Seriously Fun

If you want to know how to rev your way through your later years, has Twyla Tharp got a pep talk for you! Her book Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life is chock-full of sound advice, stories, examples, personal anecdotes, "homework"-style exercises for body and mind, and her personality-plus brand of tough love. 

It's highly readable and eminently practical. What makes it thoroughly fun is the feeling that you're in a master class with the world's greatest dancer/choreographer, still going strong in her late seventies. Lest you think this is an exercise book -- well, yes, it is, with practices such as "Say no more often" and "Look for something miraculous in every day." 

Tharp's spirited take on aging shines here, and it's clear that her sharp mind and capable body work because she works both of them. It doesn't matter if you're a creature of habit and you can't dance two steps. This master class will get you motivated! 

Excerpt:

So, pick your poison. Run, lift weights, dance, swim, skate, broad-jump. Make a commitment and practice it regularly, same time, same place. Your track, gym, studio, pool, all can become your sanctuary. In a volatile universe, a ten-pound iron weight is a constant. It puts you in the now. It's unyielding and pitiless but also generous, even comforting. And it is nonjudgmental. You either lift the weight or you don't. If you do it well, your reward is more weight. The weight doesn't transform. You do.

Here's what I know: a life that gives the body its due is a happy life.   

 Note: This book counts toward the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.