Birds and Books

Saw a wren today, just outside my kitchen window. It disappeared too quickly to photograph but didn’t seem to be stealing my pyracanthus berries like the thrushes and blackbirds do. I don’t know why they are so greedy this year. Of course, I don’t really mind – just glad my garden is suitably bird-friendly, even if the pyracanthus is beginning to look kind of messy.

Mini notes on recent reads:

Much enjoyed Fair Deception by Jan Jones. Well written, it’s a traditional Regency - a good, rollicking plot with a handsome hero, a horrid rake and a beautiful quick-witted well-informed heroine.

Talking of quick-witted well-informed heroines, did you see the Romantic Novelists’ team on Eggheads last night? I was so proud of my friends.

Back to books: I keep laughing aloud while reading Nora Ephron’s I feel bad about my neck, and other thoughts about being a woman. She’s a famous writer, of course, and was married for a while to Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, who became close friends with Margaret Jay, then British Ambassadress to the USA. (It’s all on Wikipedia – I haven’t made it up!) None of this is in the book, or rather divorces are only mentioned obliquely.

Nora’s credits include the screenplay for some of my favourite films, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. This book, I feel Bad about my Neck, is a series of pithy essays about modern times written from the perspective of a mature woman. She’s dryly amusing about how parenting (a new word, as she says) seems to have become a sacrament for some mothers, and about her various apartments, about being one step away from looking like a bag lady if you aren’t careful etc. etc. It’s full of pithy advice too - ‘When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.’ Actually I nearly bought some shoes yesterday but luckily I read, ‘If the shoe doesn’t fit in the shoe store, it’s never going to fit.’