Yarn Along: Second Hand Time

~knitting~

I don't have that much exciting stuff to show today.  I finished the back of my dad's vest, and started on the front.  

I also am nearly done with the back of the Sulka cardigan--I've just got to get some additional length on the arm holes.  It knits up so fast, being bulky weight.

I also started swatching a summer linen pullover from Quince and Co.'s Sparrow line.  I know, I know, I'm kind of a textile magpie.  I saw the Lena Tee a while back and saved it to my favorites on Ravelry, and impulsively decided to go for it sometime a week or two ago.  I got the hibiscus colorway, which is a really deep saturated coral--I love it!  

I don't think it will be a fast knit, being fingering weight yarn with tiny needles, but I like the shape of it, and I think I figured out how to tweak it for better upper arm coverage using a free pattern from Purl Bee.  I usually have to size up on needles from the pattern in order to get gauge, but this one might actually swatch according to the pattern.  I didn't have size 3 needles, so I'm waiting for them to arrive to I can reswatch it.  Size 4s (which I did have) were too big--21 stitches instead of the necessary 24.  The linen yarn is quite different to work with.  Almost like twine, but soft.

 ~reading~ 

I have been reading a lot this week.  I tore through Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Cherynobyl, and have started her book Secondhand Time as well.  I have Zinky Boys waiting in the wings.  Her work is just stunning--I wish I could find her first book in English.  Coincidentally, I happened across a book review of Secondhand Time this morning.  I really like her style and the immediacy of her writing and reporting--it is like sitting in a Russian kitchen and talking with people about their lives and experiences.  So much of it seems familiar to me, and I am really enjoying the long chapter about the low-level Party official who remains a True Believer in communism.  It has reminded me of the Russian belief in the redemptive quality of suffering, and of suffering with hope.  Russians have a great capacity for enduring suffering while waiting for a better future--perhaps not even for themselves, or for their children, but for their children's children.  I think it is a quality we lack here, and I'm curious to read more.

I think my main takeaway from the book so far is that a lot of people (not just Russians, people in general) will follow a crowd in terms of setting a national identity and agenda for themselves.  It gives me some perspective anyway.  I put A Brief History of the Cold War back onto my stack, since I've never gotten around to finishing it and I really should.  It's only 100 pages, and incredibly well written.

I made myself finish Turgenev so I could get back to War and Peace, and am now officially half way through it--600 pages, volumes I and II done!  I'm so eager to get to the next scenes between Bolkonsky and Natasha, after the battle of Borodino, to see if they are as beautifully wrought on the page as they were in Episode 7 of the recent BBC production.  I still think about those scenes, the beauty of them, the emotional scale of them, the spiritual depth and truth of them.  

The Turgenev was a good and worthwhile read, in terms of setting the stage for understanding some things about Imperial Russia.  I felt there were some stories that were stronger than others--Living Relic, Death, and Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District were the three that really stood out to me.

I also picked up The Beginnings of the Life of Prayer again this morning and read a few more sections.  I'm trying to be disciplined about my reading and give myself small goals for the day.  Sometimes I make them and sometimes not, but I hope to get more reading done this way.  I'm collecting quite a stack of books by Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Shamalov, Shokolov and others, plus some books that I'd like to revisit like David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb.  It's a Russia kind of season.

~watching~

My husband was gone with the boys over the long Memorial Day weekend, so I had my evenings to myself, so I finally got around to watching Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby and the latest James Bond movie, Spectre.  

I almost turned Gatsby off in the first half hour, because a) it was so slow and boring and b) I couldn't take some of the licentiousness.  I finally just skipped ahead to where we find out Daisy and Gatsby's history, and then I was drawn in.  I really like Lurhman's work, generally speaking, and I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was really good in this one.  The casting was excellent, and the movie really captured a lot of the symbolism of the novel in an interesting and uncontrived way.  

I re-watched Revolutionary Road in large part to watch DiCaprio again.  That one struck me very differently the second time round.  I remembered the penultimate scene from the first viewing (and dreaded it again), but there was a lot more that stood out to me this time, about the loss of dreams, and the ways that marriage changes you and how much work it is to maintain a relationship over time.  

As for James Bond.  I have an academic interest in the Bond films--I wrote a rather lengthy paper in graduate school on the cultural significance of the early Bond films (I limited my scope to the Sean Connery films, just to keep it manageable, and within a specific time period), and over the years I think I've seen all the Bonds except Roger Moore (sorry, I just can't believe Moore as Bond--he's too suave--not enough rough edges to him).  I've really enjoyed Daniel Craig's run as Bond--I thought Casino Royale was a fabulous reboot, and Skyfall was great storytelling.  Quantum of Solace was a little weak, but I still liked it.  

Spectre was okay.  The acting was good, but there wasn't as much clever in this film.   The themes of the film seemed a little tired, but maybe that is because a lot of television programs are covering similar ground. Ralph Fiennes was quite good as M--that guy is so stinkin' versatile! Christoph Walz was brilliant as Blofeld.  I wish they'd cast someone different for C, because that actor also played Moriarty on Sherlock, and his eyes are so shifty that I didn't buy for one minute that he's not a bad guy.  (Of course, maybe that is part of the point--Bond films tend to operate in the realm of black and white, not the gray areas we've come to expect in our storytelling)

I just noticed season 3 of Peaky Blinders hit Netflix, so I'll probably get around to that sooner or later.  I'm still finishing up the final season of Person of Interest, so we'll see where that leads.  

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!