Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/4/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: Madeline gets annoying about shoegaze and Björk again. Plus, Robyn Hitchcock songs that make you go “wahoo! Hell yeah!”

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/4/26

“Tugboat” – Galaxie 500

It’s been an embarrassingly long time coming for me to write about this song, as I found out about it at least a month ago on the same BBC Radio 6 interview with mary in the junkyard that I discovered Jessica Pratt through. Admittedly, I talked about Jessica Pratt two weeks ago, and I’d had that revelation at least two weeks before I’d made the damn post. Sorry, excuse me while I pull down the massive Wizard of Oz curtain here…not that anybody really cared all that much about the timing here. There’s always a fair amount of lag in terms of the song timing. Breaking my silence…

Anyways. Galaxie 500’s Today was drummer David Addison’s pick for his album. One way or another, I probably would’ve found my way to Galaxie 500 given how much I love shoegaze (and. Luna, for that matter), but I’m not complaining that today (figuratively) is the day. Plus, as the leaves around my apartment start to turn orange and the air turns sharp and chilly, it feels like the perfect environment to drift off to “Tugboat.” Even without the nautical title and lyric references, this track meanders like it’s a slow, lumbering boat miles away from the nearest coastline. Dean Wareham—who I didn’t even make the connection to until my dad pointed out that it was him—laments in a crooked rasp about wanting to be the one sailing that ship: “I don’t wanna stay at your party/I don’t wanna talk to your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain.”

It’s 1/3rd love song, 1/3rd wistful plea to escape it all, and 1/3rd classic shoegaze freakout; once the repeated verse and chorus (if you can call them that) disappear into the mist, never to be seen again, Wareham launches into a spidery guitar riff as reverb swallows what remains of the song whole, like some sort of biblical leviathan. And sure, I’ll eat up some classic noisy shoegaze riff action any day of the week, but to me, it feels very thematically significant: after Wareham lays out his lament of wanting to escape, the last third of the song loses its structure, its DNA dissolving; to me, that’s exactly the escape he was looking for, and the tugboat captain has made his maiden voyage.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Celestial Seas – T.A. Chan – “I don’t wanna talk to your friends/I don’t wanna vote for your president/I just wanna be your tugboat captain…”

“Hyperballad” (Live at the Royal Albert Hall) [Björk cover] – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Just writing down “acoustic Björk cover” feels offensive to me. For the majority of her catalogue, it’s a kind of unholy combination that really shouldn’t exist. How do you reduce the soundscapes of an artist who specializes in creating veritable jungles with sampling, synth textures, and percussion? It just feels like sacrilege to see all that and go “welp, lemme whip out the acoustic guitar…anyways, here’s Wonderwall, amirite?”

Fortunately, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are no stranger to sacrilege. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) To be fair to them, it’s not fully acoustic either—it’s a live cut from Hidden in Pieces, performed at the Royal Albert Hall with a full string section. And if there was anybody that understands the pioneering spirit of Björk, it’s one of the many daring women that she inspired to get weird with it: Karen O. Even having been a Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan for over a decade, it seemed like this was territory that even they couldn’t succeed in, and boy, was I wrong. Of course, nothing beats Björk’s original, but there’s something about this understated, almost humbled take on this classic. Only accompanied by said guitar and the melancholy strings section, it takes the lyrics—a private exorcism to keep a relationship afloat—in a softer, more ashamed direction. Karen O’s vocals are, as expectedly, nothing short of heavenly, but they lend a sort of whispery, bittersweet pang to an already emotional song, heavy with the weight of sacrifice.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Deep – Rivers Solomon – “I go through all this/Before you wake up/So I can feel happier/To be safe up here with you…”

“It’s a Mystic Trip” – Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock recently released Invisible Hitchcock, his collection of rarities, outtakes, and demos that was previously only available on cassette and CD back in the day, on Bandcamp last month. Other than the absolutely glorious cover, with Hitchcock somewhat menacingly showing you his radishes, is finally seeing the light of day for the first time since the ’80s, there’s one key reason why Invisible Hitchcock made me so excited. Why? Four words: “It’s a Mystic Trip.” Fuck yeah, finally!!

WAHOO!! HELL YEAH!!!! Or, in the words of the man himself, YAYSVILLE!! Listen, my poor dad didn’t get his justice after requesting this song at the most recent show and not hearing it, but at least “It’s a Mystic Trip” is more widely available (and in better audio quality than YouTube). About time, too, because this song is just joyous. I genuinely feel something close to ecstatic every time I listen to it, to the point where whichever neighbors saw me having a solo dance party to it definitely contemplated calling a hotline of some kind.

Dating somewhere back to the early ’80s, post-Soft Boys and at the beginning of his burgeoning solo career, Hitchcock described the songs on Invisible Hitchcock as offcuts from a period from “when New Romantics were at their zenith, I felt more comfortable clutching radishes outside a garden shed than trying to hang out in the Club for Heroes or the Batcave. I couldn’t get my quiff together, nor did I really want the digital patina sprinkled over my songs that seemed obligatory for 1980s pop music.” Keeping that timeframe in mind, “It’s a Mystic Trip” feels like the point where Hitchcock’s creative floodgates burst straight open. After The Soft Boys, who retained a punk sound while lyrically bucking up against tradition, this song goes headfirst, no holds barred, into straight-up psychedelia. His riffs seem to dance against the beat, which has the rhythm of the world’s most confident strut down a brick street. Compared to this, the Soft Boys’s lyrics sound like he’s holding back—he’s spouting the absolute quirkiest nonsense with the self-assured confidence of a time traveler peddling prophecies from the far, far future. Occasionally he veers into the exasperation of a checked-out British mother from the ’50’s at the objectively bonkers scenes unfolding in front of him: “Janice, don’t squat in the nettles/Last week, three people came in to be dignified/And they all got stung.” And to give you an idea of the average trajectory of “It’s a Mystic Trip,” here’s what comes immediately afterwards: “Lucy put her bean in her nostril/And Mr. Watkins said, ‘well, where there’s a barrel, there’s a bung!'” Naturally. It’s so British. But though it’s absurd through and through, there’s a relentless happiness to it. To me, even if it’s adjacent to the lyrics, “It’s a Mystic Trip” represents the moment where Hitchcock felt truly confident in breaking free of the mold, and setting carefree impulse in his songwriting free. I’d never call Hitchcock cringe (even affectionately, as somebody who’s embraced the cringe long ago) but it really does ring true to “to be cringe is to be free”: your best work comes along when you throw convention straight out the window.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Railsea – China Miéville – I sometimes struggle pairing books with Robyn Hitchcock songs, and this one was no different. To me, Railsea has that same spirit of being relentlessly, batshit weird and reveling in throwing expectations to the winds. Shoutout to weird British dudes, I guess.

“Hollow Trees House Hounds” – Cate Le Bon

I’ve done it. I’ve scaled the mountain. Minus a few EPs, I’ve listened to Cate Le Bon’s entire discography. I effectively went backwards, since Me Oh My was her debut album. The St. Vincent comparisons are inevitable, but Me Oh My is very much her Marry Me, not just temporally but sonically. It has the kind of relentless, freewheeling energy of somebody letting it all out and trying everything, and it serves as a time capsule of a weirdo’s first solo foray into the music world. There’s a slightly more cohesive sound than Marry Me, but it has that same late 2000’s indie precociousness to it. It veers into being to twee at times, and honestly, her keyboard choices weren’t doing her any favors for a good half of the album. I hate to slander my queen here, but that fake organ noise makes her sound like the weird Christian lady from Edward Scissorhands in some places. But as a whole, it’s a portrait of a budding weirdo who would eventually hold the torch for many more weirdos to follow. The seeds are all sprouting here, and the blooms that are coming up look alien.

What I didn’t add about finishing Cate Le Bon’s discography is that my brother beat me to the punch. The student has become the master, etc. But he was the one who shared “Hollow Trees House Hounds,” and it kind of ruined Me Oh My for me because it’s the best track on the album by a long shot. It’s just a kooky delight. Out of the whole album, which is mostly acoustic, it’s one of the few rockier tracks, and it really does rock—the chunky guitar chords and the drums make it an instant boot-stomper. The riffs in between skitter and scramble, and all the while, Le Bon is spinning a surreal tale. From the start, she was already getting weird with the lyrics—I mean, look at the title—but the imagery of overgrown moss and vines and a forest to conquer is nothing but her. But I think the outro is an amazing foreshadowing of her career; the repetition of “No room for me/I’m serpentine” is the perfect distillation of her consistent refusal to be boxed in and her penchant for daring, unconventional musical choices. Plus, the shrillness of it reminds me of St. Vincent’s “Now Now”—the “You don’t mean that/Say you’re sorry” bit in particular.

I can’t not mention the music video, which is somewhere between Radiohead’s “There There” and Björk’s “Human Behaviour”—and “Bachelorette,” for that matter—it reeks of the Michel Gondry/Chris Hopewell influence, but with way more beheadings. Which is to say that neither of the examples I just listed had any beheadings at all. Kaiju Cate Le Bon can’t catch a break. But like Me Oh My, it’s totally offbeat and kooky, and very meticulously animated with magazine cutouts and whatnot. Once again, very late 2000’s-early 2010’s, but I miss that era of music videos.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lightfall: The Girl and the Galdurian – Tim Probert – more than fitting for a fantastical gallivant through strange, magical lands.

“No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye” – Lucy Dacus

To quote one of the top YouTube comments on this video, “Phoebe set me up, Lucy knocked me down.” None of us were ready to get emotionally sniped with this. Lucy, diva, I know that No Burden turned 10 recently, but LET US BREATHE FOR A MINUTE before unleashing something like this! Christ. Either way, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, because “No Thank You, I Love You, Goodbye” is an excellent track. Originally a rarity recorded during the sessions for No Burden, it’s a revived time capsule from 2016, shaking with the same angst that colored the album. Amidst an onslaught of reverb that feels strong enough to drag somebody into the riptide, Dacus recounts being dragged along by a lover’s careless antics: “You used to scare me/Bottle on the dashboard/Reckless abandon, abandoning me/I swore to myself I would not follow your lead/So why did I get in the car every evening?” The churning chug of the production, grainy and building to an implosion we never hear, accentuates Dacus’s mounting feelings of being trapped in a corner, knowing that it’s nearly too late to save herself. But save herself she does—she lets the song peter out, as though leading a limping, wounded animal to safety, letting it fade into soft but firm promises: “Put me to rest, to rest/Say ‘no thank you, I love you, goodbye.'”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Nothing Burns as Bright as You – Ashley Woodfolk – “You used to scare me/Bottle on the dashboard/Reckless abandon, abandoning me/I swore to myself I would not follow your lead/So why did I get in the car every evening?”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/29/26) – Sunward

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

It feels like this is my first time reading William Alexander, but technically it isn’t. My first experience of his writing was ages ago; I picked up his MG novel Goblin Secrets when I was about 10 or 11 (I think? My memory’s hazy on it, to be honest) and didn’t like it. But I wasn’t the best judge of taste back then (even if the average ratings for Goblin Secrets are rather low), and plus, Sunward was his first book for adults, and things are bound to have changed.

For whatever reason, it’s so difficult to find sci-fi books by Latine authors. I don’t know if it’s the publishing industry or some other thing, but I feel like for Latine authors specifically, they’re so few and far between. That’s part of why I was so excited to see Sunward out in the wild. I’m so glad to report that although past Madeline didn’t like Goblin Secrets, Sunward is not to be missed.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Sunward – William Alexander

When faced with the decision to follow in her parents’s footsteps as interplanetary politicians, Tova Lir chose a quieter life. She works as an interstellar courier, ferrying private communications across the solar system. But her spaceship doubles as a nursery—Tova raises sentient AIs whose consciousnesses are still on the levels of children and teenagers. When Agatha Panza von Sparkles (she named herself), one of her AI wards, experiences the splintering of her consciousness, Tova has to seek answers in the last place that she wants to go: Earth’s moon, where a deadly explosion has been pinned on its robot population. With the help from her former AI wards, Tova must cross the solar system to save Agatha’s mind from disappearing entirely.

TW/CW: racism, child death, descriptions of injury

Sunward clearly felt like a first-time attempt at a sci-fi novel; there’s less emphasis on the hard mechanics of the worldbuilding, and even with the strong AI element, it rarely veers into any grounded science. Even as a certified sci-fi girlie, that’s not a dig at William Alexander in the slightest. In fact, that’s part of why I loved Sunward so much. It wasn’t burdened by any of the rigid genre conventions that some authors adhere to, and it frequently bucked against what sci-fi is “supposed to be.” Alexander was unafraid to make his solar system unabashedly quirky—it almost felt like Wes Anderson’s take on straight-up sci-fi post-Asteroid City, from the precocious characters to the charm of the solar system’s cultures. There’s a sun-based cult on Mercury. The Moon has wacky mushroom architecture. The gang runs into a theater troupe of mostly robots that perform Twelfth Night in sign language. There’s a pretentious poet and her screaming parrot. Some of the more deliberately twee bits (ex. Agatha Panza von Sparkles) did get grating at times, but for the most part, it made for such a delightful novel. It’s just so charming and strange, and I loved every second of being in Alexander’s new solar system.

As a whole, the worldbuilding of Sunward was a mixed bag. But something that Alexander really excelled at in this novel was the cultural aspects of the worldbuilding. Our solar system is flung far into the future, with human settlements on many of the planets familiar to us, but each of them felt so culturally distinct. Alexander did such an amazing job feel like every planet’s people was unique, and even within the planets, giving them different groups and points of conflict. The same goes for his depictions of human-robot relations; they also differed from planet to planet, but different characters had different culturally specific reasons for the positions that they had. In particular, I loved the whole group of people isolated on a spaceship that developed their own sign language after an illness rendered most of the crew Deaf—that was a fascinating aspect, and I loved that unique inclusion in the novel. It was just so clear that there was tons of thought put into this future vision of the solar system, and I loved it.

Of course, you all know that I’m a sucker for found family. It’s old news at this point, but loving stories like this has made me picky about which ones actually feel like family. Sunward, in the end, knocked it out of the park. Tova was such a strong character, and I loved that her stoic outward presence didn’t contradict the love that she had for her robot children and the people around her—in fact, it only enhanced the protectiveness she felt for them. She was a great protagonist, but the side characters made this novel shine even more. Sunward’s dynamic was way more of a dysfunctional found family, which is pretty much par for the course, considering that this novel is basically just a solar system-wide quest to reunite all of Tova’s AI children. Tova’s getting the band back together, and it…doesn’t go to plan. Alexander did a great job of meshing all of the characters’s clashing desires and making this found family painfully chaotic, but still funny. It’s very much “we’ve all been tossed together in this spaceship with a vague common goal, and we all have to tough it out,” but by the end, in spite of all the squabbling, they stick together. That being said, a lot of the characters were too underdeveloped for it to fully feel like a family until the last few chapters. I would’ve loved Sunward to be longer for several reasons, and this was the most prominent one for sure. But for what it was, Sunward’s resonant love for family and sympathy for outsiders made it a tenderly emotional novel.

Unfortunately, that first-time sci-fi writer element that I praised earlier dragged Sunward down in some places. While I was willing to suspend my disbelief for a lot of this novel, there was a complete lack of context for a few too many of the worldbuilding elements. Sunward is set in our solar system, but the only context that Alexander gives us is that we’re “far in the future.” We don’t know the year, how many centuries it’s been since we’ve colonized the stars, and how long that took. Listen—I don’t need all of the answers, but given that Earth has been abandoned for nebulous reasons, we still retain some pop culture from antiquated Earth eras, and there’s some semblance of advanced technology, it would’ve helped to have at least a rough timeline of how we colonized the solar system, and more importantly, why. The same would’ve helped with some context around the human-robot tensions, but that was at least easier to extrapolate from context clues; still, I would’ve liked more than just vibes and ideas that haven’t been hashed over in other robot-related sci-fi. Granted, I thoroughly enjoyed Sunward, but it desperately needed some more ground to stand on in terms of the worldbuilding.

All in all, a heartfelt and quirky vision of our solar system in the future, and the love that brings people together within it. 4 stars!

Sunward is a standalone and William Alexander’s first novel for adults. He is also the author of several other books for children, including Goblin Secrets, Ghoulish Song, Ambassador, Nomad, A Properly Unhaunted Place, and A Festival of Ghosts.

Today’s song:

I’ve finally listened to Cate Le Bon’s entire discography (album-wise)…Me Oh My is my least favorite, but it’s still so fun

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/27/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: everything’s a David Bowie reference if you’re neurodivergent enough. Plus, the ocean and the taxi are rainy, and you can’t believe or keep anything.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/27/26

“Ocean Rain” – Echo & The Bunnymen

Ocean Rain’s cover art is suited to the songs on it to an almost scientific degree: gothic and dark, with a canvas of deep indigos and blacks. Whoever made the decision to have the cover (photographed by Brian Griffin) in the Carnglaze Caverns should’ve gotten a raise. All of the tracks I’ve heard from the album (see also: “The Killing Moon,” “Nocturnal Me”…damn, remember when Stranger Things had meaningful and fun needle drops?) have the feel like the grand, orchestral arrangements are pinging off of the dappled light inside of a moonlit cavern.

This is probably kind of silly, considering that I’ve only listened to about half of Ocean Rain, but my hot take is that “Ocean Rain” would’ve been a way better opener than “Silver.” No shade to “Silver” (which has always reminded me of Wii Sports Resort music, weirdly…if Wii Sports Resort was goth), but I think this track lends itself more naturally to that classic, swelling build that more cinematic openers have. Whisper-quiet, “Ocean Rain” tiptoes in before launching into a slow-burn tale of storm-wracked seas—and minds: “All hands on deck at dawn/Sailing to sadder shores/Your port in my heavy storms/Harbors the blackest thoughts.” (I love the double meaning of “harbor” here—harboring thoughts, but then there’s the connection to the ocean/sailing imagery. Peak.) The more Ian McCulloch weaves the lyrics, the more his ocean begins to roil with crushing waves, a cry for help on a raft drifting further and further out to sea. But I doubt that it would be half as impactful without that expertly-timed, cinematic build, from McCulloch’s echoing vocals, almost a cappella, to his wail accompanied by the swells of an orchestra.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea – Rita Chang-Eppig – “I’m at sea again and now your hurricane/Have brought down this ocean rain/To bathe me again/My ship’s a-sail, can you hear its tender frame?/Screaming from beneath the waves…”

“Rainy Taxi” – Spoon

“Rainy Taxi” is a frantic love song for the end times. Amidst the kind of biblical apocalypse besetting the characters, Britt Daniel only has one thing on his mind: “Put on your red shoes; sing it to me, lover-girl/When you do, my love, I forget the world/And if you say ‘run,’ I may run with you/I’ve got nothing else, I’ve got nowhere else.” First off: I can’t not mention the nods to the David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” and its placement feels very intentional; in Daniel’s hands, “and if you say ‘run,’ I may run with you” is molded from a declaration of love to a sign to flee the oncoming end of the world and devotion as everything crumbles. The graying minor key and Alex Fischel’s spurts of discordant piano gives “Rainy Taxi” the anxious, precipice feel that at the slightest hint of danger, it’s time to bolt. By the outro, the characters presumably have run for the hills for good. Spoon isn’t a band that I’d usually think of with more sci-fi narratives like this, but their painting of the apocalypse is as good as any prog-rockers or metalheads; their nervy style translates effortlessly into the sky falling.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come – Jen St. Jude – “I came home last night, I had no good news/And you’ve been sleeping through the brightest flash of apocalyptic ruin/And if you leave, I’ll never sing another tune…”

“I Can’t Believe” – The Apples in Stereo

The Apples in Stereo could rarely write a straight-up love song: there’s always a sci-fi element. Somebody’s a robot, somebody’s in space, et cetera. But that’s why I come back to them anyway—it was never a complaint. I thought that “I Can’t Believe” was one of those rare birds that didn’t include any of those elements until I listened more closely to the lyrics. What first appears to just be a classic case of an absent girlfriend turns into an absent girlfriend who’s also a time traveler: “She told me she came from tomorrow/And from a world far away, man/She told me leaves here this morning/Has she come back yesterday, man?” Yup. Just another Tuesday for Robert Schneider, apparently. It’s so perfect. It’s like the plot of some pulp comic from the ’60s.

And like the strange time loop that the girlfriend seems to be traveling through, “I Can’t Believe” is a song that I keep coming back to, over and over. There’s a timelessness to it, an instant clicking that feels rooted in classic rock elements but retains that signature Elephant 6 quirkiness. Something about the harmonies on the chorus—that repetition of “I can’t believe what she said to me,” before Schneider feinting silence on the last “what”—is so impeccably choreographed. Something really scratches an itch in my brain about the note change and Hilarie Sidney’s harmonies on the last repetition of the chorus before the verse starts again. The spacey synths and the crunched-up guitar riffs—it’s just a perfect pop song with a sci-fi twist, as is the mission of The Apples in Stereo.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Swift and Sudden Exit – Nico Vincenty – self-explanatory: time-traveling girlfriend.

“Can’t Keep Anything” – Cameron Winter

Alright, here I go. I feel like that meme of all of the identical Buzz Lightyear action figures in Toy Story, but oh my lord, Heavy Metal is a fantastic album. What people tend to gloss over is that it really isn’t the most palatable listen. The wise-beyond-its-years optimism of “Love Takes Miles” is the outlier. Whoopsies. Some of the songs are downright anxiety-inducing, like you’re standing on the unstable ground of a volcano about to blow its top; you’ll see a truly inspired lyric whizz by your head like shrapnel, but oh god, another piece of the ground just broke off into the lava flow and you’re precariously teetering on the edge. And then you fall down—that’s “$0” for you. After a certain threshold, Heavy Metal is completely untethered, hurtling towards some sort of chaotic, terminal doom, fully aware of its own destruction. It’s like witnessing somebody’s manic episode. I was honestly shaking a bit during that stretch between “Nina + Field of Cops” and “$0,” but thankfully, Cameron Winter finds a way to land the plane.

The best comparison I can make to Heavy Metal is Wilco’s masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Not that the albums are fully comparable, since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is easily a top 10 album for me, but Winter has that same spirit of Tweedy in terms of dressing up personal turmoil in intricately noisy compositions, whole worlds contained in three minutes. “Can’t Keep Anything” feels the most Wilco to me in its lyrics. As the closer to the album, it’s no “Reservations” (but what could ever be?), but Tweedy feels alive and well in the beat-up, tired self-reflection: “Walking and walking, you used up your feet…Begging and praying, you used up your knees.” After this pseudo-religious spiral desperately trying to win back affection (romantic? spiritual? artistic? all three?), Winter’s laid down his sword. In the many ways that self-deprecation manifests on Heavy Metal, this feels like the admission of defeat. Love, or whatever it may be, has slipped through his fingers, and this is his final acceptance of it. (I can’t help but thinking that the repetition of “I can’t give everything away” in the outro is a reference to the David Bowie song of the same name...cathedrals for those with eyes to see, etc. etc.). Musically, it’s much more subdued, with the soft plunking of the xylophones seeming to gently usher of Winter into the next stage of his life. It’s a gesture of futility and exhaustion, but also a kind of pledge to himself: he’s wasted all of this time going to inhuman lengths to pursue this something; from now on, there’s no use butchering pieces of himself. For an album that goes to such catastrophic highs and lows, it’s a sad ending, yet it feels like making peace with your mistakes. Whether or not he follows up on it, “I just can’t give everything away” feels like the binding of a pact: it’s over.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The River Has Roots – Amal El-Mohtar – “I don’t know where I’m going, babe/Wherever it is I’m going, baby/You’re going too/Baby, where I’m going/I can’t keep anything/But I can’t just give everything away…”

“Pink in the Night” – Mitski

“Pink in the Night” really does glow. Everything about the production and instrumentation just glimmers, bathed in reverb and synths that feel like they could dissipate with the slightest breath. Listening to it feels like watching afternoon light illuminate specks of dust until they become stars. Even the persistent kick drum that ushers the song into its ending might as well be the hammering of a lovesick heart against a ribcage. That glowing feeling is so intimately concentrated that it might as well be emanating straight from Mitski’s chest. And that’s exactly where it’s coming from—Mitski described “Pink in the Night” as being centered around “that visual of someone glowing pink because they’re so infatuated,” but that the heartbreak threaded through the first verse “doesn’t have to be a hard, horrible bad thing. It’s just like ‘I’m so infatuated and in love that I feel myself crumbling… but in a good way!'”

Of course, there’s an undercurrent in this track that the love feels one-sided or unrequited, but like too many of Mitski’s songs, they’re automatically pigeonholed as depressing. “Pink in the Night” doesn’t seem to be so, as painful as unrequited love can be. It’s just an overpowering emotion, of falling so head-over-heels in love that you feel weightless, tumbling through space with no trajectory. That infatuation is heady, but that carefree tailspin takes you all the way down, sprinting through summer rain that catches the evening light; it feels like dust turning into stars (or raindrops singing) because that’s how infatuation feels: like the ordinary has somehow become the most cosmic, wondrous thing in the universe.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If You Still Recognize Me – Cynthia So – “I glow pink in the night in my room/I’ve been blossoming alone over you/And I hear my heart breaking tonight…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Bisexual Visibility Week (2026 Edition) 🩷💜💙

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., September 16th-23rd is Bisexual Visibility Week, and September 23rd is Bisexual Visibility Day!

To me, visibility—true visibility—for the bi+ community is more vital than ever right now. In contrast to decades ago, when bisexuality wasn’t in the public conversation, today, it seems that bisexuality has enjoyed a more nuanced mainstream understanding. Yet this visibility came with the price of misunderstanding and stigma, much of which continues today. It’s already a handful coming from straight people, but what breaks my heart the most is when it comes from within the LGBTQ+ community. Sadly, it’s more common than you’d think. It manifests in a lot of sinister ways within the queer community, from the stereotype of bisexual women only dating men to the widespread jokes this year in particular about bisexual people only being allowed to celebrate pride for half the month. Sure, they may not be all that sinister on the surface, but when they repackage the same stereotypes about bisexual people (bisexuals only being bi for attention and bisexuals being “less queer”), they become regurgitations of the same demons that we’ve been facing for decades. And don’t even get me started on the stereotyping, particularly from lesbians and gay men, about how bisexuals are somehow co-opting queerness by exhibiting same sex-attraction or that we’re somehow “unclean” because we may have dated other genders. Especially considering that bisexual people are more likely to consider or commit suicide than their lesbian or gay peers, as well as reporting higher rates of depression and sexual assault, this rhetoric always has a consequence.

When did we all forget that we should all be on the same side? I’m so tired of saying something to the effect of the last paragraph in these posts, but this rampant biphobia—and infighting—just keeps happening. Whether bisexuality/biphobia is the issue or not, all of this casual queerphobia only serves to divide us further. There are real, present threats to the LGBTQ+ community, especially here in the U.S., that are so much more pressing than some fabricated issue of who’s more queer and who doesn’t deserve to be queer. Even if the issue was remedied, we should be quick to remember that after the word transgender, the next word that the government tried to erase from Stonewall National Monument’s website was bisexual. We need to focus on the real, tangible threats to our community, not on pointless squabbling that only makes enemies of each other.

To all of the fellow bisexuals who may be reading this: you are bisexual enough, you are queer enough, and you do not have to justify your identity to anyone. When I embraced my bisexuality in my teens, I felt freer than ever before. That’s exactly what claiming this identity should be all about: the idea that you cannot be boxed in by a society placing you on a single track for the gender you should be attracted to. In a perfect world, it should bring you that freedom, and never fear. We can all work towards that world, someday.

For my lists from previous years, click below:

Let’s begin, shall we?

🩷💜💙THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR BISEXUAL VISIBILITY WEEK (2026 EDITION)🩷💜💙

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC/HISTORICAL FICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by bisexual authors? Let me know in the comments! 

Today’s song:

That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/22/26) – Blue-Skinned Gods

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy fall equinox/bisexual visibility day eve!

Since this week is Bisexual Visibility Week, I figured I would read some books to supercharge my own bisexuality celebrate the occasion. I’m normally not a huge literary fiction reader, but I read SJ Sindu’s graphic novel Tall Water back in May and really enjoyed it, so I figured I’d give more of their works a try. Blue-Skinned Gods turned out to be quite an impactful novel!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Blue-Skinned Gods – SJ Sindu

Kalki was born with sky-blue skin. His parents, believing he is the reincarnation of the god Vishnu, set up an ashram where they make a living off of Kalki’s supposed healing powers. As Kalki gets older, the cracks in his identity and his father’s manipulation of him begin to grow. But on a pilgrimage to New York City, Kalki discovers that the carefully-constructed narrative of his life may not live up to what his father made them out to be, and that the only way to discover his true nature—godly, human, or something else entirely—is to break free of his father’s grip.

TW/CW: child abuse, religious bigotry, cancer, loss of loved ones, emotional & physical abuse, sexual content, suicide, attempted murder

There’s a moment that I particularly liked in Blue-Skinned Gods that, to me, exemplifies the best qualities of SJ Sindu’s writing. When Kalki first arrives in New York City, he describes the traffic as rivaling that of India, with the rickshaws replaced by yellow cabs. It struck me, and it really made me laugh—I feel like a lot of the Orientalist rhetoric that we hear about India is about how crowded and unclean the streets are and how out of control the traffic is, and this passage felt like a slap upside the head to all of those tropes. But Sindu didn’t write it necessarily as such: it was just how Kalki processed his first experiences of the city. The impact of that observation was how a lot of the themes were delivered—everything had layers of satire, nuance, and emotion, and it just felt downright clever. Sindu’s writing engrossed me in the setting and delivered its messages all folded up into one: neither was separate from the other, and that’s what sets their writing apart to me.

Sindu’s buildup of Kalki’s character was one of the strongest aspects of this novel. His narrative voice, with his strong sense of justice and deep sensitivity to the corruption of the world around him, gave the novel a very tender aspect, especially considering the cruel hand that he and his family and friends were dealt. Kalki deals with his fair share of trauma, and Sindu did an excellent job of depicting it respectfully and not milking it into gratuitous trauma porn. (That being said, take heed of the trigger warnings. Blue-Skinned Gods is definitely a difficult novel to read.) There was a kind of innocence to him, but it was rooted in his belief of justice and his godly duty to right the wrongs of the world. Once he breaks away from his abusive father’s grip and comes into his own, his journey to true self-discovery was heartbreaking and heartwarming; on the one hand, Sindu’s portrayal of everything he’s built his life on come crumbling down almost instantaneously was just plain sad, but seeing Kalki’s rocky journey towards advocating for himself and not letting himself be manipulated by other people was so fulfilling. It’s clear that Sindu put so much love into Kalki, and every page was proof.

Strangely, I feel like Blue-Skinned Gods isn’t as much about religion in the end—it plays a part, but not the whole. It’s about people wanting to believe in something so desperately that they’re willing to do callous things to the people caught in the crossfire. Kalki’s childhood is stripped away just because his father knows the power of people who just want to see miracles—and because his father knows that it’s profitable to bring false miracles to people. When Kalki escapes to New York City and finds refuge in Lakshman and his band, he’s told that his father has been using him, but then gets manipulated by the band so that they can profit off of his identity as well, just in a different way. I think it’s also about how otherness is seen as profitable, and how when the othered person doesn’t want to be commodified, they become something to despise and fear in the eyes of the majority. Sindu had so much to say with Blue-Skinned Gods, but for the most part, she did an excellent job of addressing it without it coming off preachy—the narrative just lended itself to so many ethical and emotional questions, and Sindu navigated all of them with aplomb.

For the most part, Blue-Skinned Gods was such a strong book. Sindu was willing to let the reader absorb the weight of all the emotions in this novel, even though it spans around 20 years and there are a lot of events to dwell on. However, the same kindness was not shown to the ending. Without spoiling anything, it felt like such a climactic moment chock full of complicated and horrific emotions, like many of the events throughout Kalki’s life. There’s so much buildup, and then it’s over and done in about a page, as is the emotional fallout. It was an ending that made me think that there were at least 5-10 more pages, but it just ended—that was it? Why did this moment not get the same treatment as the rest of the traumatic events in this novel? It didn’t take away from my rating of this novel, but I feel like it needed more room to breathe, and much too abrupt for something so emotionally charged.

All in all, an affecting novel of religion, identity, and the lengths you’re willing to go to just to believe in something. 4 stars!

Blue-Skinned Gods is a standalone, but SJ Sindu is also the author of several other books for children, teens, and adults, including Marriage of a Thousand Lies, The Goth House Experiment, Tall Water (with Dion MBD), and Shakti. They also contributed to the anthology Be Gay, Do Crime.

Today’s song:

IT’S FINALLY HERE

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/20/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: women getting weird with it is a common theme here, but the vibe you gravitate towards is your choice today. Plus, Tall Dwarfs get lost in the woods.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/20/26

“Jacquelyn in the Background” – Jessica Pratt

Talking to Radio 6 Music for BBC, Clari Freeman-Taylor of mary in the junkyard described Jessica Pratt’s album On Your Own Love Again as “the kind of music that frogs would make on lily pads” and Pratt herself as “an alien.” And just like that, I was sold. Both of Freeman-Taylor’s descriptions are right on the money. There’s a charming, familiar yet alien quality to Pratt’s music. The first comparison that jumped out at me was early Cate Le Bon, before she’d gone full-throttle into sensory synth maximalism; St. Vincent circa Marry Me comes to mind as well. Their joint wavelengths of quirkiness manifest in similar ways, with folk skewed enough out of the ordinary to sound like something timeless but new.

I’ll always love a woman vocalist with an unabashedly unconventional voice. Pratt’s voice is nasally at the best of times, and that’s part of what makes Freeman-Taylor’s frog comparison genius: she totally sounds like she could be an extra on Over the Garden Wall, or something. Against the delicate pluckings of an acoustic guitar, “Jacquelyn in the Background” weaves a story that seems innocuous—just a folksy tale of mundane friendship—with flickers of uncertainty that belie some sort of imaginary friend narrative. Jacquelyn is in the background, but the image of her shifts colors, morphing as Pratt catches glimpses of her between shadows in her room. My favorite part of the song comes when the music catches up to the meaning: at 2:41, the pitch suddenly shifts and wobbles all over the place, dopplering in and out of the realm of the ordinary before tripping head over heels back into normalcy. Twitches of pitch-shifting fleck the rest of “Jacquelyn in the Background” until it ends. I was on board from the beginning, but that flourish of genius, connecting the narrative to the music itself, is what sold me on Jessica Pratt. If my never-ending album bucket list is anything to go by, it’ll be a long time coming, but something tells me that this isn’t the last time I’ll talk about her on here.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Am the Ghost in Your House – Mar Romasco-Moore – “Ode to Jacquelyn, I see you coming through/See the changes in your smile/In the background, you’re coming in colors now/Leave your bad news for a while…”

“Lord of the Reedy River” (Donovan cover) – Kate Bush

I’m biased, since I listened to the Kate Bush version first and I really don’t know much of anything about Donovan. (To be fair, not all of her covers hit the mark—see her weirdly pseudo-reggae cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” If that concept makes you go huh?, you’re not alone. To be fair, it’s not bad, it’s just a combination that doesn’t fully work.) But this cover elevates Donovan’s original song so much. Donovan’s version, a retelling of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan, is eerie to begin with. It has that uneasiness that you find with a lot of ’60s folk songs, this kind of whispery discomfort that hints at unsaid things beneath the surface. But for a song about a myth about a mortal woman getting raped by Zeus in the form of a swan, the lyrics don’t suggest anything all that distressing, other than the waver in Donovan’s voice.

Kate Bush had to be keen on that undertone. Swapping Donovan’s acoustic guitar for flutes and a ghostly choir, her interpretation of “Lord of the Reedy River,” without changing the lyrics, makes it clear how inherently chilling the story is. There’s a quivering anxiety everything, shadows concealing feathers and uncertainty afoot. The male choir that Bush often used in her early years (to mixed results) hums discordantly, groaning and murmuring as though they’re spirits watching from the underworld itself. The only change is that Bush switches Donovan’s “she” to the more personal “I,” and that might be the most crucial change of all; closing the distance between Leda and the listener makes the mounting fear—and the implications of the myth itself—much more immediate.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill – even with all of the Greek myth retellings I’ve read, I’ve never come across one of Leda and the Swan; and listen, fully admitting to double-dipping with this one, but it’s the first book that came to mind with eerie birds and uneven power dynamics (to put it lightly).

“Sign the Dotted Line” – Tall Dwarfs

“Sign the Dotted Line” has a strangely childlike quality to me, but it’s a very specific brand of childlike. Other than the grim territory that some of the lyrics verge into, it feels like it should be soundtracking the quest of a band of feral children with bindles wielding big sticks as swords with dirt smeared on their knees, like something out of Calvin and Hobbes. (I’m imagining at least one of them is wearing a colander as a helmet.) The looping background percussion—which reviewer Roger Shepherd derogatorily likened to a “burping mud pool” (ouch)—adds to that feeling; if there were any more instrumentation other than guitars and said loop, it ought to be a washboard or a shaker made out of an rusty can filled with gravel. The jangly rhythm has the measured march of gallivanting through the woods with some glorious purpose, which is where the enduring charm of it comes to me: “Let’s descend through fog and rain/And see if we can find the same way out/Of this whole mess/It’s not as if we’d lose our lives/Or be impaled by carving knives just yet.” Knox’s lyricism is undeniably pretty sarcastic, but it has the kind of glee that comes along with losing your way and embracing it. Of course, that’s my interpretation—Shepherd, writing for Flying Nun (the Tall Dwarfs’s label), posited that “[it] could equally be about a musician signing up to a record company” or, based on this illustration by Knox in Weeville‘s liner notes, “a commentary on the willingness of people to surrender their lives to religion.”

art by Chris Knox, from the liner notes of Weeville

The screwed-on halo makes the whole drawing for me. (As do the dubious three arms.) Knox draws exactly how he writes songs—I love it when artists have that touch that’s so distinctly them that it translates across mediums. Either way, I’d take “Sign the Dotted Line” to be about willingness, earned or unearned—the “sign the dotted line” is undeniably sarcastic, but what awaits our heroes on the other side? That’s for you to decide.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Art of Prophecy – Wesley Chu – “Let’s descend through fog and rain/And see if we can find the same way out/Of this whole mess…”

“VCR” – The xx

“VCR” is inherently comforting. In the simplicity that The xx crafted out of some loops, guitars, and bass, they created a kind of nest where life is easy and romantic. Like the couple tearing off pieces of an abandoned building in the music video, it’s a song that’s for making you (and somebody else) feel like you’re the only people in the world. It’s a late-night blanket fort of a song, relishing in the quiet, cozy moments shared between two people: “And we, we live half in the day time/And we, we live half at night/Watch things on VCRs/With me and talk about big love/I think we’re superstars/You say you think we are the best thing/But you, you just know.” Falling asleep to this song on my beat-up, 13-year-old iPod feels like the best way to listen to “VCR”—it’s a song that nestles in those warm, half-asleep moments between dreaming and waking.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Sound of Stars – Alechia Dow – “Watch things on VCRs, with me and talk about big love/I think we’re superstars, you say you think we are the best thing/But you, you just know, you just do…”

“This Is Love” – PJ Harvey

“This Is Love” rocks. Sometimes you don’t need so many paragraphs to describe how potent a song is, and this track is one of them. It’s just pure rock n’ roll, from the raw sensuality of the lyrics (very much giving meaning to the original meaning of rock n’ roll as a sexual slang term in the early 20th century) to the confidence she oozes with every shred of the guitar. Sure, I think women will never fully be free of the scrutiny that men don’t get when writing unabashedly sexy material, but PJ Harvey at least makes it feel like we’ve gotten somewhere, no matter what conservative panics may rise and fall. “This Is Love” is horny as fuck, and nothing but. And it rocks. The music video enhances that confident, sensual energy. It’s a simple setup, but every deliberate choice—PJ Harvey’s Dolly Parton-looking suit, that red lipstick, the bedazzled heels, the classic black and white tele she plays, the black and white background—exudes the confidence of somebody who already knew full well that she was an icon. It’s so gloriously in-your-face. Some songs scream “rock star” more than others—PJ Harvey, in this moment, was as emblematic of the term as you could possibly get.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Calamity – Constance Fay – “I can’t believe life’s so complex/When I just want to sit here and watch you undress…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for National Latine Heritage Month (2026 Edition)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., September 15th-October 15th is Latine Heritage Month! If there’s one thing that living under two rounds of the Trump administration has made abundantly clear, is that the government does not want any marginalized group—especially BIPOC—to feel any sort of pride in themselves or their cultures. Being a part of the Latine community has made that blatantly evident to me. Day after day, Latine people continue to be unjustly detained by ICE and shot in broad daylight. To the people in power, our cultures are not worth celebrating, nor are they worth acknowledging at all, not when we supposedly “don’t belong” here.

That argument obviously doesn’t hold up to anybody with even the most basic knowledge of U.S. history. While the government disparages Latine laborers, they stand on structures that have been built by generations of our labor. ICE agents indulge in cuisine from Latine immigrants, and then detain those same immigrants in the same breath. Our vastly diverse cultures have been embedded in the fabric of this country, and the refusal of the country at large to acknowledge this has led to the thoughtless dehumanization of Latine people of all kinds, simply for the color of their skin or the language that they speak. Even I, with my mixed-race heritage and my decidedly very white-passing skin (and privilege), find it hard not to feel like a squashed bug on the daily having to see the casual disparagement of our rich communities. But what brings me back to earth is to have that pride: to read books from my heritage, to try and cook food from my culture, and to have any sense of pride. To love your heritage—heck, to put any effort into looking into it at all—is to be the very thing that your government wants to suppress. What my queerness has taught me is that being loud and proud isn’t the safest option, and the same logic applies here; all that matters is to foster that pride and curiosity wherever you can.

More than ever, Latine people of all walks of life could use your help in this country. This is a non-exhaustive list, but here are some excellent charities that you can support.

CHARITIES YOU CAN SUPPORT:

This is a non-exhaustive list! I encourage you to look for other options, and let me know of any other great charities supporting the Hispanic/Latine community in the comments.

For my past lists for Latine Heritage Month, click here: 

THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR LATINE HERITAGE MONTH (2026 EDITION)

FANTASY AND MAGICAL REALISM:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC/HISTORICAL FICTION:

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you like them? What are some of your favorite books by Latine/x authors? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/15/26) – Summer in the City of Roses

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and more importantly, happy National Hispanic & Latine Heritage Month!

I’m kicking off the occasion with a novel that’s been languishing on my TBR for way too long. I don’t remember where exactly I heard about it, but I was intrigued by the cover and the unusual premise. Though I wasn’t immediately familiar with the myths and fairytales that it drew from, Summer in the City of Roses stands as something uniquely itself, regardless of its inspirations.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Summer in the City of Roses – Michelle Ruiz Keil

Iph and Orr are inseparable. Ever since Orr began showing signs of anxiety, Iph has been his protector, making their way around Portland in the early ’90s together. But when their father sends Orr off to a wilderness camp without Iph’s knowledge, she’s beyond betrayed. Unbeknownst to Iph, Orr snuck off into the woods the minute that he arrived at the camp. Now on separate journeys to find their way back to each other, Iph and Orr will stop at nothing to reunite, no matter the bizarre trials they encounter on the way.

TW/CW: transphobia/deadnaming, kidnapping, substance abuse, animal cruelty, homophobia, domestic violence

First off: this is a weird book. It’s weirder than a lot of mainstream YA dares to get, which I greatly enjoyed. In a publishing landscape dominated by all manner of fairytale and myth retellings, Summer in the City of Roses dared to do something radically new, and while it wasn’t completely successful, it’s a bright spot of individuality in the YA landscape.

I wasn’t familiar with the myth of Iphigenia or the Brothers Grimm’s “Brother and Sister,” the two fairytales and myths that Summer in the City of Roses was based on; once I looked into them more, there were so many fun Easter eggs that were hidden throughout. But even without that context, it felt so much like a fairytale. The strange, winding nature of the plot, as well as the oddball characters that Iph and Orr encounter along their quest, were so archetypal, but beyond that, just pure fun. Ruiz Keil’s prose gave the novel a Wes Anderson feel, especially when it came to the narrative voice and the way the characters acted and spoke. (George felt very Rushmore to me.) There’s a wandering nonbinary Robin Hood type with a mini pitbull, a band of Riot Grrrls, covens of witches from San Fransisco—it’s just unabashedly ’90s and unabashedly quirky, at that. It’s just so charming all the way through. And though I’ve never been to Portland—much less in the early ’90s—Ruiz Keil’s love for the city shone through in every page. There’s a lot of fun references to the pop culture and music scene at the time, as well as past musical movements (BRIAN ENO AND OBLIQUE STRATEGIES MENTIONED!!) It’s a charming, punk fairytale dressed in flannel with the spirit of Riot Grrrl activism and siblingly love. Summer in the City of Roses is seriously one of a kind.

Iph and Orr are at the heart of Summer in the City of Roses, and their relationship was written so tenderly. Iph’s uncertain yet determined spirit was so poignant, and Ruiz Keil captured that feeling of being a teenage girl at the crossroads of life so well. Her experiences with her mixed-race identity, with a Greek father and a Mexican mother who was rather secretive about her culture and past, resonated so much with me as a mixed-race person with Latine heritage. Orr was so wonderful, and his sensitive was dealt with so well; I also loved seeing both Iph and Orr casually come into their queerness. What stood out to me though was that despite there being all of this amazing representation, Ruiz Keil didn’t automatically translate it into modern terms that would’ve been out of place in the ’90s. (She talks in the author’s note about not choosing to use any pronouns for George, as nonbinary identity wasn’t as well known/understood in the mainstream ’90s culture as it is today, although it existed without question.) Iph and Orr are decidedly queer, and Orr is decidedly neurodivergent; a less deft author would’ve inserted all manner of 2020’s therapy/PSA-speak into the narrative, but Ruiz Keil toed the line between modernizing their identities while still respecting them as identities that existed in the ’90s, and have always been a part of history.

Naturally, a book dealing with the Riot Grrrl movement and the punk/activist culture of Portland in the ’90s would deal with a lot of social issues, and Summer in the City of Roses certainly did. Not a lot of YA literature deals with subjects surrounding sex work, especially considering the audience; but I like that Ruiz Keil touches on this, and humanizes sex workers and explains a lot of the rationale behind the activism. There are discussions about homophobia and transphobia, Latine and mixed-race identity, spirituality, and unhoused people, but through it all, what made it so meaningful was that Ruiz Keil took such a great deal of care in humanizing all of the marginalized groups she talks about. That being said, a lot of these discussions are delivered in a kind of PSA style at the worst of times; this style is also applied to any other subject that Iph learns about, which made some of the discussions drag for me. However, this is YA, and for a teen audience unfamiliar with these subjects, it might be more beneficial. Chances are, it was only an issue for me because I’ve aged out of the target audience.

A lot of the reviews for Summer in the City of Roses commented on how jarring the transition in this novel was from fairytale-inspired realistic fiction to straight-up magical realism. To be fair, I saw that it had been tagged on the Storygraph as magical realism, so I had some idea of what I was in for. Once I got to this portion of the story, the genre transition wasn’t that abrupt to me: Ruiz Keil’s writing already had the air of a fairytale, even if the actual fantastical elements didn’t come in until the eleventh hour. My problem was more about their execution. The hard left turn into fantasy was quite messy; it’s clear that Ruiz Keil had a lot of ideas and a lot to say about them, but they all tangled into a jumbled mess at the end. The ending had the potential to be so powerful, but everything was so tangled that the message got lost. I feel like part of the issue is that it needed more time to breathe—50 more pages would’ve done the trick for making sure that this element felt substantially integrated into the narrative. Summer in the City of Roses was just shy of a 4-star read for me, but this mishandled ending was why it didn’t get the full 4 stars from me in the end.

All in all, a daringly weird and ambitious novel with lots of aspirations—most of them fulfilled, but with some unfortunately left in pieces. 3.75 stars!

Summer in the City of Roses is a standalone, but Michelle Ruiz Keil is also the author of All Of Us With Wings and contributed to the anthology Dispatches from Anarres: Tales in Tribute to Ursula K. LeGuin.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 9/13/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: at this rate, I could probably condense material from several previous posts to just have a whole album review of Pompeii. Plus, Bill Callahan gets existential, Lisa Germano gets sarcastic, and The Ladybug Transistor gets…very Elephant 6.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/13/26

“Why Do Men Sing” – Bill Callahan

Last week, I was concerned about Bill Callahan going through it back during the era of Red Apple Falls. That sense of isolation thankfully seems to be behind him, but these days, it seems like he’s having a different kind of existential crisis. His newest album, My Days of 58, came out in February of this year, and it seems he had a mission to pick apart all of the questions that seem to emerge in the midst of a midlife crisis. “Why Do Men Sing,” the album’s opener, gets right to the meat of it: why is he still attached to this craft in the first place? I love the slowly-building meander of it, the acoustic strummings that are gradually strung with horns, harmonies, and electric guitars—it’s a song that languishes in all seven of its minutes, giving a weight to its stream-of-consciousness stylings. Callahan doesn’t necessarily answer his central question—it’s repeated over and over in the chorus, but he leaves the answer in the realm of ambiguity. But if there’s ever a sign that you’re artistically on the right track, it’s the visitation from Lou Reed beyond the veil that Callahan describes. (He even adopts a bit of Reed’s New York affect in several places in the song, which is a lot of fun.) His advice? “It’s cool, baby. Just got to let it ride.” First off, that sounds exactly like something he’d say, but I think that’s where the not-answer lies. There’s no one, concrete answer to the question Callahan poses. Creativity’s meaning is unique to you, but more importantly, the many meanings come from the winding journey you’re on. Let it ride, baby.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut – the existential absurdity of this track feels very Vonnegut, in spirit if nothing else.

“Wheel” – Cate Le Bon

Shit, I’ve probably talked about at least half of Pompeii at this point. I’ve run the whole gamut of emotions about it; at first, it was more just “this is a great album, but the second half lags a bit” to “wait, that second half really doesn’t lag” to now, where I’m certain that it’s at least a top 10 album for me. The more I dissect everything about it—the origins, the lyrics, the aesthetic, the Cate Le Bon of it all—the more I adore it as an exercise in processing loneliness and isolation.

From the start, I loved “Wheel” as a closing track. Like its namesake, the blasts of distorted saxophone feel like the melody is eating itself, being born, dying, and being reborn in the space of a few beats. The synthy sway of it reminds me of St. Vincent at her weirdest. Its echoing lament made the track feel like it was ushering the end of the narrative into the fog, as ephemeral as the glow of a lighthouse. But it took me years to get why this album—and this song—got me. I think it was because I found it during a time when I was mired in some woefully self-imposed self-isolation, and something about that sensation planted a beacon in me, one that slowly but surely helped clear the fog. I loved the music, then I loved the aesthetic charm, and then wham: here comes “I do not think that you love yourself/I’d take you back to school/And teach you right/How to want a life/But it takes morе time than you’d tender.” FUCK.

Le Bon told Apple Music that this track was “more direct than the rest of the record. I was struggling to call people over the pandemic. What do you say?…I missed him, but couldn’t pick up the phone.” The circular feel of the melody now gives the image of somebody stumbling time after time over the same, self-imposed hurdle, like feeling your mouth clamming up before you can say what you desperately need to say. And it lodged itself in me deeply—even outside of said self-isolation, I relate painfully to that feeling of knowing that you want to connect more deeply with people, but agonizing so much over what to say, what to do, that it comes too late. Somehow, it feels more digital—especially given the pandemic context—it’s a feeling I experience way more when connecting with people over texts. I feel the urge spill over, desperate to say everything that you want to say, but then that mental barrier clogs your repository of words, anxiety freezing your hands. That previous lyric I referenced (beginning with “I do not think that you love yourself”) perfectly encapsulates that feeling of having an armful of things to say and do, but feeling inadequate when the time comes to condense them into something comprehensible, even if it’s just “hey man, do you want to hang out on Thursday?” Back to “I do not think that you love yourself”—I feel like it’s both Le Bon addressing these friends, but also herself, in a way: seeing yourself suspended in your current state, but frozen in the moment, you’re just observing yourself pacing in circles.

In this light, the outro of “no prisoner, no peace” feels like a call to arms. I’m still chewing on it. The prisoner is, to my understanding, herself, locked in these patterns: from there, “no peace” is the resulting state from being the prisoner of your own patterns. Le Bon repeats it like a storm warning, letting it crash against the waves: you’ll have no peace while you’re still a prisoner of these unsaid thoughts. And to end Pompeii, a study of being stir-crazy and vulnerably self-reflective in Le Bon’s childhood home during the pandemic, feels like the solution to claw through the dirt and see the light of day again. No prisoner, no peace indeed.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis – “It’s been a mild winter here/And I’ve buckled like a wheel/Sucked the life from god’s routine/Broke the royal we…”

“Twangy Wig-Out” – Transvision Vamp

I’d only heard of Transvision Vamp from songs off of their final album, Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble, so it came as a surprise to discover that this album was their critically panned finale after several years of UK Number One singles in the ’80s. Of course, it’s reportedly pretty different from a lot of their earlier work, hence why it was initially barred from release in the UK by their record label. There’s nothing here that would suggest that Wendy James and co. were pop stars—I could see them being underground neo-psychedelia legends only going off of this. But it seems like that’s exactly what they wanted to do, after years of smearing by the UK music press (often at James’s expense, with many a misogynist insult hurled in her direction). “Twangy Wig-Out” has some pop genealogy, but it’s pure, British psychedelia—you can’t get much trippier than this. Its dreamlike prediction makes you feel like you’re stumbling through somebody else’s movie-montage drug trip, complete with lyrics that are the exact kind of thing you could only find deep if you got really, really stoned. (“‘Art is the mind set free’/She says, I don’t know any real artists?’ Shiiiiit, dude, that’s deep…[cough] pass the blunt…”) On its own, it’s a real fun track, but as a stylistic rebellion against a label (and a country) that wanted to kick them to the curb, it’s even more enjoyable.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch – Philip K. Dick – admittedly, I didn’t particularly like this novel, but you can’t get much druggier than this.

“Rushes of Pure Spring” – The Ladybug Transistor

Right off the bat: The Ladybug Transistor is an awesome band name. It also sounds like the kind of name you’d make up for a fake band to sound more pretentious than you are at a party. Oh, you haven’t heard of The Ladybug Transistor? Name three songs, poser. Their song and album titles only accentuate the vibe. Oh, you clearly haven’t heard of their critically acclaimed album Beverley Atonale and the lead single “Your Wagging Tail (Single Space).” Pitchfork gave it an 8.6, you know. Well, they actually didn’t, and that wasn’t the lead single, but you get what I mean. Apparently, they’re so niche that Beverley Atonale didn’t even get reviewed by Pitchfork. Who’s the poser now?

To me, that’s the mark of a fantastic band name/general aesthetic, because it’s a sign that they’re doing nothing but them. The Ladybug Transistor is another member of Elephant 6, and the influence is clear: like many of the other bands in their company, they were producing charming, ’60s-flavored indie pop. From my limited experience, they seem gentler and more slow-paced than some of their peers, but I love the atmosphere that “Rushes of Pure Spring” creates. Unlike a lot of other Elephant 6 bands, the ’60s comparison doesn’t jump out at me, but what does is another band from the ’90s—that being Luna. Aside from the fact that Gary Olson and Dean Wareham’s vocal styles are similar, it has that same gentle, observant quality to it; both the lyrics and the misty instrumentals sound like the results of a steady hour of journaling while staring out a window during a spring rain shower. My only complaint is that I found out about this song after I started taking the bus to school regularly, because this is prime bus commute music. There’s always tomorrow.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Monk and Robot – Becky Chambers – “Beverly Road brings/Rushes of pure spring/I hear the day sing/It’s alright…”

“Happiness” – Lisa Germano

If you’re coming into a Lisa Germano song called “Happiness” and expecting it to reflect any semblance of happiness…strap yourself in. Don’t say I told you so.

A lot of Lisa Germano’s songs have a childlike quality to them. It’s not in the sense of purity, but more in the sense of feeling like a nine-year-old hearing their parents fighting through the walls, learning some choice words, then misspelling them in their diary. There’s an almost-innocence to it, but it reflects a twisted mirror of childhood, a theme that recurs in a lot of her songs. (It’s especially evident in songs like “My Secret Reason,” whose plain lyrics paint images of rot through simplistic language: “But I know this/As dumb as I am/When I was young/And it was winter/In our yard/There used to be snow there.”) It’s a kind of reversion to lost childhood in adulthood, since that childhood wasn’t properly provided. A lot to unpack, to say the least.

“Happiness” has that same eerie simplicity to it. Germano intones the lyrics like she’s unenthusiastically regurgitating advice from a therapist: “Happiness/Is like TV/On or off/It’s up to me.” The subsequent ones are darkly childlike, with the sarcastic bent of a children’s songwriter with an acoustic guitar gathering everybody for a singalong: “Mom and dad/Are like my head/I won’t listen to them/Until they’re dead/Or I’m dead.” There’s a deliberate bit of gallows humor, a smirk evident when she sings “C’mon, everybody—sing!” and the next verse begins with “Pain and sadness/Are real to me.” (“Everybody!”) I wouldn’t go so far to say that “Happiness” is a funny song, but there’s a rotten sarcasm to it that only became more refined with time in Germano’s catalog. The chorus’s repetition of “Inconsiderate bitch, inconsiderate bitch,” sung in a similar singsong quality, is deeply wry and eerie, reflecting both the hollow platitudes people tend to give to suffering people (especially women) and the consequences of questioning them. Oh, you’re not just deciding to be happy? You’re not depressed! You’re just a selfish, inconsiderate bitch. Just turn on the happiness and be a docile, obedient woman, why don’tcha?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill – “Relationships
Are like a cow/Growing strong/Just for now/Poor little cow…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/8/26) – The Folded Sky (White Space, #3)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I got hooked on Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series back in January. I figured I’d order The Folded Sky (on Bookshop.org of course…if you’re still ordering books on Amazon, go here instead!! Your money goes to indie bookstores and not Bezos!) with some leftover birthday money. Like all the other installations in this series, The Folded Sky did not disappoint.

NOTE: The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, and while it doesn’t contain spoilers for books 1 and 2, it’s difficult to understand without the context that they give. For my reviews of the first two books, click below!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Folded Sky (White Space, #3) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Sunyata Song was supposed to live a quiet life as a historian. Her studies of the Baomind—an ancient, moon-sized artificial intelligence created by a long-dead alien race—have so far not disturbed this. But a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity to study the Baomind drags Sunya, her wife, and her two teenage kids out to the farthest edges of the galaxy. Sunya is elated, but she soon realizes that she’s in over her head, between the presence of her longtime academic rival, a potential murder plot, and the dying red giant that the Baomind orbits. In the midst of all this conflict, Sunya must make a choice as to what matters most to her—and all of the people around her.

TW/CW: kidnapping, child endangerment, gun violence, murder

Whoever was in charge of writing a succinct blurb for the back of this book needs a raise. Seriously. There is so much going on in The Folded Sky, and the blurb is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the giant alien AI, of course. But that’s not even the biggest plot point. You’ve got pirates. Incredibly heated historian beef. A murder mystery on a janky space station. Red giants with horrifying implications. Did I mention pirates?

Elizabeth Bear’s characters are the reason that the White Space series as a whole works so well. Book by book, she’s not only created an increasingly multilayered and complex world, but shown it to us through the eyes of people (and systers) who are refreshingly flawed and lovable. I was already sold on the concept of a sleep-deprived, slightly-too-committed historian and her long-suffering but patient alien wife as the protagonists already, but Bear developed them so far beyond that concept; Sunya was one of the series’s most well-realized characters. She’s somebody who tries so hard to be civil and unbiased, but is not-so-secretly very impulsive and prone to being hotheaded—it’s a funny combination, but more importantly, it felt so real. Anybody with a strong sense of justice who’s also incredibly emotional can relate—all of her righteous seething about Vickee was so relatable. Her family dynamic was so heartwarming; Bear could’ve easily gone down the “teenagers are so annoying, hahaha look at them being stupid” route, but I loved how Salvie points out that Luna’s outbursts are just versions of Sunya herself (much to her dismay). Salvie and Sunya were such a lovely couple, and their devotion to their children—and justice as a whole—was the novel’s beating heart. Aside from Salvie being an alien, they felt like a family you could meet any old day, and that’s what sets the White Space series apart as a whole—nobody makes aliens (and people) as real as Bear.

Just when you think the worldbuilding of the White Space series can’t possibly get better…IT’S ELIZABETH BEAR WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!! INCOMPREHENSIBLE MOON-SIZED AI, COMIN’ RIGHT ATCHA! I love her no-holds-barred approach to making the Synarche unabashedly weird, and she followed through on that mission in The Folded Sky. This novel takes us to the more backwater, less technologically-advanced parts of the universe, and the experience of seeing what’s considered backwater in the first place is. All of the new Systers that get introduced were delightful. (Dr. Nonsense was a favorite of mine…you know I love a cephalopod, but Bear did an excellent job of making it more than just a cephalopod in space!) The Baomind itself was so meticulously thought-out, and even after Machine, Bear really pushes the limits on how strange robots and AI can get; I loved the song communication, and the twists that Sunya discovers in her studies are too fascinating to spoil. Either way, it’s proof that Bear is a worldbuilder in her prime, and this series is all th better for it.

The main reason that The Folded Sky didn’t get the full 5 stars from me was the pacing; for a series whose books that I’ve routinely gobbled up hundreds of pages of in one sitting, The Folded Sky had a slower start. But once that hurdle was jumped over, this novel was excellently executed from start to finish. I mentioned the dozens of disparate plot elements earlier, and juggling all of them would be a Herculean task for any author (much less whoever had to condense all that into a blurb). What struck me about The Folded Sky is that out of all of those facets of the plot, none of them were treated as afterthoughts. They were all a critical part of the tangled web of the novel. The murder mystery was just as compelling as Sunya’s historical work, as was the rivalry she had with Vickee and the pirates and everything else. Bear made it look easy, connecting threads that I couldn’t imagine connecting. Of course, it wasn’t perfect—in addition to the beginning, the climax was more drawn out than felt reasonable—but for a plot this jam-packed with different elements, Bear pulled it off surprisingly well.

But I feel like the chaos that the characters are mired in was so crucial to the central themes of The Folded Sky. For one thing, there was the whole Folded Sky concept in a series, and its connections to integrative complexity (new concept that I learned! And they say that only nonfiction is educational…thanks, Elizabeth Bear!) and being able to see issues and their consequences from multiple perspectives, and not, as Dr. Nonsense said, a human binary of only two sides. That was already a very powerful theme, but the chaos also related back to Sunya and her family. Though I don’t have any firsthand experience with parenthood, I loved how this theme was written; you bring children into the world, and you want to protect them from a world that is often cruel and unpredictable, and while you can’t protect them from everything, you desperately want to try. And either way, Sunya and her family are able to keep somewhat levelheaded because of the love they have for each other, and the love that they foster in their community. Overall, The Folded Sky is an ode to the power of multiplicity and many perspectives, whether that’s community-building, family, or studying history.

One more bonus point—look, I know “Life On Mars?” is one of Bowie’s most well-known songs, but the fact that it was referenced in passing still made me giddy.

All in all, a poignant and deeply moving addition to one of the best space opera series out there today. 4.5 stars!

The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, preceded by Ancestral Night (1) and Machine (2). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!