september 7

I was watching “Letterman” the other night and he had on this ramp climbing, skyrocketing, double-twisting motorcycling X Games champion who admitted he was an old man in the field at … 22. Writer-director Nora Ephron, who’s never exactly shied away from mixing the personal and the professional, is 65 and you can bet writing about the aging process will not escape her. In her collection of essays, “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman’’ she writes about how she cannot anymore conclude a thought. This has happened to me at a much lesser age, situations where I can barely … where was I? Oh, yes, at the old folks home. But Ephron can conclude thoughts – here anyway – and she kvetches about the indignities of aging (can’t read the type on the pill bottles, can’t wear a bikini) and the mini-triumphs. She is not Philip Roth, raging against the ravages of time. Ephron chooses to smile ruefully as she most always has. Remember when her marriage to Carl Bernstein went down in flames she wrote “Heartburn,” an excellent book and movie. Ephron is speaking at the Coolidge Corner Theater Thursday Sept. 7 at 6 p.m.  (Get $2 tickets across the street at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline.)

290 Harvard St., Brookline, 617-734-2500, coolidge.org or brooklinebooksmith.com