Tuesday, January 16, 2018

January Pt. 1

The list is getting a bit long, so let's just split it up into two parts.
  1. Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari
    • I suppose this is going to set the tone for the rest of the year, then?
    • Well written and enjoyable, and it's actually quite eye-opening that the places I thought people were going to meet other people offline comprised such a tiny percentage of actual couples' origin stories: online dating is winning by far. Which is kind of scary.
  2. Great Myths of Intimate Relationships: Dating, Sex and Marriage by Matthew D. Johnson
    • While I enjoyed the numerous citations and references to studies, I'm not coming away from this with any sense that I really learned anything. To begin with: Who's the target audience?
  3. The Swimmer (1968)
    • Well that was weird.
      • What's with the soundtracks from this era? I'm saying this based on The Haunting (1963) and this movie, but I could date this movie as being from the same era as The Haunting even without knowing when either of them were produced. That's kinda freaky.
    • So the synopsis I was told that had me watching this movie at all was that a guy swims across a county via people's backyard pools. Which is a comedic enough premise that I figured it'd be, y'know, comedy. It's pretty random and out there, and swimming your way through a county just by going through backyard pools sounds rather like fun (I'm the life of the party, I know). So what was with all the sexual tension? And he seems to be going through his life and breaking down in terms of his memory and where he is with every pool he swims through. He starts off pretty well, well-liked and shaking hands with everyone, but as he progresses, discovers that no one loves him anymore and that everything he believes is true has either passed or has never been true.
  4. In Therapy/Divã (2009)
    • This was actually a really good movie! I was expecting something super lighthearted and flippant, something rather predictable, but this went from comedic to tragic to just kind of how to live with the changes that inevitably crop up in your life. The funny parts were funny, the sad ones made me choke up a bit, and there was a lot less focus on the affairs (on both sides) and other relationships beyond what they contributed to Mercedes' life. This was a change from, say Goodbye to All That (2014), and I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It might have been that my expectations were rather low to begin with, and so I enjoyed it more as a result, but either way, I'm glad it went completely off the rail I laid down in my head for it.
  5. Next Year, for Sure by Zoey Leigh Peterson
    • THIS. Was what I was looking for when I went to watch Call Me By Your Name. It's sweet, it's sad, and maybe not much happens most of the time, and everyone is accepting and flawed, and there's really no "bad guy". When you put the book down, Chris seems to be on a downward spiral, but he also knows that he won't continue sliding down - Peterson ended this beautifully, with all the necessary tact to close up loose ends in a loosely tied knot. I get the feeling everyone reading this will be satisfied with the ending, which is a pretty difficult feat, especially in a novel that explores relationships in a more unconventional manner, treating alternatives to strict monogamy with a gentleness and openmindedness that allows for a deeper discussion to be had.
  6. Found Memories (2011)
    • Rather slow, but I'm glad I stuck with it till the end. I'm not sure whether what comes across to me as the rudeness of Rita is typical, or if she really is just being rude. A village where God has closed the cemetery, where the villagers have forgotten to die, and the repetitive days they pass.
  7. O Outro Lado da Rua (2004)
    • I wasn't sure about this until the very end, but what an incredibly gentle movie. Camargo's forgiveness of Regina at the end, his willingness to quite literally step into her place and see her through her eyes, is quite touching, as is Regina's son welcoming her back into his life (and Regina's decision to stop judging everyone around her in such black and white terms, thus showing up at her grandson's birthday party at all).
  8. Children of Invention (2009)
  9. What Do You Do With an Idea? by Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Mae Besom
    • Beautiful illustrations, as with the other one: What Do You Do With a Problem?
    • Again, part of me thinks the story itself dragged on a little longer than I would've liked, but it's a lovely message to be true to yourself and nurture your ideas and creativity without letting others get you down.
  10. Only When I Dance (2009)
  11. Memoirs of a Goldfish by Devin Scillian, illustrated by Tim Bowers
    • I love this so much! The dry and curmudgeonly tone of the goldfish, the panic that increments day by day, and even the ending! So perfect!
  12. Whiskey Words & a Shovel II by R. H. Sin
    • While I'm usually not that big on poetry, a few of these really got to me. That being said, reading through the entire collection in more or less one go, it started to get a little repetitive in terms of the themes and content. Perhaps these were meant to be enjoyed over a longer period of time? I've also got a few other of the poetry books by Sin on hold or checked out, and I'm desperately hoping they're a bit different - not because I didn't enjoy the spontaneity and relatable nature of the poems in this collection so much as because I'm actually kind of getting tired of it by the end already.
  13. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
    • Why do kids like this book? This series? Granted, I've only read one of the series, and this is the very first book, so perhaps it gets better, but this is pretty boring. In terms of how well the writing actually captures the mind of what I was like in elementary school, this falls way short.
  14. The Bad Guys: Episode 1 by Aaron Blabey
    • Starts off really well, and gathers momentum quickly enough at the beginning with the chutzpah of the wolf, but that middle part really killed it a bit. It's as though Blabey wasn't sure how to segue into the main mission: freeing canine inmates at a prison. The irony of how this is a good deed is not lost on me, and of course it's great seeing the "bad guys" turn a new leaf and discover how good it feels to do good, but I hope that in the next few installations of the series Blabey improves on the flow of plot as a more cohesive whole.
    • Would probably be a great companion to The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith. I remember being assigned that in grade 5 to read in class (though I'm pretty sure we also read To Kill a Mockingbird in grade 5, so the reading levels of the assigned reading materials ranged quite a bit).
  15. Time by Eva Hoffman
    • I'm not sure why, but the entire book read as rather disjointed to me, in that I wasn't able to fully grasp the entirety of it as one thing. Each chapter worked on its own, but for me, it didn't tie together quite so well from chapter to chapter. However, the last part, Time in Our Time, was very on point:
      • quality of time > quantity of tasks crammed within time period
      • We try so hard to extend the length of our lives, but at what cost? Does it decrease the quality of our lives? Do we value the time we have in our lives less because we have more of it? And do we devote more of our lives to being cogs in the wheel as a result of that?
      • The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    • I remember there were more specific points I wanted to talk about, but was too lazy to make notes as I made my way through the book, so alas.
  16. The Little Book of Heartbreak by Meghan Laslocky
    • It was so promising! I was expecting something more along the lines of a compendium of revenge stories regarding not completely peaceful breakups throughout the ages, especially judging by the little blurb on the back. And Laslocky does sort of deliver those, but there's this entire section, Culture, that doesn't touch on sordid stories of heartbreak gone rogue at all, and as we continue on, there's less of a scandalous  amusement that peppers the pages than I would've liked. It's as though Laslocky wasn't sure how serious exactly to make the book, and thus went this way and that before realizing she had run out of things to say (topping it all off with a bit of self-help advice in the afterword).
  17. Rest in the Mourning by R. H. Sin
    • This one resonated with me a lot more than whiskey words & a shovel II, and covered a bit more in terms of variety of topics.
  18. Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday
    • I have to say that this is another one of the books that I must have gravitated towards primarily because I tend to seek out reading materials that have confirmation bias potential. I can think of at least one person I would love to recommend this book to, but that would probably be ill advised for obvious reasons.
    • Are there really just the 3 stages in which we can find ourselves throughout our lives, aspire, success, and failure? Where would a contentment with where we are with ourselves and our lives stand in relation to this tripartite structure? As in a state where there isn't much striving for anything further (unless you would count striving to stay woke, to continue sweeping every day, to employ the metaphor used in this book). Stagnation, I suppose, which doesn't sound all that great. It's not that you'd want to not improve yourself so much as, isn't your entire life placed in the phase of aspiration in that it's a constant struggle for self-improvement, even while we succeed at various things and fail at others (occasionally the same things at which we previously succeeded)?
  19. The Bothersome Man/Den Brysomme Mannen (2006)
    • That idyll is so creepy, and I'm wondering if it's that Andreas died, arrived at purgatory (the velkommen gas station), was driven into heaven, ate the forbidden fruit (which is why the other guy was allowed to leave), and was thus sent into exile into the winter landscape. What does the wintry end signify? Is this a social critique of Norway, or more generally a critique of the way in which we now present what constitutes a "good life" by generally accepted social standards - a partner, a good and stable job, a good relationship with coworkers - yet somehow misses something vitally human in its components?
    • Although I'm not sure exactly how to read this film, and it's sure to take a bit of time to fully digest, I am quite in love. This might be my favourite film so far this year.
  20. Call Me By Your Name (2017)
    • Yes, again. And I enjoyed it a lot more this time around.
    • What do you do once you've had that very special friendship though? How do you go about the rest of your life? Better to have had it than not, for sure, but what if you never find it again?
    • The soundtrack is amazing also. Absolutely in love with Visions of Gideon & Mystery of Love, as well as Chalamet on the piano.
  21. The Pool (2007)
    • That ending though.

Still working on:

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Chrysanthemums

lukknits
The WS is facing the camera, but you get the gist.


I've had the Chrysanthemum Shawl by Francoise Danoy in my library for a while, and it's sort of been waiting for the right occasion to come up for me to knit it up. When my mom brought up knitting a small shawl or scarf for an auntie of mine, I dug through what patterns I had queued up, as well as trawling the free lace shawl patterns on ravelry before realizing I had the perfect pattern and yarn waiting to be knit up together.


lukknits
A nice size to drape over your shoulders


To be honest, I didn't really take too close a look at the instructions beyond how to start the tab at the beginning of the shawl, how to do the yo rows (because it's not completely a pi shawl), and following the charts. Which turned out to be fine, actually, so if you know how to knit a circular shawl, or at least the general pattern recipe, then this pattern is really easy. The only lace chart I had a bit of trouble with was the last one, because I wasn't paying much attention and kept making mistakes, but everything's relatively mindless. (And I can say this because probably a good 80% of this shawl was knit while marathoning season 2 of Preacher.)


lukknits
How do I put this on in time for the time- oh. Every time this happens! Every time!


Personally, I would've liked a slightly larger shawl, but that could have been in part because I didn't block as aggressively as I could've (no pins used at all). And besides, the request was for a wee scarf, without much bulk, so this definitely fits the bill. I've got way more yarn left over than I expected, too, considering the entire skein fell right within the pattern requirements: I used 75g of the 100g skein (100g = 765 yards), and the pattern asks for 730 - 766 yards. I thought for sure I was playing yarn chicken, but alas. More leftovers to mull over.