I was doing reasonably well for most of June. My love affair with the Kindle is continuing and I bought Jo Nesbo's Devil's Star (yet more and yet more Scandinavian crime fiction) and my book group's read for this month, Anna Funder's Miles Frankin prize-winning All That I Am. I'm not sure that the Kindle is an ideal medium for my book group reading. One of its shortcomings (yes, even such a fan as I am has to admit there are some) is that it's much harder to flip back and forth to reread bits and pieces and think about how they relate to each other. I guess over time I'll work out what format is best for what kind of reading.
Then, in the last few days of the month I bought two more books, but I really do have a good excuse. I read of Nora Ephron's untimely death at 71. She's best known as a scriptwriter - Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and as that most aspired for combination, scriptwriter/director - You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie and Julia. My first awareness of Nora Ephron was as the author of the novel Heartburn, which was a loosely disguised acerbicly funny account of the break-up of her marriage to Carl Berstein, the journalist of Watergate fame. I loved the dry, self-deprecating, strong wit of the novel, and remember both laughing out loud as well as trying the peach cobbler recipe that pops up in the middle of the story. Later the book was made into a film with Meryl Streep playing the Nora Ephron character...which then led to this wonderful Ephron tribute to Streep:
Wouldn't you love to be able to write lines like that?
Like so many of my books, Heartburn somehow disappeared, so I've purchased a replacement. It wasn't available in e-book format, so this time I've bought a 'real' book. And mainly because I couldn't resist the title I also bought Ephron's book of essays I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.
So that's four more books for this month - but so much reading pleasure.
3 comments:
I own a Kindle, an iPad, an iPod (for audio books) and still sometimes read books in old-fashioned print!
all great reads! i enjoyed All That I Am but i'm not sure it quite hit the mark in terms of what it could have achieved. I'd be interested to hear what you think.
I too have to decide on the best format for each book purchase - paper, audiobook or ebook. I often choose traditional print books if I think the title is one I'd like to pass around to my daughter or mother or my book club friends. I pick audiobook versions of mysteries and thrillers, which I use as falling asleep "reading", or listen to in the car on long trips with my husband, or while knitting. Definitely ebooks for big novels which are too heavy to hold up in print versions, and for books that I think only I will enjoy.
I borrowed I Feel Bad about My Neck from one of my book club members because I related to the title. I thoroughly enjoyed the essays, including the one about purses. I like that a smart woman like Ephron could still address womanly concerns. There was a time when Feminism wanted us all to be above all that.
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