Enraptured

I downloaded Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and listened to it last weekend. After racing to the mirror to reassure myself that my neck hadn’t become flabby, crepey, or mottled since I have passed the dermatologically critical age of 43, I was able to chuckle at her observations on purses, gourmet cooking, and parenting. My favorite essay was titled “On Rapture”. In it, Nora discusses the effect that a good book can have on a reader. “There’s something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can’t tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he’s liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can’t adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All this happens to me when I surface from a great book.” It was such a striking image I had to turn off my MP3 player and think about it for a while. Now that’s the mark of a good book.