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wednesday

If you’ve ever lent a sympathetic ear to your mother, you’ll feel at home with Nora Ephron’s latest book, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. The 65-year-old screenwriter and director—who is responsible for the whole of Meg Ryan’s popularity—infuses candor and humor into stories about aging and the quotidian female routine. (How many other women publish works that talk about unseemly upper lip hair or necks that resemble turkey gizzards?) Thankfully, Ephron has ditched the increasingly schmaltzy, and increasingly Tom Hanks–inflicted, formula of her romantic comedies. The famous people making appearances in the pages of I Feel Bad About My Neck include JFK and Bill Clinton; when they pop up, it becomes clear that Ephron shares in the tribulations of aging on not only a relatable, but also a rarefied, level. Ephron discusses and signs copies of her work at noon at the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th St. NW. Free. (202) 518-9400. (Kim Rinehimer)