[Scribble Scribble] is as clean, tart and refreshing as the first gin-and-tonic of the summer….

Nora Ephron writes, at all times, with clarity, directness and wit; and with a casual, agreeable chattiness well suited to her subject. It is as if she were calling on the phone at 10 A.M. to bounce a few impressions off you over coffee. Her best moments come when she takes off into manic flight and seems suddenly transformed into Woody Allen; or, perhaps, into a somewhat more malicious Roger Angell….

On those infrequent occasions when she becomes truly incensed, she can be brutal…. (p. 7)

The book, however, is not without flaws. All collections would seem to suffer, to some degree, from unevenness, but "Scribble Scribble" more than most. There is included here a piece about an uncle of Miss Ephron's who did carpet commercials on television, which, even at the time of...