Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/2/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: bear with me, this color scheme is hanging on for dear life. Also, the many connotations (positive and negative) of “they were really just doing whatever in the ’80s.”

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/2/26

“Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)” – Super Furry Animals

I love when album covers have absolute Creatures on them. Super Furry Animals lived up to their name in that regard—we’ve got the raccoon critter and its evil twin on Radiator, whatever’s going on with Phantom Power, and perhaps the most Creature of all their Creatures: the one-eyed, many-legged missing link in Minion evolution on the Guerrilla album cover. I love that dude.

In their heyday, it seems like Super Furry Animals were willing to do whatever. For me, that’s why they’re so iconic—they refused to be predictable, even if they weren’t setting out to be experimental, as was the case with Guerrilla, according to Gruff Rhys. This is the only track I’ve heard off of Guerrilla, but it’s apparently just one of the many, many detours they were willing to take on the album. “Wherever I Lay My Phone (That’s My Home)” is full of false starts and twists, all made to make you jump—it’s one of the band’s many flirtations with dance music, and it’s littered with jittering beat drops aplenty. They crammed all manner of sounds into this track (one of them being a sample of an early ringtone), from foghorn like blares at the beginning to bass that can only be described as blorping (hear me out here), and all kinds of autotune, distortion, and sped-up chipmunk voices. The beauty of Super Furry Animals is that it all works together; with the electronic connective tissue, none of the seemingly random sound effects and touches feel random. Apparently, while touring for Guerrilla, this song was used as the opener to their shows—understandably, because I’d go fucking nuts if I heard this right out of the gate.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1) – Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff – this song could 100% be playing during the ballroom scene on the Sempiternity, right? Or maybe the bar fight right before.

“Seen and Not Seen” – Talking Heads

Pitchfork’s review of Remain in Light contains this goldmine of a line: “At nearly every turn, Remain in Light thwarts cognitive sense to appeal to the gut. Or maybe the limbic system? I’m not a doctor—whatever part of human physiology is responsible for getting funky.” I don’t think there’s ever been an album so dissociative and alienated that’s simultaneously so funky. That’s probably the best distillation of Talking Heads—and most of David Byrne’s career, honestly—I can think of. To be honest, it wasn’t the showstopping marvel that everybody makes it out to be, but it was great regardless. I’d listened to “Crosseyed & Painless” and “Once in a Lifetime” so much that the best was already ruined for me. The second half meanders slightly, but it’s such a unique, influential, and unreplicatable blend of isolation and togetherness.

I’ve never really been one for spoken-word tracks, but I’ve warmed up to them lately, in no small part thanks to Jeff Tweedy’s “Parking Lot,” which is probably the pinnacle of them. (The quiet vulnerability of “I’d like to teach the world to sing…fuck, anything” is a high point of the album.) “Seen and Not Seen” is entirely out-of-body, with David Byrne’s voice devoid of almost any emotion. He describes a man with a desire to change his appearance who has tricked himself into thinking that he can “by force of will, cause his face to approach those of his ideal” after focusing on models in magazines and passersby on the street. He’s burrowed so far into his own head that he’s convinced that everyone around him has been able to replicate the process; every face he sees is the product of relentless wishing. It’s interesting that the facial features that the protagonist wants—”a more hooked nose, wider, thinner lips, beady eyes, a larger forehead”—aren’t traditionally desirable facial features, at least in the eyes of pop culture and Western beauty standards. It’s simply the image the character has in mind. “Seen and Not Seen” has the dread of a sci-fi short story from the ’70s, something that Philip K. Dick could’ve conceived, sans drugs and casual misogyny. There’s a distinct discomfort about how removed it is, but it’s a key piece of Remain in Light’s distanced story.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Queen of Faces – Petra Lord – I’m reminded a lot of the Chassises in this novel: magical, synthetic bodies and faces that can be swapped and altered at will, guaranteed that you’re rich enough.

“Your Touch” – Saâda Bonaire

The creation of Saâda Bonaire might be the epitome of the statement “they were just doing whatever in the ’80s.” It was the brainchild of German DJ Ralph Von Richtoven, who formed a loose supergroup that consisted of two models-turned-singers (Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld) and a bunch of musicians (namely Kurdish and Turkish) who had been found in an immigration center. (There was also the fact that Lange and Hossfeld would be dressed in traditional Bedouin clothing, which…hoo, boy. Yikes.) It was an early exploration of “world music,” which would later become a cornerstone of the ’80s. Richtoven’s ambition was in vain, and the project lay unfunded and unreleased until 2013. Incidentally, I heard about it through my brother, who heard it playing at some random coffee shop, which sounds like the exact kind of obscure music that only a barista could unearth. The result sounds like an alien trying to recreate ’80s disco-pop from memory. “Your Touch” adheres so strictly to what ’80s pop was, and yet it retains that left-of-center skew that makes it tread into lovable weirdo territory. Spacey synths bounce, tapes rewind, and telephones ring as Lange and Hossfeld coo about frustration (sexual and just generally situational). “Your Touch” speaks to the kind of creative freedom that was running rampant in the era; of course, it wasn’t without its cultural and financial boundaries crossed (again, probably for the best that it didn’t go forward with the cultural appropriation), but in spite of its failure at the time, it was the product of somebody with creativity to spare, and that’s the strange beauty of it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Love Galaxy – Sierra Branham – between the reality TV, sexuality, and espionage, there’s plenty of this energy going on here…in space, of course.

“Ghost in Sunlight” – Robyn Hitchcock

The Confuser! Even though I’ve been steadily following the singles on Robyn Hitchcock’s latest album, I haven’t gotten around to talking about them much here, which is a real shame. (“Yesterday’s Rain” and “My Dead Astronaut” are some of my other standouts.) Overall, it’s another showcase of his brand of quirky, jangly psych-pop, defiantly himself after decades in the industry. Having seen a few of these songs live, the studio versions of a handful of songs weren’t as potent, but fantastic nonetheless (see: “I Am This Thing”). “Ghost in Sunlight” was one of such songs. The experience of seeing it live was nothing short of enrapturing—and downright raw. Hitchcock played it solo on piano. I feel like should’ve stayed as such, because the sheer force of his craft bowled me over. He just delivered one of the most gut-wrenching lines in his catalogue (“They tore up the tracks this morning/The tracks they laid the day that you were born”) and followed it up with a raspy, powerful belt; imagine, if you will, a sprightly British man in his ’70s banging away at the piano, screaming his throat raw, then pausing to yell “FUCK ICE!” and going right back to the screaming. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is doing it quite like him.

In his defense, that spur-of-the-moment vulnerability is hard to replicate. The more polished version of “Ghost in Sunlight” that appears on The Confuser doesn’t quite capture that same feeling of wounded primality. Yet Hitchcock’s lyricism, even with his oddball lyricism, retains the core that made the live performance so memorable. That central metaphor of “a ghost in sunlight” evokes such an ephemeral image, of something already transparent on the brink of disappearance altogether. It’s all about the painful parts of transience, of old institutions and memories crumbling with time: “You disappear/Like a ghost in sunlight/Your outline fades away.” I imagine it’s more raw for Hitchcock, seeing as he’s in his 70s, watching bygone eras fade away. “They tore up the tracks this morning/The tracks they laid the day that you were born/Look at them, they’re gone” is one of Hitchcock’s most devastating and impactful lyrics to date. The Confuser is chock-full of surprises like them, and although the whole album isn’t a success, it’s well worth a listen.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer – “They tore up the tracks this morning/The tracks they laid the day that you were born/Look at them, they’re gone…”

“Mine’s Not a High Horse” – The Shins

I haven’t talked about The Shins much on here, which is a real shame. Speaking of which, if we’ve got any Shins fans here…are y’all okay? And I thought the Phoebe Bridgers drought was bad! We’ve gone almost a decade without a new album, send help…

James Mercer is a lyricist for the ages, one of the few songwriters that deserves the title of being called a poet. But as much as great joy and tragedy can be wellsprings for poetry, so too can petty arguments. “Mine’s Not a High Horse” is the kind of poetry that sounds like it sprung up while seething in the shower post-argument, and that’s some of the best kind of poetry there is. (See also: “Therefore, I Am.”) I recently revisited Chutes Too Narrow through the episode of Life of the Record, and that kind of argument was how “Mine’s Not a High Horse” was born; by Mercer’s admission, it was a culmination over several arguments and conversations he’d recently had. It has that “oh, and ANOTHER thing!” feel that you can only get while replaying an argument for an audience of an empty shampoo bottle, but with Mercer’s signature touch. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a putdown more eloquent—and brutal—than “Will you remember my reply/When your high horse dies?” YOWCH. Of course, my main takeaway is that Mercer’s horse may, in fact, have been a little bit higher, but what resulted is a perfect indie rock kiss-off to whomever it may concern.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis – “Don’t ask for his opinion/They ought to drown him in holy water/Will you remember my reply/When your high horse dies?”

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 (7/28/26) – The Language of Liars

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I discovered S.L. Huang through The Vela and The Water Outlaws, and I was intrigued enough by their writing to put The Language of Liars on my TBR. It was the most compelling premise I’d seen in any of their novels—and it quickly proved to be their best.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Language of Liars – S.L. Huang

The Star Eaters are the key to making sure that galactic civilization runs—they are the only species who can mine the element required for space travel. But so little is known about them—scientists haven’t been able to figure them out and linguists have not been able to decipher their language. The only way—or so Ro has been told—is to jump into their minds, inhabiting their bodies in order to pick apart their enigmatic existence. Ro has been assigned to jump into the mind of a Star Eater, and he carries a monumental amount of responsibility on his shoulders. But the more Ro figures out about the Star Eaters, the more he realizes that this mission was never about understanding, and that the sinister ulterior motives may spell a horrible fate for him and his team.

TW/CW: genocide, torture, imperialism/colonialism, slavery, police brutality, violence

TREAD LIGHTLY! This review contains spoilers, so if you haven’t read this novella and plan to, read at your own risk.

I’ve only read one full novel by S.L. Huang, but after reading The Language of Liars, I’m convinced that this is their best work yet. Few other novellas are able to pack so much top-notch worldbuilding, twists, and emotions into so few pages, but this one did. I’ve been thinking about it for days.

I enjoyed The Water Outlaws, but I wasn’t quite as invested in the story as I was with The Language of Liars. What carried over from that novel was Huang’s distinct writing style. They excel in extruding the raw emotion from the most minute, overlooked moments. Every little thing is important to Huang, and that made The Language of Liars into a truly unique novella. The care they put into each metaphor carried over to the care they put into each minor character. The inhospitable, alien world and all of its contradictory rules were written tensely—and intensely. I find myself thinking of Octavia Butler’s famous note to herself, where she vows to “make people FEEL, FEEL, FEEL!”; Huang certainly carries on Butler’s legacy in that regard—as well as their commitment to making anti-colonial sci-fi that truly makes you think.

The world of The Language of Liars is a truly intricate one, but Huang pulled off the exceedingly tricky feat of establishing it a) in less than 200 pages, and b) doing it without unwieldy chunks of exposition. Part of why I think Huang was so successful was because of the tidbits at the beginning of each chapter: passages from books, news segments, and quotes from fictional politicians all buttressed this world, making it feel real in the spaces between the narrative. Beyond that, Huang did an excellent job of not only pulling off this marvel of worldbuilding, but making it compelling. There’s a whole host of fascinating species, all with their own cultures and wars that the narrative is able to dip its toes into without derailing the plot. I especially loved all of the cultural quirks of Ro’s species, and the creature design in me loved how Huang went beyond “these aliens look like rabbits” to integrating rabbit-like behaviors into their language and culture.

I debated whether or not to reveal the big twist of The Language of Liars in this review because it knocked me off my feet and I don’t want to ruin that for other people. And yet, it’s so hard to discuss this novella without talking about it, and I desperately want to talk about it. As it turns out, this cutthroat social system of the Star Eaters is entirely a fabrication, and the reason that the Star Eaters’s culture is so enigmatic and unknowable is that it cannot be known—all of the remaining Star Eaters’s consciousnesses have been hijacked by other alien spies like Ro. It gutted me. The other civilizations were so desperate to “understand” (read: figure out so they could adequately exploit) the Star Eaters that they committed a mental genocide on the entire species, and everything about their culture that could’ve been discovered has been lost forever. It’s a seismic blast of a twist. And it makes such a potent point about the nature of imperialism and the history of anthropology and linguistics—sometimes, something as innocuous as attempting to understand another culture or language can quickly be turned into tools of exploitation and slavery. Though there was the faintest (faintest) glimmer of hope at the end, that haunting conclusion has stayed with me for weeks. Not only did I not see it coming, but the way that Huang executed it made everything fall into place horribly—it takes a hard left turn into psychological horror, in my opinion, but it’s the horror of imperialism.

The Language of Liars isn’t necessarily about disability, but Ro is hinted to be neurodivergent. I hesitate to put an exact name to it, as he’s an alien with entirely different physiology and brain chemistry. (That being said, some of the traits that Huang names are similar to autism, namely a difficulty grasping social cues and aversions to certain food textures.) However, I think a part of the twist that stood out to me is that the entire premise felt innately neurodivergent. Here you have Ro, who goes undercover into the mind of an alien creature to get to the bottom of their language and culture, and is shoved headfirst into a world of intricate, often contradictory social cues. Say the wrong thing, and you’ll be punished, and yet everybody else is unwilling to share what it is that makes words or phrases “wrong.” And as the twist tells us, this intricate, contradictory system of words is a house of cards that’s easily toppled: nobody knows what to do or what to say in the end, only that one wrong word could mean death. Everybody’s just performing normalcy, but it all falls apart at the drop of a hat. The Language of Liars felt so neurodivergent to me, and Ro’s journey of struggling to figure out this thankless construction of language hit home for me in more ways than one.

All in all, an inventive and haunting novella that packs a startling amount of power into less than 200 pages. 4.25 stars!

The Language of Liars is a standalone, but S.L. Huang is also the author of The Water Outlaws, the Cas Russell series (Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point), and several other novels for adults.

Today’s song:

such a classic album—this is my favorite track, without a doubt

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: 7/26/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: here’s what Supergirl (2026), my Instagram algorithm, and my ongoing Britpop obsession dragged in.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/26/26

“Animal Nitrate” – The London Suede

Something about listening to early Suede makes me feel like an anthropologist. Every song I’ve heard off of their debut feels like finding a missing link in alternative music evolution, the point where British alt-rock branched off and evolved into Britpop in earnest. It’s cloaked in the power pop of the ’70s and the Smiths-like atmosphere of the ’80s, and yet it feels like the breaking point where the ’90s distinguished itself and became a whole new beast.

“Animal Nitrate” is one of my favorite Suede songs at this point—at their best, Brett Anderson and co. had an innate talent for crafting some of the most intoxicating British rock at the time. I remarked that “New Generation,” which came a few years after this album, sounded like fanfic set in David Bowie’s Hunger City; “Animal Nitrate” only fuels that flame. Awash in intoxication and seduction, “Animal Nitrate” glides along with razor-sharp guitar riffs from Bernard Butler and Anderson’s howl. The music video continues their quest of pushing the envelope as far as possible while maintaining their velvety, shocking aesthetic, but, yeah, the fact that Anderson admitted that the whole band consumed copious amount of cocaine in preparation for the video shoot explains…well, practically everything about that video. (“Fuck it, let’s spin this pig head around a bunch of times! Faster! FASTER!”) Yet it fits the slinky underworld of “Animal Nitrate” in all of its drugged-out splendor. But honestly? I feel like there’s no drug more powerful than the key change at the two-minute mark. WHEW.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hammajang Luck – Makana Yamamoto – a soundtrack for the gritty—and grotty—cyberpunk underworld of this series.

“Blush” – Annika Rani

For all of the heinous evils of the Instagram algorithm, the one credit I can give it is that it occasionally hacks up new music I might not have heard of otherwise. This one interrupted my scroll with an unusually catchy bassline, hooky enough to make me do a double take. By all accounts, Annika Rani is leading up to her debut album sometime in the future, and if “Blush” is the lead single, then it’s a great pick—it instantly snags you with its funky rhythm and Rani’s vocals. (That guitar/piano double hitter at the three-minute mark is especially addictive.)

Granted, there really isn’t a reason for this song to be over four and a half minutes long. It gets repetitive in sections, and I think it would benefit from being a minute or so shorter because it has the perfect bones for a catchy, three-minute indie-pop tune. Along with the music video, where Rani pouts in clownish makeup and tries to shake off too-small heels, “Blush” is an unfolding tale of going to the extreme trying to impress the person you’re attracted to, to no avail—all Rani ends up with is a smudged, messy face: “Blush on my cheeks starts to run/Damn, my mascara’s a river/It fills up and leaves me with none.” Despite a few snags, I’m glad that I stumbled upon “Blush”—it’s a catchy track full of angst and goopy makeup.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Margo Zimmerman Gets the Girl – Brianna R. Shrum and Sara Waxelbaum – “I know you pick the people who look like you/So I’ll try and put some blush on/I’ll dab it right up…”

“Care” – Hana Vu

Madeline can’t be normal about comic book movies, more at 6. Yes, I finally saw Supergirl last week, and while it was fun in places, there were so many decisions that hampered it. To keep things somewhat short, nothing about Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Woman of Tomorrow—possibly the best comics treatment that Supergirl has gotten to date—was respected. Not Kara’s character arc, not the aesthetic of the comic, and certainly not the message. Don’t get me started on how they brutally botched their attempts to be feminist. (There was no need for Krem of the Yellow Hills to be a sex trafficker and to have all of those teen girls unnecessarily exploited for their trauma onscreen…it gets to a point. Jesus Christ. Just let a woman take the wheel, god.)

One of the lesser criticisms that I have is that it blatantly tried and failed to be Guardians of the Galaxy. But for the most part, it had some great needle drops, and that might be the only ray of light amidst the botched-ness of it all. There’s a great list of mainly women-led bands in the mix: Wolf Alice, Wet Leg, Rilo Kiley, and Modest Mouse all get their day in the sun. (Supergirl was basically reverse-engineered to include a fight scene set to “catch these fists.”) In the theater, it was killing me where I’d heard a certain song before—and then I realized that it was Hana Vu, who I’d discovered last year after seeing her open for Soccer Mommy! She’s not my favorite, but if there’s any positive impact that Supergirl has, I hope it gives Hana Vu a wider audience. She deserves it. “Care” plays during an appropriately angsty scene of Kara staring teenagerly out the window, and Vu, with her aching vocals and punchy indie-rock production, provided the ideal backdrop. On its own, “Care” pairs well with the emotional atmosphere of Romanticism, with its crunching guitars. Vu truly has a powerful voice, and it only positively propels her perspective of love gone down the drain.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Forever Is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – “Oh, hold me now/When I open my mouth/It just screams ‘why?’/And oh, I don’t know/I just hope that someday I’ll be fine…”

“Angel” – Madonna

What a wonderful, talented pop star…it’s such a shame that she never made anything after 1998 and never expressed any questionable views about vaccines…what a shame…[cough cough]

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Like a Love Story – Abdi Nazemian – it’s in the title…very much a love letter to queer resilience, the ’80s, and Madonna, of course.

“Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” – David Bowie

Diamond Dogs is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s been regularly on my rotation ever since I got a copy on vinyl back in June (because pride is all about self-love and self-care and supporting queer artistry…so I bought some Bowie on vinyl). At the moment, it’s still in my top 5 Bowie albums—even the weak links are darkly theatrical romps through the twisted, dystopian world that he weaves. Interspersed between them are songs like “Rebel Rebel,” which Bowie called his “goodbye to glam rock”—and what an enduring goodbye it was. Both this track and “Rebel Rebel” were holdovers from the Ziggy Stardust era, and it shows. There’s a lot of ballad-ing going on in Diamond Dogs, what with the thematic through-line of forbidden love in the face of a totalitarian government; “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” is the most Ballad of the ballads to me, more of a traditional rocker. And yet it holds some of the same emotive yearning as “Sweet Thing,” though it sounds more like a drunk serenade than the former’s heartstring-tearing plea.

This was the tip of the iceberg in terms of Bowie’s experimentation. He was a master of musically pushing boundaries, and Diamond Dogs was far from his first attempt at worldbuilding and concept albums—and it would be far from his last. And yet, “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me,” despite being on the simpler side shows that he could bring that same charm to more stylistically straightforward songs. Like with Let’s Dance, he could make even the most ordinary formats into something exuberant and fresh, which is exactly why “Rock ‘N’ Roll With Me” endures to me.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo – “When you rock ‘n’ roll with me/No one else I’d rather be/Nobody here can do it for me/I’m in tears…”

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 (7/21/26) – Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I hate to say it, but while Amie Kaufman has never let me down with her books, her book recommendations are less reliable. That’s how I found out about Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous, but to be fair, I’ve been reading and enjoying Autumn K. England/M.K. England’s books since I was in high school. They’ve never been a favorite or auto-buy author for me, but their books have been consistently solid and enjoyable in a pinch. Unfortunately, their cozy adult debut is their weakest novel to date.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous – Autumn K. England

Oaklin Nettlewood is turning over a new leaf. After narrowly escaping from a magical cult, Oaklin has fled to the small town of Mossley’s Rest. In a fit of desperation, they buy a farm, not knowing that its former occupant was a beloved staple in the town before her death. Her ghost lingers in the barn, and she’s bent on helping Oaklin revive the farm in earnest. But between painful flashbacks, suspicious townsfolk, and Oaklin’s self-imposed barriers, will they ever be able to start over?

TW/CW: panic attacks, mental illness themes, past descriptions of murder/violence, substance abuse

I wasn’t a massive fan of England’s books before, but they were consistently entertaining, which is why I’ve kept reading them. This might be where I break up with them. I should’ve seen the red flags when this was compared to Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, which I rated too generously in retrospect. Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous was largely bland, and when it wasn’t bland, it was grating; there are so many ways to make cozy genre fiction compelling, and England used none of them.

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous did have a prominently good aspect; it’s not just a matter of “the main character is disabled/mentally ill and that’s cool,” but England’s depiction of Oaklin’s PTSD was so empathetic. England did an excellent job of writing all of the facets of Oaklin’s trauma and mental illness. No punches were pulled with the depictions of their violent flashbacks, and their frequent panic attacks and harshly critical inner monologue were treated with the appropriate balance of sympathy and authenticity—unlike some other parts of the book, none of it felt sanitized, which I appreciated. It didn’t just feel like representation for representation’s sake—it felt like a genuine attempt to humanize a mental illness that’s quite stigmatized.

I’m not sure if I was just able to pass over the flaws in England’s novels in high school because I wasn’t super discerning or if Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous is just their worst novel. Whatever the case, one of the biggest weaknesses of this novel was just how downright bland it is. I hate to say this, but I genuinely can’t think of a single unique quality that England’s writing has. There were a few nicely flowery metaphors here and there, but it just felt devoid of any individuality. The bucolic setting was described at the barest minimum, as were the relationships between Oaklin and the others. I wasn’t expecting a worldbuilding marvel, or anything, but any sense of the world beyond the absolute bare minimum was missing. England’s writing style was just exceedingly nothing. This was certainly a book. With words in it.

I was hoping that England’s characters and dialogue would pick up the slack that the boring writing left off. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Apart from Oaklin, who was decently written, and Granny (whose main distinguishing factors were that she was a ghost and had the mannerisms of an old lady), the supporting characters were lazy copy and pastes of each other. Looking back, the only thing that distinguished Lior from the others was that she was [checks notes] an attractive woman who had a different job from the others. Ryn and Jules were the exact same character. (I think one of them plays guitar? That’s all that distinguishes them.) But what really exacerbated this issue was that all of their dialogue sounded the same. To make matters worse, they all had these very modern, gratingly “quirky” mannerisms that felt like some insufferable person’s DnD campaign. For all the effort that England put into making the people of Mossley’s Rest seem like the kind of small town folk that you’d be comfortable being neighbors with, I just wanted to leave as soon as possible.

An extension of this character issue came in the form of the romance. I liked the setup of Oaklin and Lior’s relationship, but none of it felt earned. From the start, I knew that they would end up together. That in and of itself wasn’t the problem; the problem was that their romantic progression felt so fast and unearned. So much of how their relationship developed fell into the many timeskips throughout the novel, leaving what we had on the page insufficient. It just lacked tension. In cozy genre fiction of any kind, romance is a great way to introduce an element of low-stakes tension without making the novel overly tense. Here, it was just insta-love, and wholly unearned. The only real barriers were Oaklin’s past identity and their conflicting professions, both of which got smoothed over pretty quickly. I do like that Lior was able to accept Oaklin in spite of their past, but it just felt like it robbed the book of some fluffier tension that it very much needed.

That being said, I will say that, in spite of not enjoying myself throughout most of Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous, I did love the ending. It’s messier than a lot of cozy fantasies like it are willing to get, and the biggest takeaway is that Oaklin is fundamentally deserving of love in spite of their past, which they had no control over. Yes, it was a little sappy, but I always appreciate narratives about the harsh criticism that characters have about themselves being proven wrong. England stuck the landing, but it wasn’t enough to save the whole novel.

All in all, a cozy fantasy that was forgettable in all senses of the word. 2.25 stars.

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous is the first novel in the Everyday Magic series, but no sequels have been announced yet. Autumn K. England (also writing as M.K. England) is also the author of several other books for teens and adults, including The Disasters, Spellhacker, Roll for Love, All Fired Up, and many others.

Today’s song:

NEW CHELSEA WOLFE ALBUM IN AUGUST, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!

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: 7/19/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: another whiplash lineup here, buckle up…at least you can boogie a little bit before the crushing weight of seasonal depression and/or a doomed relationship gets to you.

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/19/26

“Glass Mountain Trust” – Mark Ronson & The Business Int’l.

More little Madeline lore: Record Collection dominated my elementary school music taste. I haven’t revisited the whole thing, but every song feels nostalgic even if I don’t remember it as clearly. Mark Ronson assembled a disparate team of Avengers for this album (Simon Le Bon, Q-Tip, Rose Elinor Dougall, Spank Rock, and Boy George are just a handful of them), but the result is a surprisingly cohesive collection of pop songs. Chances are, that’s owed to Ronson’s talent as a producer—the glossy, neon sheen he applies to these songs make them feel like a machine all his own—he has a very distinct synth sound on this album. “Glass Mountain Trust” was one of the ones that I’d forgotten about, with D’Angelo serving as the lead vocalist. Even if you took away the metaphor of the glass mountain, the electronic atmosphere of this track feels glassy, all shiny and transparent. From D’Angelo’s rippling vocals to the drum machine that seems appear and disappear in thin air, “Glass Mountain Trust” proves Mark Ronson’s innate ear for intricate pop music.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Red Star Rebels – Amie Kaufman – “Formidable, the structure surrounding me only looks/I bust right through the glass, one attempt and that’s all it took/I wanted to remain feeling safe, but it just can’t sustain me/It feels more like a trap, gotta break out, won’t let it contain me…”

“Stonemilker” – Björk

I’m nearly done listening to all of Björk’s discography (and if I keep at it like this, I should be able to finish it all before her new album in 2027, EEK), but I’m pointedly afraid of listening to Vulnicura. I know it’ll devastate me. I just need to rip off the bandaid. “Lionsong” already guts me on every single listen, and I know that it’s objectively not the most brutal song on that album, so I’m already cooked. “Stonemilker” seems to be one of the more toned-down songs on the album, but it’s no less emotionally vulnerable. Björk’s dissection of the dissolution of her relationship with Matthew Barney is as raw as the open wounds she describes in the lyrics; her plaintive pleas for connection and understanding carve a rift in the notes themselves. But it’s the central metaphor of trying to connect as being as fruitless as “milking a stone” that drives home the emotions—there’s a lingering sense that their relationship is destined for failure, and she knows it. It’s a six minute lament of futility, the final toss of an anchor before it gets lost in the stormy waves.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Memory Called Empire – Arkady Martine – “A juxtapositioning fate/Find our mutual coordinates/Moments of clarity are so rare/I better document this…”

“Za” – Supergrass

Even in some UK publications, the impact of Supergrass on Britpop goes woefully understated, especially post-“Alright.” They were crafting album after album of some of the tightest British rock tracks time after time, with a mind for experimentation and a devoted admiration to the great British rock bands of years past. But if there’s anything that they’re hardly acknowledged for doing, it’s making a killer opening track. I mean, come on—“In It For the Money?” “Moving?” Dude. If I had that many genius album openers up my sleeve, I’d be able to die happy. “Za” deserves a place among those ranks as the cinematic opener to Life on Other Planets. What starts as a spacey synth that belongs at the beginning of a documentary about the universe unfolds into a classic rock ballad, with electric guitars arm in arm with sci-fi keyboards. Sure, there’s not much going on the lyrics department, but “Za” was built to indulge in instrumentals, not lyrics. It’s the perfect introduction to the album, which swerves in all manner of rock-adjacent directions, but wasn’t afraid to explore the outer space of Supergrass’s musical capabilities. It’s a classic.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Full Speed to a Crash Landing – Beth Revis – “Love/I see it in lies/It shines like the winter sun/So why don’t we get it on…”

“Gronlandic Edit” – of Montreal

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? came out around when I was in kindergarten. I remember my dad playing it pretty early on in the car, and when I first heard “Gronlandic Edit,” my tiny, barely-grown mind was just enraptured. Something about that chord progression cracked something in half in my brain like a geode. I wanted to hear “Gronlandic Edit” over and over. Looking back, it was a sign of things to come that this toddling five year old who liked pink, Zoboomafoo, and stuffed pigs was also fixated on an of Montreal song. Pretentious music taste foreshadowing? Depressing music foreshadowing? Gay foreshadowing? Probably all three.

To this day, “Gronlandic Edit” retains that enchantment that first snagged me when I didn’t have the words to describe it. I recently revisited it thanks to Kevin Barnes’ episode of Life of the Record about Hissing Fauna, which was, admittedly, a real downer. They explained that song after song, they were holed up in their ex-wife’s hometown in Norway trying to turn their depression into something upbeat just to feel something. Indeed, “Gronlandic Edit,” which starts off with a hypnotic, funk-like bassline and electronic claps, begins with a description of Barnes sarcastically singing: “I am satisfied hiding in our friend’s apartment/Only leaving once a day to buy some groceries/Daylight, I’m so absent minded/Nighttime, meeting new anxieties.” Sometimes you make bleak-sounding music to articulate your bleak feelings, but if you’re Kevin Barnes, you try to dance the seasonal depression away. Whatever the case, “Gronlandic Edit” remains infectious—the immaculate construction of the chord progression of the chorus somehow makes a string of notes into a key that bottles the deep-seated yearning residing in Barnes’s heart. Their layered harmonies rise as though in prayer, dismissing of organized religion and yet simultaneously desperate for something to pray to in order to anchor themself through their disarray. (It’s a common theme throughout Hissing Fauna—just see “A Sentence of Sort in Kongsvinger” and its prayers to “a saint nobody has heard of.”) It’s a self-deprecating cocktail about outer and inner concerns, especially the biting barbs he directs at himself in the lyrics about the “faker indie star” (yowch, give yourself a little credit…).

It’s no wonder that Barnes doesn’t look back on Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? fondly. The whole album is an unforgiving chronicle of self-loathing, parenthood fears, marital tension, and seasonal depression. And yet there’s a reason why it’s held up for so long—it’s some of the most meticulously crafted indie pop of the 2000’s. There’s always some beauty to be found in the darkest of times, even if you have to force it out of yourself just to see it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Ephemera Collector – Stacy Nathaniel Jackson – “Daylight, I’m so absent minded/Nighttime, meeting new anxieties/So am I erasing myself?/Hope I’m not erasing myself…”

“Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” – The Magnetic Fields

When “Andrew in Drag” gained traction on TikTok last year, I was surprised that a lot of people took it seriously—not as a song poking fun at the confines of heterosexuality and masculinity, but as a tragic tale of a repressed, closeted man who could never fulfill his queer desires. I kept thinking to myself: wasn’t the jokiness obvious? Were the lyrics—full of rhyming innuendos and dick jokes—not enough to clue people in that this song wasn’t at least partially silly?

Sure, it’s TikTok, the place media literacy goes to die, but then I remembered—I used to think that “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” was playing it straight too. Stephin Merritt is a trickster and frequently sarcastic in his songwriting, but he’s written his fair share of sincere songs (see: “The Book of Love,” which is about as genuine as you can get with a love song). And then I saw The Magnetic Fields on the anniversary tour for 69 Love Songs, where they played this song—and explained that it was a parodic, Sonny & Cher-style duet about a couple who hate each other’s guts. When I first heard it in high school, it just depressed me—and that’s saying something, given that my musical diet at the time primarily consisted of Car Seat Headrest, Radiohead, and Sparklehorse. But it struck me as so achingly tragic: this woman built her whole life around her husband, only for him to only respond “yeah, oh yeah” to all of her darkest fears about him, and then he murders her? It sure is bleak.

But after that revelation at the live show, “Yeah! Oh, Yeah”‘s sarcasm is blatant. A lot of it was evident in the performance, where Claudia Gonson’s mischievous grin and Stephin Merritt’s drier-than-dry delivery of each “yeah, oh yeah” gave the song’s intended nature away. “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” is full of mockery, from the playground “ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah” of the chorus, to Merritt’s exaggeratedly villainous portrayal of the gold-digging, murderous husband. The more Gonson’s fears escalate, the funnier each utterance of “yeah, oh yeah” gets—it goes from simply confirming that the husband isn’t in love with her anymore to “would you really kill your wife? Yeah, oh yeah!” It’s all very camp—it’s hard to expect anything less from The Magnetic Fields.

BONUS: Suki Waterhouse, an avid Magnetic Fields fan, recently performed a duet of “Yeah! Oh, Yeah!” with Stephin Merritt, and she does a pretty solid job at Claudia Gonson’s part:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “I thought if we lived apart/We could make a brand-new start/Do you want to break my heart?/Yeah, oh yeah…”

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 (7/14/26) – Machine (White Space, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Thankfully, after last week’s disappointment, we’ve got something to save the track record for Disability Pride Month. I started Elizabeth Bear’s White Space trilogy earlier this year, and I knew I wanted a physical copy of book 2. It’s one of the great joys in life when a sequel is better than the first book—and Ancestral Night was already a 4.5-star read for me, so this was huge! Machine was a fantastic step up for a series that’s already a cut above the rest.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Machine (White Space, #2) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a special kind of doctor. Her patients are usually aliens, and her status as an emergency specialist means that her job description tends to involve having to jump out of spaceships. It’s already a job that keeps her on the edge. But when Dr. Jens and her crew discover two ships that have been abandoned for thousands of years, they uncover a mystery with layers upon layers of disastrous implications. With a strange, antiquated AI, an entire human crew in cryosleep, and a potential conspiracy on their hands, Dr. Jens and her crew must race against the clock to make sure that everybody makes it out alive.

TW/CW: ableism, misogyny, medical content, xenophobia, violence, murder

Genuinely, my sole problem with this novel is the title. Elizabeth Bear thought out this intricate and complex space opera world full of thousands of aliens and unique space travel, and couldn’t think of a more memorable title than Machine? I mean, yeah. There sure are Machines. Lots of ’em. But come on, really.

As much as I enjoyed Haimey’s story in Ancestral Night, I really think that making the White Space series several collected companion novels was the right move. It expands the intricate world that Elizabeth Bear has crafted in so many exciting ways that were only possible through the eyes of a different cast of characters. I loved the ways that the Synarche and all of the different species within it were fleshed out. Bear’s writing is as sharp as ever—her voice is so witty and hilarious, but she also knows just how to stick the landing when it comes to the more climactic or serious moments. The pacing was top-notch, especially considering that Machine is nearly 500 pages long—I blew through hundreds of pages at a time, and Bear never lost me.

I absolutely adored Dr. Jens as a protagonist, and Bear’s willingness to let her protagonists be messy yet lovable people made her shine. Dr. Jens has such a dry sense of humor, and her wry observations about the world around her made Machine such an entertaining read. But beyond that, I loved her continuous self-reflection—about the ideas she’s constructed about herself, but also about her work and the world around her. The supporting cast was so vibrant and lovable—it was a treat to see Cheerilaq again, first off, but all of the characters were so delightful and added a real human (and syster) authenticity to Core General’s staff. Sometimes your coworker gets on your nerves for no discernible reason, and they’re also a massive cetacean-like being getting wheeled around in a massive tank. On that subject, I loved all of the new Systers that Bear introduces. My creature design brain predictably became that meme of the dog with the propeller beanie and the giant lollipop seeing all of the truly alien aliens that populated the Synarche. But Bear went beyond good creature design and into crafting memorable, multilayered characters, which is what makes her space opera stand out in the end.

In particular, the expansion of the AI and robots in the Synarche was one of the most intriguing aspects of the world that Bear discusses in Machine. The whole plotline with Helen Alloy was one of the most well-executed. I love how Bear interrogates the objectification of women and how sci-fi has historically translated this into female-presenting robots. The visceral discomfort that Dr. Jens has that Helen was specifically created to have a hypersexualized, feminine form felt was like seeing the sun peer through the clouds after decades of weird men writing all kinds of messed-up sex-bots. It’s treated with the appropriate level of disgust—both on Helen and Dr. Jens’s part. Helen’s manipulation also ends up being vital to the later twist, and her entire arc of deconstructing the lies that she was programmed with was handled with such tenderness. Beyond the robots, I think that thread of treating people who have been brought up with hateful ideologies and not immediately dismissing those with different opinions was one of the best aspects of Machine; Bear’s insistence that people—human, alien, or AI—are not inherently bad, only victims of harmful ideas, was so necessary.

Bear’s take on disability in a sci-fi context was also such a respectful and well-researched one! She listed off several sensitivity readers in the acknowledgements, and their work paid off—for someone who seems to be non-disabled, by all accounts, this might be one of the most caring representations of a disabled person and their struggles in sci-fi I’ve seen by a non-disabled author. Dr. Jens has a chronic pain disorder, and she has a special exo-suit that manages some of her pain, but not all of it—sci-fi tech still has limitations in the far, far future. She still aches and gets physically taxed from her daring missions. Granted, I’m not chronically ill, but it felt like Bear paid so much attention to how Dr. Jens’s symptoms would present and how her high-stakes profession would affect it. Additionally, there’s a lot of talk about how disability is handled in the future; there was lots of discussion of “rightminding,” a process that, among other things, mitigates the effects of some mental illnesses. It would’ve been so easy to just slap it on as a cure-all technology, but Bear’s approach was one that I rarely see in sci-fi. It’s not necessarily “disability isn’t cured,” but it’s handled on a case-by-case basis, there’s an understanding that different kinds of disabled people have different needs and opinions about how they want to live with their disabilities with the technology available. This rejection of the one-size-fits-all approach to disability was a breath of fresh air, and wasn’t afraid to get into the nuance of how disabled people live their lives.

Disability wasn’t the only issue that gets dealt with in a refreshing amount of nuance. Bear was not afraid to get into the weeds with this novel, and it made my reading experience so much better. Machine, more so than its predecessor, gets into how a utopia and utopian ideas can be twisted into something sinister. It all feels very Ursula K. LeGuin—the Synarche is without a doubt an ambiguous utopia like The Dispossessed. (First off, I liked that Bear interrogates the ethics of “rightminding” targeting potentially “dangerous ideologies,” and how that ends up being decidedly non-utopian.) I appreciated that Bear discusses how well-intentioned utopias can be co-opted into vehicles for hatred, but also how that revelation wracks the people who genuinely believed in this utopia—people like Dr. Jens. Her arc in having faith in her hospital and the Synarche was so human—her entire reality and faith in the organization she devoted her life to is messily upended. But the realization that she comes to—that you can take the good work you wanted to do and the faith in your fellow people outside of corrupt organizations and do your own work—was one that feels so vital. I also loved the thematic potential of the infectious meme—not unlike the spread of a hateful ideology—that is treated as an infection that has to be weaned out with attention and care. Bear’s depictions of that crushing realization and how Dr. Jens and her coworkers pick up the pieces was so heartfelt, and a very potent message in this day and age.

All in all, a spectacular companion to Ancestral Night that expanded Elizabeth Bear’s masterfully crafted space opera universe with pulse-pounding action and heart. 5 stars!

Machine is the second book in the White Space trilogy, a series of companion novels set in the same universe; it is also includes Ancestral Night (book 1) and Folded Sky (book 3). 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:

still going through my mom’s records from the ’80s. this remains peak.

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: 7/12/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: four years of Sunday Songs (!!), and the vibes are nothing short of baffling. Buckle up. And if you happen to get unexpectedly bopped on the head by falling fish, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/12/26

“The Earth Died Screaming” – Tom Waits

I know the expression “[xyz] could kill a Victorian child” is overused, but my shuffle recently made the transition from this song to “L to the OG,” and I feel like that could reasonably put a Victorian child into a coma. It almost put me into one.

I think I was destined to stumble upon more Tom Waits eventually. I guess he’s been having a bit of a minor moment, what with the recent needle drop in Wake Up Dead Man and his emergence from hibernation on Massive Attack’s biting anti-war track “Boots on the Ground” (which samples this song!). I’d also been familiar with him from his feature on Sparklehorse’s “Dog Door”; the words “gremlin,” “goblin,” and “chaos” have lost all of their meaning thanks to Tumblr, but if there’s anybody who actually sounds like a gremlin on that song, it’s Mark Linkous. And then here comes Tom Waits bellowing like an ogre. The whole experience of “Dog Door” is like witnessing some bog goblins performing a sacrificial ritual in an abandoned shed with some rusty nails and a fish skeleton. Great stuff. It’s peak, just trust me.

Bone Machine in particular vaguely fascinated me from afar—it always seemed to pop up on my Apple Music recommended albums. Of course, my brother ended up being the impetus for me finding this song. Is the fact that I’ve had “The Earth Died Screaming” on repeat on and off for a few weeks a cause for concern? Probably. But it’s such a captivating herald of the apocalypse. Wait’s signature growl is probably the only voice that could properly convey the bleakness of this vision of the end of the world. We’re talking Biblical levels of apocalypse here—the Devil’s shoveling coal, for one, but the last line of the last verse invokes the plague of locusts, so we’re already off to a great start. Waits’ rasping delivery of “Bring me some water/Put it in this skull” might set the atmosphere more than any of the others. Some of the lyrics are truly spine chilling—I don’t know why, but the invocation of army ants picking off the bones of whoever’s left after the initial onslaught of ungodly abominations gives me the willies. And the way that Waits’s lips seem to form around the words “it rained mackerel, it rained trout” cement this song’s feeling of being passed down as an omen of doom between haggard street preachers. The percussion, which marches on like a dirge, sounds like it’s being played on the dusty ribcage of a horse. I can almost imagine a Cab Calloway-like parade of skeletons marching along to this song. All of the instruments are sparse here, and the Lisa Germano-esque organ outro only adds to the feeling of foreboding. It all feels very Cormac McCarthy to me, and if not for the fact that I hated The Road, it would’ve been my book pairing—it’s a bleak tale, a world populated by dust, bones, and dirt roads that haven’t seen human feet in years.

Wait’s storytelling is what keeps this from going fully into The Road territory, but more notably, I think it’s the romance. It’s not a ballad by any stretch. But the fact that the rotted connective tissue of the chorus, howled by Waits, is “The earth died screaming/While I lay dreaming/Dreaming of you” sets the tone for the song—every post-apocalyptic trope is happening to Earth in an unrelenting barrage, but he’s still dreaming of that you. Amidst the horror, there’s fleeting bright moments—”I walk between the raindrops” for one, one of my favorite lines from the whole song—and maybe that’s the real human instinct of perseverance during the apocalypse, even while you’re getting pelted by locusts and fish.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Anthem – Noah Hawley – “And the great day of wrath has come/And here’s mud in your big red eye/The poker’s in the fire/And the locusts take the sky…”

“Peter the Dog” – mary in the junkyard

At long last…Role Model Hermit, everybody!! The album I’ve been anticipating for years has been out a little over a week now, and the shine hasn’t worn off. It’s such an excellent spread of the things I love best about mary in the junkyard. It’s a lovingly-sewn patchwork of remnants of their earlier sound and the more mature songwriters that they are now, full of off-kilter, Radiohead-esque chord progressions paired with whimsical lyricism evoking folklore and landscapes populated by weird little Jim Henson puppet creatures. Role Model Hermit is a world of vegetable gardens, reincarnated mice, hungry dogs, and men turning into trees. All of it showcases a kind of storytelling that’s more than comfortable veering into the fantastical while retaining the weepy, angry vulnerability that endeared them to me in the first place.

The one major drawback of Role Model Hermit is that the most memorable tracks were the singles. It’s kind of a rough move to release almost half of the album as singles before the release (six, if you count the fact that they frequently played “Thou Shalt Sprout” before the album came out), and although there wasn’t a bad song on the album, none of them live up to early standouts like “Crash Landing” or “New Muscles.” Even so, the album remained full of surprises—”Peter the Dog” was a standout on the first listen. This is the aforementioned hungry dog, a comfortable but hungry creature that eats all of the narrator’s fears and anxiety. It’s one of the more painfully vulnerable songs on the album—it candidly captures that feeling when you think you’re out of the woods when it comes to anxiety or any other kind of issue, and then the feelings start to resurface: “I don’t understand my tears/I’ve been doing so well/And the big black dog ate all of my fear/And I was starting to smoke.” I love the imagery of the dog (Peter, apparently), because to an extent, these feelings are like a domesticated animal: you’ve learned how to treat them and lived with them, but even the most rigorous training can make old habits resurface. But the comfort that comes with this dog is that you can always train it more, and you can calm it down just as easily: “And I’m made of strong stuff/But I’ve always got this pain in my head.” mary in the junkyard have never shied away from this kind of vulnerability, and it’s resulted in so much fantastic songwriting; but their earlier songs were more scattershot in the lyrics, embodying their old Instagram bio of “angry weepy chaos rock.” But “Peter the Dog”—and Role Model Hermit as a whole—feel like the result of them really honing in on their songwriting, and the end product has resulted in their most impactful songs to date.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Heaven’s Graveyard – Grace Curtis – “I don’t understand my tears/I’ve been doing so well/And the big black dog ate all of my fear/And I was starting to smoke…”

“Death is Not the End” – Chelsea Wolfe

SHE’S BACK!!

So there’s definitely an album on the way. There has to be, she’s already announced a tour! Chelsea Wolfe recently reemerged with two new singles, this track and “The Dark.” I liked “The Dark,” “Death is Not the End” was, without question, the stronger of the two; while the eerie, meandering goth-folk of “The Dark” is solid but listless, “Death is Not the End” feels like much more fortified vision of a song, coalescing into the best parts of what I like about Chelsea Wolfe. Her ethereal whispers and the pluckings of an acoustic guitar assemble themselves like a skeleton before the real skin and muscles—the ascending, doom-y guitar as foreboding and ragged as a stormy cliffside—shield it. Amidst the crushing instrumentals in the latter half, she muses in her true gloomily poetic fashion, about the nature of death and transience: “This life heaves a sigh/Relief amid night/To water I return, in sea-dress/Seal-skin locked away for a time.” I, for one, fully support Wolfe’s selkie arc—her visuals for this set of singles return to the well-trod ground of “Chelsea Wolfe looking like a modern-day goddess in various biomes,” but the video for “Death is Not the End” is perfectly suited to the lyrics, with Wolfe clad in frilly tulle amidst kelp and a stony beach with bony spires rising from the shore.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Soul Keepers – Devon Taylor – “Let it wash over/Unspoken/Like the mouth that eats the tail/I keep hoping death is like the ocean…”

“Cancer of the Skull” – Cameron Winter

The last time I talked about Cameron Winter, he had a much sunnier outlook on life. Heavy Metal really seems to run the gamut of emotion, because we’ve gone from embracing the bumpy road of love to the battle between having to work an unsatisfying job and desperately wanting to create. Granted, enough of the lyrics have enough quirkiness to them to suggest that Winter at least has something of a humorous outlook on things: “Cancer of the ’80s/I was beat with ukuleles” sounds abjectly goofy out of context. For me, that’s what prevents “Cancer of the Skull” from being purely pessimistic for me—like the swaying rhythm of the acoustic guitar, Winter documents the boat-on-the-sea pendulum swing between devoting yourself to work and devoting yourself to creativity. There’s a bevy of interesting instruments that work themselves into the fabric of the songs, from the warbling organ to the grasshopper boings of the barely-audible jaw harp, and they all serve to make this push-and-pull feel like Winter’s “pirate’s crazy-eyed quest,” adding a degree of sarcastic grandeur to something that most creatives have to grapple with once in their lives. Winter’s rich vocals, layered one on top of the others, make the thesis of “Oh, songs are a hundred ugly babies/That I can’t feed” into the kind of chorus you’d drunkenly sing around the fire—and oof, yeah, that’s such a fantastic distillation of having millions of ideas but neither the time nor the patience to attend to them.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Embassytown – China Miéville – “I came here to sleep in your infamous kitchen/You’re holding out a baby’s shoes/I can’t take ’em/I pray to a pirate’s maniac religion…”

“Voyager” – PJ Harvey

What is it about songs called “Voyager” that always end up gutting me one way or another? I think it’s just the inherent bittersweetness and cosmic smallness that comes with evoking Voyager I. Yowch. Granted, PJ Harvey’s version didn’t really destroy me until I looked closer at the lyrics, but boygenius? Yup. I’m still reeling from their “Voyager” three years later. Damn you, Phoebe.

But we’re not here to talk about that “Voyager.” PJ Harvey’s newest track, a companion to an upcoming stage show by musician and physicist Professor Brian Cox, is a synth-driven slow-burn meditating on the probe that was launched into space nearly half a century ago. Amidst methodical keyboards that evoke the inner workings of a rocket, Harvey details its ongoing journey through the heavens: “Dark nights, dark days/Frozen, silent/Bearing Earth-songs.” The lyrics are simple and quite sparse, but it fits the construction of the song, a glacial build from keyboards into a grand orchestral hum. But then…ow, there was no need to gut me with the reference to Carl Sagan. Or, at least, that’s how I interpreted this line: “Look back at us/As a speck of dust/Darkness our home/Bear it through love.” It’s awfully similar to this line from page 371 of Contact: “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.” …excuse me while I keel over into the fetal position for the next hour. FUCK.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Contact – Carl Sagan – “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”

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 (7/7/26) – Climate of Chaos

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I wanted to kick off Disability Pride Month with something positive, but unfortunately, I don’t think that it’ll be the case. Whoops. They can’t all be bangers. I was intrigued by the concept of Climate of Chaos, and excited by the premise of a disabled main character navigating a dystopian world. Unfortunately, Climate of Chaos was not the Hunger Games successor that it purported itself to be.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Climate of Chaos – Cassandra Newbould

Fox LaRosa lives in the climate-ravaged wilderness of what was once Seattle. While the rich get to live in luxurious, climate-proof domes made by the infamous Aegis Corp, people like Fox and her sister Rabbit live on the edge of death—made worse by the mounting medical debt that Fox has been carrying ever since she became disabled. To make matters worse, a strange new virus is creeping its way up north, and if it hits Fox and her commune, it could spell disaster. But when Rabbit is kidnapped on a routine heist for medical supplies, Fox must fight her way into the rotten heart of Aegis Corp in order to find her sister—and figure out what Aegis wants with her.

TW/CW: medical trauma, violence, pandemic/epidemic, ableism, loss of loved ones, police brutality, loss of loved ones

The other day, I was watching BookLeo’s retrospective on the YA dystopian craze of the late 2000’s-early 2010’s, and she mentioned that one the most common plot elements throughout the books is that the inciting incident is that the protagonist has to find their missing sibling. I never even considered that, but it’s everywhere. If anything, Climate of Chaos is proof that the trope is alive and kicking today. It’s a foolproof inciting incident. Pour one out for all of the missing brothers and sisters that get put through the wringer for the plot in YA dystopias.

As a whole, I was disappointed by Climate of Chaos, but I’d like to acknowledge the positives, because there were some great aspects of this novel. We’re at least a decade out from the huge wave of Hunger Games copycats, but the issue that a lot of people had with them was that their dystopian worlds tended to be removed from real forms of oppression and didn’t make sense. Climate of Chaos, however, grounds its dystopia in two very real-world issues: climate change and medical debt. Newbould did an excellent job of going into all manner of ways that climate change could negatively impact our world in the future, from the more obvious weather changes to the spread of new diseases, the latter of which becomes very relevant to the plot. The discussions around medical debt and the poor treatment of disabled people under our healthcare system were very timely, and it pointed out that conditions for many disabled people are as dystopian today as they are in this fictional, far-flung future. And while I had my issues with Fox as a character, it’s so wonderful to see a disabled girl kicking butt in a YA book like this. Her cane being able to extend out of her belt and fold back into itself was indisputably badass, as was the fact that the cane had an extendable blade at the end.

Aside from those points, Climate of Chaos was unfortunately weak. There was some serious work that needed to be done with the characters. I hate to say it, but I think the only reason that Fox stands out from other teen dystopian protagonists is the fact that she’s disabled. Her entire personality is that unnecessarily gritty, edgy persona that you get when you’re trying to make a character sound “hardened,” to the point that it was overexaggerated. Half of her dialogue sounded straight out of Zack Snyder’s DC movies. It got old quickly. Apart from that, most of the characters were hardly characterized beyond a few base traits, and some—even the main characters—were only distinguished by the fact that Fox is friends with them. Cely at least had a distinct personality, but Asher and Eamon, despite being some of the central characters, didn’t get much beyond “boys who are friends with Fox.” Towards the end, there was also a faint indication that Asher and Fox had some sort of romantic chemistry, which felt forced, but more importantly, completely unearned—their relationship is a complete plateau from the beginning to the end of the book, and there was nothing that convinced me that there was any sort of romance brewing between them. It was all just the absolute bare minimum of character work.

The worldbuilding was largely hit or miss. I think Newbould did a decent job of establishing how the world (particularly Seattle) got to where it is in Climate of Chaos, and the structure of the different rungs of society made sense. The themes of inequality between disabled people and poor people were the only things keeping Aegis Corp from falling into the “the government is bad, but we’re not going to tell you anything except for that it’s bad” trap, but it was pretty close. Without spoiling, I think the reveal about Aegis Corp and the Vi (yes, that’s what they call the virus 🫩 peak YA dystopian cornball terminology lives, folks) was the most nonsensical part of the plot; with the established plot about the Harvest House, I feel like that erased all of the rationale for why Aegis Corp used the Vi in the way they did. At a certain point, there’s things that don’t even make sense for a comically mustache-twirling fictional government to do, just because the stuff that they’re doing would be such an unnecessary and unjustifiable drain on their resources.

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue with Climate of Chaos was that I never once felt like Fox or any of the other main characters were truly in danger. Despite them undergoing the notoriously dangerous Storm Runner trials with a ridiculously slim survival rate, all of the main characters came out without a scratch. Seriously! The main characters had a laughable amount of plot armor, and after about the halfway point, I just gave up on caring about any of them—Fox, Asher, Eamon, Cely, Trew, and all of the other main characters are completely fine, even though they’ve been exposed to a deadly virus, been in danger of being killed by their bloodthirsty teammates, and were almost gunned down by their Storm Runner superiors. Eamon is inside a factory that nearly explodes, and he comes out unscathed…give me a break. It just reeked of Newbould liking them too much and refusing to let any of them even get the smallest scrape on their knees. I didn’t even care that Fox had been taken to the Harvest House, because I knew by then that she’d come out the other side completely fine—and guess what? SHE DID. Along with the worldbuilding, this is what made me lose faith that any of the characters were actually in danger in this supposedly dystopian world.

A related sidenote: I don’t have chronic pain, so take this with a grain of salt, but other than Fox having to use her cane in a few situations, wouldn’t she be in excruciating pain during something as taxing as the Storm Runner trials? It’d be exhausting even for a nondisabled person. Granted, I remember an instance of her sneaking painkillers, but I feel like even that wouldn’t erase the pain of having to fight a bunch of other teenagers to the death day-in and day-out.

All in all, a YA dystopia that had its heart in the right place, but failed to make its dystopian world fully believable. 2.5 stars.

Climate of Chaos is a standalone, but Cassandra Newbould is also the author of Things I’ll Never Say and the editor of the anthology Every Body Shines: Sixteen Stories about Living Fabulously Fat.

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 Books

♿️ The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Disability Pride Month (2026 Edition) ♿️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., July is Disability Pride Month! It seems like every year, representation—and all-around recognition—for disabled people only progresses by millimeters. Time and time again, it’s left on the back burner by so-called intersectional activists, continually ignored from unaccommodating public education to inaccessible infrastructure in the biggest cities and the smallest towns. It’s gotten bleaker still with the damaging rhetoric spread by R.F.K. Junior and by the Trump administration at large. And we’ve somehow let the r-word insidiously creep back into common use. I feel like it’s relevant that when I was in high school, I frequently heard people call their phones “autistic” when they were broken or not working—2019 wasn’t as long as ago as people would like to think. Dehumanizing disabled people has always been baked deep into the roots of our language and slang—and yet it’s so easy to just switch words around.

In short, the world hasn’t exactly gotten kinder to any of us in the disabled community. But recently my best friend sent me this hilarious (and wonderful) reel, and it reminded me of the endurance of our community:

Yes, this is totally goofy. But it’s true. Despite all of the rampant campaigns to dehumanize and outright eradicate disabled people in all aspects of life, we are still here. The disabled community is as diverse as our struggles, but we have weathered all of them. There are countless issues that we have to face, in the highest forms of government and even in the simple ways we interact with friends and strangers. But if there’s one thing that the disabled community has done, it is endure—and endurance is nothing without community. The strength of our community is what has allowed us to create a more accessible world, little by little, and it is the key for making the world a kinder and more accessible place to be.

Also, four years out from my installation of this post where I talked about the absolute dearth of SPD representation out there (see 2022 in the “previous lists” section below), I’ve finally read one more book with a main character with SPD. Halfway through 2026, and it was one of the best books I’ve read this year by a long shot. Thank you, Jamie Sumner. Representation matters. 🩵

NOTE: my memory (and the internet) is imperfect, so if I’ve misrepresented/mislabeled any of the specific rep in these books, don’t hesitate to let me know!

KEY FOR TERMS IN THIS POST:

  • MC: Main character
  • LI: Love interest
  • SC: Side character

For my previous lists, click below: 

Let’s begin, shall we?

♿️ THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH (2026 EDITION) ♿️

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC/HISTORICAL FICTION:

*the POV character in Pod is a dolphin, but I feel that the representation still counts.

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of the books on this list? What are your favorite books with disability rep? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

THIS JUST IN, ROLE MODEL HERMIT IS A BANGER

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 7/5/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: in honor of the 250th anniversary of our glorious, flawless United States of America, I’ve concocted a color scheme that pairs well with the sickly algal green of the Reflecting Pool. God bless America, or something. Worry not: there’s enough women, queers, and people of color to give half of the White House a stroke. D.E.I.!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/5/26

“Lost Boys” – Phoebe Bridgers

SHE’S BACK!! SHE’S BACK, THIS IS NOT A DRILL! LOST WEEKEND COMES OUT THIS AUGUST!!!

Returning to music—and the public eye—was always going to be a tall order for Phoebe Bridgers. In the absence of new music since 2022, her fame has unexpectedly skyrocketed. It’s so bizarre to think that when I got into her music in 2019, she was on par with artists like Soccer Mommy, Snail Mail, or Jay Som in terms of recognition, and now she’s selling out arena shows…whiplash, for sure. Opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour was likely the turning point. Either way, when she finally came back, there would be an inevitable torrent of naysayers and unwarranted speculation. I almost still can’t believe that she’s back.

Most of my thoughts about “Lost Boys” coalesced while I was listening to it on repeat while making a grilled cheese, which feels strangely fitting—here’s a song with themes of immaturity and not wanting to grow up, and there I stood with the ultimate kid’s menu dinner. (At least it wasn’t American cheese and white bread.) But the doubts kept swirling around in my head. Is the production too polished? Are the horns and tempo too much like “Kyoto?” Was Punisher the only trick up Phoebe Bridgers’s sleeve after all? Sure, I maintain that the production feels on the unnecessarily slick side (damn you, Jack Antonoff). And it does ring similarly to “Kyoto.” But “Lost Boys” feels like being invited into something new. It feels like the lulling into a false sense of security before the sound of Lost Weekend unfolds in earnest.

Yet even if it wasn’t, “Lost Boys” would be a worthy addition to Bridgers’s catalogue. The “Kyoto” comparison is apt because they have that same quality of feeling like a reckless sprint—both to escape something they should’ve confronted long ago. Imagery of fantasy and escapism melds with Bridgers’s usual structure of very modern vignettes—these lost boys are emblematic of the kind of escapism she longs for, but she’s equally damaged by being in the company of that amount of emotional stuntedness and immaturity. It’s a bittersweet concoction, made all the more so by the effortless shifts from whispery reflection to the raw-throated count-off before the final chorus. “Fun” isn’t the word I’d normally describe Phoebe Bridgers with, but I can’t help but feel a rush of excitement every time I listen to this song—there’s something ecstatic about it amidst the uncertainty. Maybe it’s the fact that both Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus quietly contributed backing vocals. Either way, “Lost Boys” is a strong start for Bridgers’s long-awaited return.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? – Temi Oh – “To another life/Where they make you cut your hair/Impatient with a rifle and your papers/Weightless, but not scared…”

“All My Loving” – Jim Noir

Jim Noir’s new album, The DLC Tapes, is now available exclusively on Patreon and Ko-Fi! If you’re financially able, I highly recommend this album alongside Programmes for Cools.

After all this time…not one but TWO Jim Noir albums this year! We truly have a bountiful harvest on our hands. Alongside Programmes for Cools (now available on all streaming platforms), Jim Noir has released The DLC Tapes, an album of 13 more songs previously released as part of the Jim Noir EP Club. (This song is technically a double-dip that I featured all the way back in 2022, but it was well before I even started writing these posts. If any song deserves it, it’s this one.) From the start of the Programmes announcement, I was holding out hope that “All My Loving” (originally from EP 7) would make the cut—it was one of the best tracks from his entire run of EPs, a delightful piece of catchy, ’60s-indebted jangle-pop. Granted, the changes from EP 7 to The DLC Tapes are minimal—mainly just the production—but it was exactly what I was hoping for. “All My Loving” was already a prime example of just how neatly Noir has carved his niche over the years—it’s proof that his craft has only gotten better as the years have gone by. The cleaner production amplifies the cheery, dreamy mood of the track—the harmonies, the starbursts of space-age synth, and the warm organ all get their flowers with this fresh coat of polish.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz – the lyrics are minimal, but the electronic, cozy feel of this track wouldn’t feel out of place in a tea shop run by robots.

“I’m a Fool to Want You” (Frank Sinatra cover) – Mitski

If there’s any artist who genuinely baffles me with the unexpectedness of their cover choices, it’s Mitski. Case in point: for the 10th anniversary of Puberty 2, Mitski released an extended edition that included two extra covers: one of One Direction, and one of Frank Sinatra. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that Mitski was throwing darts at a board with all of the most popular artists of the past 70 years and covering whatever they landed on. But both of these covers—yes, also the One Direction one—show off the many different facets of her artistry that frequently show up in her original music. Her cover of “Fireproof” has notes of her more straightforward rock days, especially from Bury Me at Makeout Creek.

“I’m a Fool to Want You” is almost the exact opposite. Accompanied only by grainy, droning synths, she turned Sinatra’s swell of big band strings into some of her most desolate-sounding music. The comparison that immediately came to mind was This Mortal Coil’s cover of Syd Barrett’s “Late Night”; both are incredibly sparse in their instrumentation, letting both of their vocalists unnervingly tremble to their hearts’ contents, and shining a spotlight on the more abjectly dreary parts of the lyrics. The latter part is more applicable to “Late Night,” but Mitski’s interpretation “I’m a Fool to Want You” turns a lovelorn ballad into something weighed down with deep-seated shame. Without the backing of an orchestra and a chorus of voices, “I’m a Fool to Want You” becomes almost unbearably ominous and lonely…in typical Mitski fashion.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Salvation Gambit – Emily Skrutskie – there’s a very “dark, ominous, abandoned spaceship” atmosphere that Mtiski creates with those droning synths.

“Sea Life Sandwich Boy” – Horsegirl

On the subject of songs that take me back to high school…

“Sea Life Sandwich Boy” occupies a brief but distinct place in my memory: sometime in the winter of 2021, during my senior year of high school—the start of my eventual Horsegirl awakening. This song will always be arm-in-arm with The Beatles’ “Oh! Darling”—I was listening to both of them on repeat at the time. It’s very indicative of Horsegirl’s early days—a very ’90s sound, a random, jokey title unrelated to the song, and vocals buried in grainy effects. No band starts out in their prime, but I’d say that Horsegirl started out damn near close—”Sea Life Sandwich Boy” could have easily been a standout on Versions of Modern Performance. Swimming in airy harmonies and precise riffs that make each note flicker like stars cut out of paper, “Sea Life Sandwich Boy” was an ambitious single for the band, but one that pays off to this day.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Amelia, If Only – Becky Albertalli – this is a very high school roadtrip playlist kind of song—exactly what this novel is.

“While I’ll Keep Writing Songs for You” (feat. St. Vincent) – Mon Laferte

Sure, this is Mon Laferte’s song, but it seems like a sign that St. Vincent is almost done ripping holes her tights and setting things on fire. Laferte and St. Vincent collaborated on “Tiempos Violentos” (“Violent Times“) off of Todos Nacen Gritando, her Spanish translation of All Born Screaming; There, Laferte delivers a visceral scream that rivals Annie Clark’s, but “While I’ll Keep Writing Songs For You” is worlds away from the battered rage of Todos Nacen Gritando. Instead, Laferte and Clark’s voices form harmonies that are nothing short of soul-warming—they’re seriously such a match made in heaven. “While I’ll Keep Writing Songs For You” is a somber, sleepless ballad about trying to cling to a static, depressed lover who barely seems to respond to her affection. Clark and Laferte’s wordless preludes almost say more than the lyrics, purely plaintive as though they’re trying to get the last word out in the emptiness of space. Laferte’s music video feels laser-attuned to the feel of the song—her she is, all dolled up and surrounded by flowers in her shopping cart, but the world beyond her borders on colorless.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Armfield – “Will we ever be ok?/You left hair in the shower again/Why don’t we laugh instead/There is no need/To argue over stupid things/You are still depressed/While I’ll keep writing songs for you…”

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!