Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/11/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: This is a long one, but I did this to myself by putting Phoebe Bridgers, Soccer Mommy, and Bowie all in one week. You’ve been warned.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/11/26

“God Break Down the Door” – Nine Inch Nails

Noisier, more metal-adjacent music isn’t usually my forte. I used to hate most forms of industrial or metal music when I was younger, up until about high school. This was true for all but a few Nine Inch Nails songs (admittedly, I did love a handful of songs from Pretty Hate Machine in middle school…fitting, and also, “Head Like a Hole” will always be a banger). To this day, I still can’t decide how much I regret not seeing them with the rest of my family back in 2018, at a Red Rocks show where they ended up playing one of the only live performances of “The Perfect Drug” up until that point. Cruelly, it took me until a few years ago to like that song, too.

Nowadays, I can appreciate Trent Reznor much more as an artist, having gone from the throes of addiction to sobriety but still keeping true to his mission of making art to exorcise pain and create a safe space for those working through similar issues. Anybody with that mindset automatically has my respect. But of course, everything goes back to Bowie with me—I think I heard “I’m Afraid of Americans” around the same time as I started sort-of-kind-of liking Nine Inch Nails, and I don’t think there’s a way that you can come away from that experience without thinking that Bowie and Reznor are the coolest people on Earth. Hearing “God is an American” for the first time in the Trump era was certainly pivotal. But to hear of their relationship—Bowie taking Reznor under his wing, seeing pieces of his younger self in him and helping Reznor work his way out of his addiction and help his artistry blossom—is such a critical part of the Bowie and Nine Inch Nails story that a lot of Bowie fans who only fixate on the ’70s or ’80s woefully miss. The ’90s marked a turning point for Bowie musically and personally, with his no-holds-barred dive into experimental music and the peace of his private life, which allowed him to become that stable mentor for people like Trent Reznor, and many others afterwards. And then, of course, there’s the legendary tour they did together.

So understandably, Bowie’s death left an indelible mark on Reznor. Even before I got into Nine Inch Nails, I could understand that if anybody could, nay should cover “I Can’t Give Everything Away,” it was him. That’s not even mentioning his concrete song about grieving Bowie, “This Isn’t the Place.” Yet even if “God Break Down the Door” wasn’t directly about Bowie, it kinda still is, in its warped way. It’s a writhing mass of tentacles frenetically squirming ever outwards towards entropy. Reznor’s blares of saxophone are the most obvious Bowie (specifically Blackstar) callback and a connection point between them, as they both played the instrument in their younger years. But amidst all of the seemingly disparate aspects of the track—the writhing beats (almost goes into yoinky sploinky territory), the marimba, the persistent drone of it all—it creates something so singly whole. That fleeting beat of silence amidst Reznor’s droning and the explosive exorcism of sound that comes afterwards bottles a kind of feeling that I can only describe as a black hole being reversed, like all of the matter of the universe being shot back out from the point of oblivion. It’s the door that God’s broken down, from my interpretation. But to me, it’s not just the sound of Bowie that Reznor inherits: it’s the floodgates of creativity being busted open in the ’90s, wiggling free of all corporate and fan expectations to create something nobody expects.

It’s very succinctly summed up in this YouTube comment:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Redsight – Meredith Mooring – “God break down the door/Everything all at once/There aren’t any answers here/No, no, not anymore…”

“Jane” – mary in the junkyard

mary in the junkyard is a band I expect to come forward with something fresh lyrically, whether it’s feral people in the woods, reincarnated mice, or people turning into trees. Clari Freeman-Taylor has an eye for the left-of-center, the unloved creatures and inherent weirdness that reveals itself once you peer beyond the space between branches; her songwriting cradles spiders, mice, and impish creatures and nurses them back to health, patting them on the head when most people would run away and abandon them. So it’s no surprise that “Jane” is similarly unique. It hung in unreleased but often played live-limbo, where it was introduced by Freeman-Taylor as a love song about her period, who she named Jane and is “too annoying and honest.” Ain’t that the truth.

Writing affectionately about your period is a daring undertaking, given that it’s the bane of pretty much every AFAB person’s existence. But I think that the same tenderness Freeman-Taylor offers to the unloved creatures translated naturally to menstruation, which frequently makes you feel like an unloved creatures, and is a kind of unloved creature in her hands. The understated combination of electric guitar and Saya Barbaglia’s plaintive viola makes it feel like an apology, the sort of intimacy of cupping your hands over somebody’s chin as they weep. (Which, once again, very much a period feeling.) For me, it evokes the fear when I went through puberty as a young girl, developing at a rate that felt entirely too fast for the uncertain body I was in, doddering around like a foal: “It’s hard to be a woman, is it harder to be here?/It’s hard to be someone when everything is new.” To me, it’s both about that womanhood/AFAB experience as well as Jane herself being new in the world, emerging like some nocturnal creature every month. I never considered that my sentient period didn’t want to be brought into this world either. Maybe I’m the bad guy. Nobody’s having a good time here. But that’s where “Jane” finds sympathy, for both herself and Jane being constant, confused, and cramping companions.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Greenteeth – Molly O’Neill – to be honest, I haven’t exactly read many books that are a) about menstruation, or b) sentient periods, but Greenteeth gives me the tenderly, whimsically dark yet sympathetic feel of a lot of mary in the junkyard songs.

“Rings of Saturn” – Soccer Mommy

Have I gotten to the point where I’m ambivalent about Soccer Mommy? I don’t think so, but I think I’m dangerously close. “Rings of Saturn” is a nice song. That’s about it. It’s a nice Soccer Mommy song. But I feel like it’s not a huge leap from any of her other work. I feel like this could be an outtake from color theory, which isn’t necessarily a complaint. Yet with somebody like Soccer Mommy, I expect at least something new with each new release—there was the color-coded concept behind color theory, the experimental daring of Sometimes, Forever, and the acoustic grief cataloguing of Evergreen. Other than the production, there’s not much that separates “Rings of Saturn” from the rest; but I do enjoy the production, with its spacey, retro graininess. The lyrics are solid too—certainly relatable, and they would’ve been even more so when I was in high school. “Rings of Saturn” is perfectly fine, but I just wanted more. At worst, Evergreen’s tracks blended together, and I’m just afraid that it’ll happen again. Then again, back when she released “Shotgun,” it felt like she was playing it safe, and then came Sometimes Forever. So who knows? I want more from “Rings of Saturn” because I know she’s capable of something more. Tentatively, I’ll follow Soccer Mommy wherever this constellation leads.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

This Is the Year – Gloria Muñoz – “The stars, they hardly shine/In the city lights, but I/Point my finger to a halo in the sky, I see your light/Rings of Saturn, do you hear me when I cry?”

“‘Tis a Pity She Was A Whore” – David Bowie

Blackstar was always going to be an album that I needed to sit with. It took me years to even listen to it all the way through. A second time around, and I could barely handle the crushing weight of grief coupled with the ecstatic art-jazz-rock freakouts. And then I bought the record because it was within my self-imposed budget, a fine addition to my collection, etc., and that final piece clicked for me. Granted, most of the tracks still make me cry like a baby, but once I vomited up that initial onslaught of sadness, I could peek back and not just appreciate but genuinely enjoy the artistry behind it. It’s not that I didn’t get it before—even while I was actively weeping, I recognized all of the snatches of odd time signatures and how flooring pretty much all the lyrics are—but the immediacy of it had worn off.

I hate hearing the sound of breathing. Not even consciously heavy breathing, that’s obvious, but just any audible breathing. It’s very much a sensory issues thing, but hearing breathing (nay, any kind of mouth noises), chewing, sniffing, it all makes me fucking squirm. Something about it sets my perpetually askew nervous system on high alert. And that’s how “‘Tis a Pity She Was a Whore” begins. David Bowie breathes into the mic, then licks his lips. You can almost hear how chapped they are. It’s laborious. The exhaustion, the energy sapped out of him, is immediately apparent in seconds, and even when the saxophones and pounding drums kick in, you can hear him heaving. Bowie never gave a statement as to what the lyrics were about: all he ever said about the track was that “if Vorticists wrote rock music, it might have sounded like this.” Keeping the art movement in mind, characterized by cubism, harsh angles, and secrecy, it’s very apt. But that no-frills, human panting and breathing inclines me to believe one of the more popular interpretations of the song; Bowie describes a woman (in quite disparaging terms) who “punch[es] him like a dude” and “steal[s] his purse with rattling speed”…what could said “whore” be if not cancer?

Even if the language is more sparse than the usual flowery, cosmic Bowie epic, “‘Tis a Pity” is an epic in every sense. There’s no shortage of aspects to pick apart. There’s the gender dynamic of the cancer personification, clearly marked as a woman but whose violence takes on distinctly masculine language (“Man, she punched me like a dude”). There’s the title, taken from a 1633 play by John Ford, which is only tangentially related to the song’s themes, but nonetheless contains that same undercurrent of violence. The literary references continue with an interpolation of Robert Southey’s Sonnet 1, part of a collection of poems condemning the Transatlantic Slave Trade, where Bowie gets “hold your mad hands.” (Thanks are due here for the no doubt exhaustive research from the blog Pushing Ahead of the Dames.) Through it all, it paints an image of Bowie as a frail boxer, battered but impossibly full of energy until his last breath. It’s a harrowing song, especially with that final ragged yelp he lets out at the end. He sounds beaten. And yet, he was ready to throw those creative punches in the ring until the bitter end.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The DSM-5 – American Psychiatric Association – we all need therapy after this, let’s be real…

“I Can’t Wait” – Phoebe Bridgers

Are you imagining me somehow serenely, sitting stationary while writing this post? Wrong. I’m still vibrating at the thought of Lost Weekend, mainly because I’ve got tickets to see Miss Phoebe (!!!!) very soon!! I’ve come back to the album constantly—easily one of my favorites of the year so far, and it only gets better every time I revisit it. This week’s pick was a real tossup—I could’ve easily gone with the enchanting slow dance (and brief Gracie Abrams diss) of “The Governor’s Waltz,” the bittersweet, country-fied healing of “Haunted,” or the visceral existential pleas of “As Above.” Now that I’ve had almost two months to sit with it, I think Lost Weekend represents the height of Phoebe Bridgers’s powers (no pun intended) so far. Dare I say that it’s better than Punisher? I do dare say it. She’s skyrocketed in fame and artistic ability, a rare combination; she’s only strengthened the emotional, raw pull in her lyrics without sacrificing a subtly adventurous spirit. The soundscapes have turned from artfully sparse to cosmically expansive, doffing shoegaze, country, and electronic hats with an ease that most musicians of her standing couldn’t attempt.

Yet I keep coming back to “I Can’t Wait.” There’s about a million puns I could make about this song and the fact that I can’t wait for the concert, but I’ll hold back. Another aspect of Lost Weekend that endears me is the fact that, in spite of the tragedy that led up to the album’s release, Bridgers has started finding peace of mind. Despite being labeled as such by the press and her fans, she’s frequently chafed against both a static sound and being pigeonholed as a sad girl; and, yes, while that’s part of why I love her, seeing her write songs of unabashed hope and love is like watching a depressed friend start healing and doing better for themselves. “Bobby” is the more obvious example, but “I Can’t Wait” hits me in the gut the most. With its juddering, harmonized sprint at the start, it’s brimming with anticipation. This time, it’s not the end-of-the-world prophecies of Punisher, but being excited for the first time about what’s on the horizon: romantically, emotionally. Bridgers paints herself as more than a little bruised and beat up, but she’s ready to run towards the finish line no matter how much dirt she’s got smeared over her bloodied knees: “I’m not good, but I’m better/Missed my cue, but whatever/It’s now or never.”

And of course, as if “I Can’t Wait” wasn’t one of Bridgers’s best already, it also solves one of the problems that she’s had for her whole career: her duet partners. She’s finally picked somebody with a lower vocal register than her to duet, and it actually works. They said it couldn’t be done…but if anybody could do it, it was obviously Cameron Winter uh [cough] excuse me, Son-John Johnson, my bad. The beat where the electronic skittering dissipates into folksy embers around a campfire, where Bridgers and Winter’s voices delicately intertwine, feels exactly like the song’s excellent music video; at that moment, the fly that the video’s POV has been from, gets gently cradled in Bridgers’s palms. It’s so secure, warm, and the moment that their voices coalesce feels like home, somehow. Incidentally, that’s where the real love song part of “I Can’t Wait” comes in, but that brimming, brilliant nucleus of hope and genuine excitement for the future gets me choked up. You can change your mind, but you can’t change mine…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Idolfire – Grace Curtis – “Baby, baby, if you leave me/Can you take me with you?/I can sit in the back seat…”

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 (10/6/26) – The River and the Star (The Warring Gods, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I read The Sun and the Void back in 2024 and really enjoyed it; although I didn’t remember everything about the plot, I figured I would go ahead and pick up the sequel. Thankfully, I didn’t have too much trouble readjusting to the world, but that was the least of my problems. The River and the Star had its moments, but I feel like I read a book from a completely different series.

Now, tread lightly! This review contains spoilers for book one in the series, The Sun and the Void. For my review of book one, click here!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The River and the Star (The Warring Gods, #2) – Gabriela Romero Lacruz

Reina and Eva’s lives will never be the same.

Both of them are now in thrall to separate gods—the god of the Sun and the god of the Void. While Reina revels in a new domestic life with her girlfriend Maior, Eva struggles with the dark powers brewing inside of her. But trouble is on the horizon for Tierra’e Sol, with armies of wretched tinieblas invading the shores. As the gods grow hungrier for power, Reina and Eva must choose which side they belong to—and which side is worth fighting for in the first place.

TW/CW: rape, violence, murder, colonialism, religious bigotry (fictional), descriptions of injury

There’s a specific brand of overlong genre fiction book that just leaves you thinking “this could’ve been an email.” I’m all for languishing and having narrative elements that aren’t necessarily practical, but some books have no business being over 500 pages. Unfortunately, The River and the Star was one of them.

It’s been two years since I read The Sun and the Void, and back then, I remembered really enjoying it, for the most part: the Venezuela-inspired setting, commentary on colonialism and war, compelling characters, artful prose. Somehow, The River and the Star treated all of those positive elements as an afterthought, and I think that’s where Lacruz went wrong. Everything about this novel seemed simultaneously overlong and dialed back: the prose is somewhat duller, the commentary feels less cutting, and everything that made the characters compelling is either rehashed or forgotten entirely. At a certain point, I had to accept that this wouldn’t be a satisfying end to the duology just because Lacruz had drained most of the juice out of the narrative. It’s just a shell of book one.

So what, you might ask, filled that void (no pun intended) left by all that? 500+ pages of unnecessary angst. Half of what “drives” the plot of The River and the Star ended up being overwritten angst and yearning. Listen, I’m all for a good yearn, but this was just too cornily written. It almost made me wonder if there was some pressure on Lacruz to make it more of a romantasy, because I feel like we took a hard left from the nuance of book one into “oooooh he’s a morally gray sexy man 😏 but NOW he’s turning into a DEMON 😏” COME ON. Eva and Javier’s dynamic was strange enough in book one, but I feel like it never got rectified in The River and the Star; all of his borderline abuse got swept under the rug, which, for a novel that wasn’t afraid to condemn the ways that men in positions of power use physical and sexual violence as leverage, felt exceedingly weird. As for Reina and Maior, they were all sunshine, rainbows, and overwritten sex scenes, and until the last 50 pages, quite flat as characters. It’s just such a letdown after how layered they were in book one.

That’s not even acknowledging just how boring the Rahmagut/Ches plot turned out to be. It just felt like a disservice to turn the complexity of The Sun and the Void into a very black-and-white story about people being puppeteered by the gods of light and dark. There’s a fancy macguffin, a Big and Bombastic Climax where The End Of The World Is At Stake, ooooooooh, but everything gets wrapped up in a nice bow at the end. There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing that in a fantasy novel, but given that The Sun and the Void really got into the weeds about power, the nature of revolutions, and, oh, the moral complexity inside each and every person no matter their chosen cause, it felt especially cheap. Plus, while Eva predictably had some serious consequences to being puppeteered by Rahmagut, it’s like Lacruz just straight up forgot that Reina was a vessel for a whole god. If the synopsis didn’t say anything about her being possessed, I would’ve had no clue. Whoops. Seems like a pretty important detail, I dunno…

To be fair, The River and the Star wasn’t all bad. I’m just bitter that a lot of what I loved about The Sun and The Void got chucked in the trash, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy a few moments of it. I think the political intrigue was at least salvaged, even if it was less nuanced than it was in book one. With the plotlines of all the squabbling families and Eva and Reina being vessels for Ches and Rahmagut (which was, in and of itself, an invasion of autonomy), I feel like Lacruz did an excellent job of continuing the thematic thread of the loss of autonomy and independence, both personally and as a vital part of the revolution. Maior’s subplot with Laurel accentuated that wonderfully, and she was one of the few characters that got spared the fate of the others and was developed more meaningfully. As a kind of end to the revolution/liberation plotline, I feel like this was a decently executed thread, even if the rest of the novel didn’t quite hold water.

All in all, a sequel with enough redeeming moments to keep it afloat, but none of the staying power of its predecessor. 3 stars.

The River and the Star is the final book in the Warring Gods duology, which began with The Sun and the Void. She is also the author of the forthcoming novel Song of Fallen Stars, which is Slater for release in 2027.

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: 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. 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 songs I’m writing about. 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, Yeah Yeah Yeahs are no stranger to sacrilege. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) To be fair to them, it’s not fully acoustic—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, strangely 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 by 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!