a life well-lived. (Including stirring up some trouble on behalf of women.)
  
  But when a disgruntled reader dismisses one of my own humorous essays with, “You‘re no Nora Ephron,” I don‘t mind.
  
  Who is?
  
  (This essay first appeared on
  www.womensvoicesforchange.org.)
  
  
• 
  Sarah

  Reading The Most of Nora Ephron was like visiting with an old friend. It was fun to time travel as in each section the articles are in chronological order. It was fun to relive the 70's & 80's with the gift if knowing how history played out. Her early works about her early career in journalism, the days when "girls" were not writers but in the mailroom or clippers or fact checkers, was enlightening and fascinating.
  
  I have now, finally, read Heartburn and thumbed through the When Harry Met Sally script. Her food writings were a treasure. But I think she really shined on her blog posts and later articles for her last couple of books.
  
  Fan or new reader of Nora, this collection is a treat. Every time I picked up this book, I felt like I was spending time with one of my best girlfriends. That was Nora's gift.
• 
  Barbara

  After finishing The Most of Nora Ephron, I have to say that it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Nora Ephron was a great writer. She was positive, funny and wise. Robert Gottlieb did a great job putting the selection together posthumously, although it was started with Ephron prior to her passing. The selections, all previously published, included newspaper columns, blog posts, a novel, play and screenplay. She was a feminist, a foodie and, in the end, an aging woman. I’ve tabbed her recipes and her words of wisdom. Her hilarious writing helped me through a long, dark winter. It’s definitely a book I’ll revisit. I'd give it an A+++. The Most of Nora Ephron is definitely a GREAT read!
• 
  Hannah Garden

  Well all I have been talking about is Nora Ephron for weeks so I’ll keep it short: this book is EVERYTHING, which is not a phrase I use. But it is. So I must.
  
  Hail 🙌🏽
• 
  Jacqie

  Nora Ephron was a funny woman. She could write and had a knack for getting to the small intimate details of life that make you say, "I totally know what you mean!" as you laugh.
  
  There's a lot of different material in this volume. Journalistic writing, her novel Heartburn in its entirety, the script for "When Harry met Sally", various and sundry essays.
  
  Some if it wasn't so much for me. Many of the journal articles were written in the 70's about famous folks who aren't so famous anymore.
  
  I've read Heartburn before and enjoyed reading it again. When Harry met Sally is one of my all-time favorite movies, and it was interesting seeing the script, which isn't exactly like the movie. We also get Ephron's ruminations on what it was like to produce the script. The latter part of the book was more interesting to me. The essays, like "I Feel Bad About my Neck", are probably familiar to Ephron fans. As far as I can tell, there's no new material here, just a wide variety of her work curated to give a representative sampling.
  
  As Ephron grew older, she turned her wit upon the indignities and sadnesses that come with age. It's very bittersweet, like much of her writing, and utterly relateable, like much of her writing.
  
  In short, if you're an Ephron fan, it's likely that you've read some, if not all, of this before. It's a great introduction for new readers.
• 
  Cait

  Yes. When Nora Ephron was on she was ON.
• 
  Brenda

  I have to admit a few things before I give my opinion of this book. First of all, I never really knew anything about Nora Ephron, including the fact that I never saw her movie or read her book. Also, I received this book free by winning a First Reads contest. Now that it is all out in the open, I absolutely loved everything about this book. This was one incredible woman.It is almost as if everything that she touched in her career turned to gold. Of course, you can't say the same about her private life, but still, this lady was truly hard to not like. Her screenplay for "When Harry Met Sally" and her book "Heartburn" were so easy to become entralled in. I couldn't put this book down, and it still took quite a while to read, because it is a huge book. If you can read this book through without laughing out loud a few times and comparing something in Nora's life to your own, you're just not normal.
• 
  Sarabeth

  This is a book you can pick up and skip around in and come back to for more. A compilation of all the best of Nora Ephron it is either a treat for her fans (I am a huge fan of hers) or the perfect introduction to anyone who may have missed out on her writing.
  
  Reading lines from When Harry Met Sally made me want to rent the movie again right away and it was interesting to read from Lucky Guy, the play that was produced after she died. (I did not get to see it. Tom Hanks was the star.) The essays range from poignant to sassy and hilarious and are also an overview of what women go through as they age. The most touching ones are the ones she wrote after she (we now know) was already sick with her cancer. The world lost a great writer.
• 
  Liz

  Let's be real: I was in this for the essays she wrote later in life, and they were the part I enjoyed the most. However! Heartburn--her novel, a BARELY-fictionalized version of her divorce from Carl Bernstein--was also excellent, and now I intend to hunt down the Meryl Streep/Jack Nicholson movie. And Lucky Guy, her play about an ambitious New York journalist, was pretty good, too. And her 1970s essays on feminism were fascinating in a time-capsule kind of way. All this to say: I could probably have cobbled some good Nora reading together from an assortment of her books of essays, but I'm glad I branched out and read more widely in her body of work. One warning: the New York-1960s journalism essays are maybe only interesting if you were a journalist in the 1960s in New York. Ah, well.
• 
  Anne

  Reading a book that results in laughing out loud is a rare event for me. Ephron has the chops to have me do just that. Highlights of this compilation include the screenplay for "When Harry Met Sally" and various writings from her early days in the 1970s including an ode to journalism that we scribes can relate to and an hilarious parody of the Palm Beach Social Pictorial. A more recent piece from The New Yorker, "Lisbeth Salander: The Girl who Fixed the Umlaut," is a fine example of pithy and humourous writing. "Heartburn," which I had never read, stands the test of time. As with all anthologies, not all the pieces hit the mark, but many more do than don't.
• 
  Maya Senen

  The worst has happened- I have run out of writing from Nora Ephron. This collection has been my cure-all for the last three years. Whenever I needed a good talking to, or just wanted to be told "it's all going to be just fine" this is where I went. Who else will be able to quiet my restless soul? Don't say Mindy Kaling or I will lose it.
• 
  Briana

  I like u Nora
• 
  meg fitzwater

  ok here’s the thing. i’ve seen when harry met sally. i KNOW how funny nora ephron was. i was expecting this to make me laugh out loud (not in the lol sense, in the actual physical snorting to myself while reading sense). what i was not expecting? to fall in love with her writing SO MUCH. to feel like i knew her as a friend. and then to reach the last two sections—“what i won’t miss” and “what i will miss”—and to have actual tears rolling down my face. what a life lived. what a special collection celebrating the little things in life. good food and good friends and good clothes and good memories. wow. instant 5 stars. i finished not 2 minutes ago & i miss her already <3
• 
  Katy Wheatley

  I had just finished reading Heartburn, which I loved and wanted more of Ephron's writing. This is exactly that. It's a behemoth with a huge selection of her journalism, her scripts, her blog posts and some of her essays and bits of her books. In hindsight I should have bought another slim volume before launching into this. The largest section of the book deals with her political journalism, which I am sure if you are American or interested in American politics would be absolutely on the nose, but for me it was largely a chore to get through. I know some of the people she talks about and what was going on at the time at the broadest level, but so much was lost on me. Her food writing absolutely shines and I really enjoyed the section where she talks about script writing using When Harry Met Sally as an example. There are nuggets of joy here, but the whole thing was rather indigestible.
• 
  The Contented

  Nora Ephron’s essay on working in the Kennedy White House is hilarious.
  
  Roll your head back and laugh hilarious.
  
  Her account of the one time JFK spoke to her (she couldn’t hear because of the helicopter he was about to get on) and her response to him (‘what?’) is so funny, I cannot stop giggling.
  
  Almost 600 pages of book is rough, but this bit is really funny. A gem.
  
  Ok, so this took about a year to read. A more concise version with more select pieces would have made this a better book.
• 
  Linda

  memorable essays and stories, a book that is enjoyable to pick up and browse through time and again.
• 
  B

  My Oma gave me this book. Her best friend (since they were in high school in the 1940s) saw it and remembered that I had always wanted to be a writer in my youth. So she bought it for me. Is that going to color how I feel about this book? Absolutely.
  
  ---------------------------------------------------
  
  With about 80 pages left, and all of it in the "Personal" section of the book, I gotta start talking about this anthology of Nora Ephron.
  
  First of all: I wish the person who put this collection together had inserted themselves a few times. I think broader context for some of the more dated and outdated entries would have been helpful. But alas, he stayed silent. So here are my thoughts:
  
  Section 1: The Journalist
  
  Very interesting - because Ephron was a journalist in the 70s dealing with sexism and the social upheaval of the time, this section provided really great and unapologetic context for that world.
  
  Section 2: The Advocate
  
  I cried. It was great. Also, I didn't know that Betty Freidan became such a fractious and narrow-minded figure in her later years.
  
  PS. The person who put this collection together put a piece on Ephron's 10th college reunion (1972) right next to her address to the Wellesley Class of 1996. Brilliant and hilarious choice.
  
  
  Section 3: The Profiler
  
  This was rough to read at times. Look, I get that writing unkindly about women was a "thing" for a while, but it's just cringey to read now, especially from someone who, in the previous section, was such a staunch feminist. She writes well here, but I was sort of gobsmacked that she took so many cheap shots at women: how they looked, how their personal lives shaped up. Oh, and her piece on Jan Morris was flat out offensive. This is where I really wish the person who compiled this collection had stepped in. And this is one of the primary reasons I gave this collection 3 stars.
  
  The "profile" on Lisbeth Salander, however, was hilarious. A good bit of satire.
  
  Section 4: The Novelist
  
  I'd never read Heartburn before and I really loved it. It's nothing groundbreaking, just a lightly fictionalized retelling of Ephron's own divorce, but the way she wrote it was just so vivid. It underscores how talented of a writer Ephron was.
  
  Section 5: The Playwright
  
  I'd never even heard of the play Lucky Guy but it was a well-written piece about the importance of journalism... and also the egos that exist within that field.
  
  Section 6: The Screenwriter
  
  When Harry Met Sally is one of my favorite movies, so obviously reading the screenplay was a delight. After the screenplay concludes we get a brief reflective from Ephron, penned in 1990. She breaks down the politics of writing a movie (how many edits you go through, how much the characters of your voices change), and also lifts the curtain a bit on the goings ons with When Harry Met Sally. I did not know that it was Meg Ryan's idea to fake an orgasm in Katz's ; nor did I realize Billy Crystal came up with the famous "I'll have what she's having line." Good on Ephron for being honest that these bits don't belong to her.
  
  Section 7: The Foodie
  
  A lot of dated feelings about food. It was interesting, but definitely weaker than all that preceded it.
  
  Section 8: The Blogger
  
  Meh. Most of this was written around 2005 - 2007, and it's mostly just rantings about Bush and Watergate. My least favorite section by far; I skimmed it because of that, and also because it was repetitive. Another cornerstone for the 3-star rating.
  
  Section 9: Personal
  
  I've still got most of this section left, but I don't think it's going to change my feelings on this collection. These last 80 pages appear to be reflections, almost all of them written towards the end of her life. They're a summation of sorts, of where's she's been and how she defines herself. I pulled a page out of Harry's book, and read the last 2 pages first. They're a list of what she won't miss when she's gone, and what she will. I cried then, too.
  
  So, it was good, but there were some problematic things in it that deserved addressing, yet no one did, and that really brought the whole thing down in my opinion.
  
  
  Oh, I almost forgot. At one point she said that men are inherently more funny than women. Interesting how she blasted Friedan for losing touch later in life AND YET, DEAR READER. AND. YET.
• 
  Chelsey

  I love her. Just love her! A bunch of these essays were rereads from her previously published work but it was a pleasure to spend time with her again. I’m shocked by how sharp and relevant even her older work still is and I’m so endeared to her honest observations about the messiness and wondrous bits of life. Lucky Guy wasn’t my favourite but I’m still glad to have read it. Nora will always be one of my favourite voices.
• 
  Cecilia Hendricks

  This is an anthology filled with delights of Nora. I don’t always agree with her. I do like my neck. I love my purse. I don’t want to wear black all the time.
  But damn, she’s a delight. Read her. Get to know her. And eat some bacon and waffles for her. She was one for the ages.
• 
  Rory Lilley

  Enjoyed, despite clearly not being the target market
• 
  LA George

  part compelling, part american
• 
  Kristin

  I read most of this. I skipped the play and about half of the journalistic articles in the first two sections. Some things were better than others but I enjoyed most. Having just read a memoir about her and reading so much of her writing together, it was interesting to see overlap.