Beth Kephart's Blog, page 317

Elif Batuman and Lilian Natel: Up Next

After reading this Dwight Garner-penned description of Elif Batuman's "The Possessed" in the New York Times today, who would not want this book? I want this book. I'm going to get it.

Elif Batuman's odd and oddly profound study of her favorite Russian authors is also an exploration of the question: How do we bring our lives closer to our favorite books?

However: I am going to read Lilian Natel's The River Midnight first. She's an impeccable blogger/thinker/writer. I've been waiting a long ...

Staying Power

(the icicles grow—fatter, longer)
(they will disappear one day—in a thunderous crack, or in a sun-inspired rain)

Figure Skating Gold: Where Elegance Prevailed

I didn't think I'd be able to watch the 2010 Vancouver Olympics following the tragic death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. I didn't think I could.

But slowly I've been drawn in by the stories of the other athletes, the quality of the production, the vast whiteness of Vancouver, and, of course, the figure skating. Two of the loveliest-seeming pair skaters ever—Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo—took the gold last night, eighteen years after they began to skate together under the direction of a coach who...

Into the Tangle of Friendship (at Zumba)

I returned to the gym today with a more functional toe and with the energy I always have when finding my way back to something that I love. My friends were there—yes, I will call them my friends—and we took that one side of the Zumba room that we've come to think of as ours, and we danced—Brenda leading the way. It doesn't matter what I look like when I dance Zumba. No one in that room stands as judge. No woman has to wait for a man to say, Will you dance with me?

When it was over, one of ...

Unfinished Desires: One Reader's Early Experience

This morning I was working my way through Gail Godwin's Unfinished Desires. Working my way through.

It's a dense book, but I've never been opposed to that. It incorporates multiple points of view, multiple storytelling sounds. It centers on one particular year—1951—at Mount St. Gabriel's, an all-girls school, but it weaves across time and through repercussions as that year is recollected in an elderly nun's purposefully dry, "official" memoirs. The cast of characters is rather gigantic, an...

Show me a little tenderness

Sometimes, all the elements of a novel you've been writing seem to be in place (voice (not just the characters' voices, but the novel's).check; character motivation.check; momentum and suspense.check; leitmotifs if you're into leitmotifs.check; etc.) and you say to yourself: There it is.

Then you look back and you realize that the novel's been lacking something that doesn't get taught, and perhaps isn't even always valued, but it matters a whole lot to you. I might use the word "tenderness" ...

Finding Romance at the Mall

Late yesterday afternoon I made my way out, to the mall. I was not original in my plan. You would have thought it was Black Friday. Or two days before Christmas.

It was Valentine's Day Eve. It was also post-blizzard. The lines at the registers were epic. I persevered. I have been wearing the same things (in fabulously creative mixes and matches, but nonetheless, the very same things) for quite the long time now, and besides, I had a gift or two to buy. I'm not big on shopping, and I wa...

The Phantom, Howard McGillin, and an 80th Birthday Celebration

The compacted ice on the streets wasn't going to stop us, nor the roadblocks, nor the hour-plus delays on SEPTA. The plan was to take my father to the city for a great meal and for a show—The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber—as part two of our celebration of his 80th birthday. Broadway stars Jeremy Kushnier, Deone Zanotto, Kathy Voytko, Kevin Kern, Laurie Gayle Stephenson, and the unbelievable Howard McGillin were to sing from 31 selections. We wanted to see them. Transported on a slow train t...

Pressure Cooker

Honestly, it can happen. The pressure of 17 concurrent client projects (so many moving parts, so many open computer files, so many business languages and discrete technicalities). The yearning for time not just to dream about a novel, but to write it. The phone, that rings and rings.

You need to get away. You need to drive.

Yesterday, toward sunset, I said, Please. Please can we get the one car with the bigger wheels going? Can we disappear, for just an hour, to horse country?

We did.

I sti...

The Bewitching Hour (in winter)

(And may I just say thank you to those of you who stop by this blog and speak to me about the photographs. You give me a reason to take my Sony out into the world. I know, Kristen, very little about photography. I have an intuitive sense for framing and focus, for the way light moves through a day. I would fail any test about F stops. Thanks, all, for giving these photos purpose.)