February 2012
4 posts
2 tags
Books I Love (an incomplete list) →
“Memory belongs to the imagination. Human memory is not like a computer that...”
– Alain Robbe-Grillet in the Paris Review (via fsgbooks)
2 tags
My silly fashion blog →
I document my outfits. I haven’t updated it in a while (because I hardly left the house while I was finishing my novel) but I will resume soon.
3 tags
My February Poem
The poem I’ll be reading every day this month: “Meditation at Lagunitas” by Robert Hass:
Meditation at Lagunitas
By Robert Hass
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black...
January 2012
3 posts
My "Best Tweets" →
Twitter is where I deposit my random musings and jokes.
3 tags
Read the Same Poem Every Day for a Month
A few years ago, a friend told me that she picks a poem on the first day of every month and then reads that poem every day that month. I loved the idea and have been doing it ever since. Each reading brings something new—even to a short poem—and by the end of the calendar year, you know twelve poems really well. This year, my friend Ruth Franklin of The New Republic has decided to do...
1 tag
December 2011
22 posts
2 tags
“Even after all this time
The Sun never Says
to the Earth
You Owe
Me.
Look...”
– Hafiz 14th Century [translated by Daniel Ladinsky]
4 tags
Russian protest music →
Today NPR’s “All Things Considered” featured a segment on Russian protest music. The website has some priceless music videos.
Robert Siegel mentioned the great singer Vladimir Vysotsky during the story. Vysotsky died in 1980 (his funeral happened during the Moscow Olympic Games), but he was like the Bob Dylan of the USSR.
в мире: Saturday in Moscow, or How I Lost My... →
My sister is living in Moscow, doing dissertation research (she’s getting a PhD in Russian Literature from Columbia University). She is fluent in Russian and knows Moscow well, but as you can see from this post, attending Saturday’s protest changed the way she feels about Russia.
katharineholt:
I started this tumblr page back in September as a repository for travel photos. I knew I...
6 tags
David Remnick on Putin, Democracy and Activism in... →
A must read.
Watchkatharineholt:
They are chanting “Putin — vor,” or “Putin is a thief.”
Les Petites Échos: The Kids Are All Right: The... →
reiflarsen:
The Kids Are All Right: The Meaning is the Mashup
On Thursday night I found myself in the decommissioned Masonic Temple in Fort Greene to watch the world premier of a music video called Girl Walk//All Day. By the time we arrived, the place was jammed, the normally blasé sea of Brooklyn…
David Remnick on State-Controlled Television in... →
Long before he became Editor of The New Yorker, Remnick was based in Moscow for The Washington Post and his book, Lenin’s Tomb, is an excellent look at the fall of the Soviet Union. Here he proves insightful about Russia yet again. Watch the video clip for an amazing condemnation of Russian television “journalism”.
Russia has not buried its Soviet past →
Longreads: Writer Elliott Holt: My Top 5 Longreads... →
longreads:
Elliott Holt is a Pushcart Prize-winning fiction writer who is almost finished with her first novel. (See her Longreads page here.)
***
I love short stories, so I decided my picks should be mostly short fiction. It’s no secret that the likes of The New Yorker, Granta, …
Abandoned Nuclear Submarine Base in Russia →
“All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama...”
– David Mamet
12 tags
Expat fiction
“I thought that if I set myself against a background into which I could not possibly merge that some outline would present itself.”
-Mavis Gallant, “When They Were Nearly Young”
I love fiction about expatriates, not only because I lived in various places abroad for nearly six years of my life, but because I’ve felt like an outsider (in various ways) since I was a...
WatchMy sister playing old Soviet arcade games.
katharineholt:
Reif took a video of me playing the best game in the place: “Морской бой,” or “Sea Battle.”
November 2011
4 posts
30 tags
Books I Read in 2011 (subtitle: reading is sexy)
Last year I posted a list (on Facebook) of all the books I read (or reread) in 2010. By popular demand, I present my 2011 list so far— I’ll probably read a lot more books in December now that I am done writing my novel. This year I reread a lot of books (probably because reading new books was distracting to my writing process). Here they are, in the order in which I read them....
Obituary for Stalin's daughter, who defected to... →
October 2011
9 posts
Kind words about my work →
Thank you, Guernica. Thank you, PEN American... →
A lot of people spell my name wrong. It’s Elliott with 2 L’s and 2 T’s, but the second T gets chopped off all the time. It’s like my phantom limb. I feel it even when it’s not there.
An excerpt of my novel →
I’m almost finished with a novel (working title: Fallout, though that’s going to change) that is set in Washington, D.C. in the early 1980’s and in Moscow in the mid-1990’s. (Yes, I grew up in Washington, and yes, I lived in Moscow in the late 1990’s, but no, this is not autobiographical.) It’s part international mystery, part coming-of-age story. Here’s a very short excerpt on the PEN...
September 2011
13 posts
6 tags
In which I get quoted on Russian politics.... →
They spelled her name wrong, but my sister is quoted in this article.
Essential Reading About the Death Penalty →
David Grann in The New Yorker in 2009.
Email the judge who could stop Troy Davis's... →
Allegedly, Judge Penny Freesemann can grant Troy Davis a stay of execution. Her email is: pfreesemann@chathamcounty.org
There’s not much time left. The execution is scheduled for 7 pm EST tonight.
He was convicted on the basis of witness testimony, but seven of the nine original witnesses have recanted or changed their testimony.
What I'm Wearing →
my silly fashion blog.