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Four things I have learned recently:
Feb. 6th, 2006 06:59 pm1. When a person returns to regular exercise after 2.5 months of being completely sedentary (on doctors' orders, thank you very much), that person's metabolism kick-starts, such that she is suddenly hungry all the damn time.
2. Also, with the returning to exercise thing -- muscles object kind of violently to being forced to work again after so much time off. The whole last week my calf muscles have been so tight that just standing upright has produced a painful stretch.
3. Zadie Smith is much cooler than I'd previously realized. Cool enough that I even forgive her for being such a successful writer and younger than me. Her new novel, On Beauty, is excellent, and if you've ever read Howard's End, she updates Forster in really really interesting ways. (Actually, she does this whether or not you've read the Forster.) I was getting ready to forgive her just on the strength of the book, but when I saw the line in the acknowledgements where she thanks her editors, "without whom this book would be longer and worse," that clinched it. Any massively successful author who can be that honest and funny and blunt and so completely over herself is somebody I just have to respect.
4. John Waters makes me weirdly proud to be American. So does Iggy Pop. John Waters and Iggy Pop in combination (we just watched "Cry-Baby," which I'd not seen in years; I highly recommend it) make me positively gleeful.
That is all.
2. Also, with the returning to exercise thing -- muscles object kind of violently to being forced to work again after so much time off. The whole last week my calf muscles have been so tight that just standing upright has produced a painful stretch.
3. Zadie Smith is much cooler than I'd previously realized. Cool enough that I even forgive her for being such a successful writer and younger than me. Her new novel, On Beauty, is excellent, and if you've ever read Howard's End, she updates Forster in really really interesting ways. (Actually, she does this whether or not you've read the Forster.) I was getting ready to forgive her just on the strength of the book, but when I saw the line in the acknowledgements where she thanks her editors, "without whom this book would be longer and worse," that clinched it. Any massively successful author who can be that honest and funny and blunt and so completely over herself is somebody I just have to respect.
4. John Waters makes me weirdly proud to be American. So does Iggy Pop. John Waters and Iggy Pop in combination (we just watched "Cry-Baby," which I'd not seen in years; I highly recommend it) make me positively gleeful.
That is all.
