There is a lot about getting older that is disappointing, according to the late, great Nora Ephron, though top of her list is what happens to a woman’s neck. “Short of surgery, there’s not a damn thing you can do about a neck. The neck is a dead giveaway. Our faces are lies and our necks are the truth. You have to cut open a redwood tree to see how old it is, but you wouldn’t have to if it had a neck.”

This sharply funny essay collection was a hit for the When Harry Met Sally writer who famously maintained “everything is copy”. Along with bemoaning the state of her neck, she reflects on her culinary misadventures, an underwhelming encounter with JFK, and the state of women’s handbags with their “morass of loose Tic Tacs, solitary Advils, lipsticks without tops, ChapSticks of unknown vintage, little bits of tobacco even though there has been no smoking going on for at least 10 years”. There are titbits of wisdom, too, among them: “Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of 35, you will be nostalgic for at the age of 45.”

This is an old recording, made when the book was first published in 2006 and unavailable in the UK – until now. Gloriously, Ephron is the narrator because who else could do her fiercely candid and funny prose justice? It also features an introduction, written and narrated by the Everything I Know About Love writer Dolly Alderton, which pays adoring tribute to Ephron’s “bold truth-telling”.

• Available via Penguin Audio, 3hr 58min

Further listening

How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying
Lara Marlowe, Apollo, 8hr 32min
Reporter Lara Marlowe narrates her book documenting the experiences of 29-year-old Yulia Mykytenko, an army officer fighting on the Ukrainian frontline.

Want
Gillian Anderson, Bloomsbury, 12hr
This compendium of essays detailing the sexual fantasies of anonymous women from around the world is collated, edited and narrated by the actor.