The Bookish Mutant

Book Review Tuesday (3/3/26) – Red Star Rebels

Posted on March 3, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

BEFORE I BEGIN: as this is a bookish space, I feel that it’s essential to bring this to your attention. Here in the States, H.R. 7661 (misleadingly named the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act”) presents a grave danger to libraries and our freedom to read as Americans. This legislation, as many similar ones are, is presented under the guise of “protecting children” from sexually explicit material, but we all know what it targets in reality: fiction and nonfiction about queer people, people of color, and other marginalized groups. EveryLibrary has both a petition to oppose H.R. 7661 and instructions to call your representatives. Excluding stories of marginalized people doesn’t protect anybody. Protect our freedom to read!

It’s 2019. I’m about to finish my first year of high school, and I’m excited to buy the new Amie Kaufman book.

It’s 2026. I’m about to finish my last year of college, and I’m excited to buy the new Amie Kaufman book.

Needless to say, longtime followers of this blog (and longtime friends of mine in general) know how pivotal of a role Amie Kaufman has played in my life. Her sci-fi and fantasy novels have been a positive constant for seven years and counting, especially the Aurora Cycle. I was over the moon to find out that she was returning to science fiction after a long stint focusing on fantasy. And though it wasn’t as emotionally potent as some of her other novels, Red Star Rebels was an action-packed and romantic blast all the way through!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Red Star Rebels – Amie Kaufman

Hunter Graves has Mars in the palm of his hand. As the grandson of the man who settled Mars, he’s got it made. If only the rest of his family would actually pay him any mind. But when he’s trapped on the U.N. base after a mysterious attack, he’ll have to use more than his name to get out alive.

Cleo just wanted to stow away on this U.N. base to get the Earth gangs off her back and make a quick buck. Having to stow away with Hunter Graves when the base goes on lockdown was not part of the plan. But they’ll have to work together for eight hours before a bomb detonates, killing everybody on the base. And neither of them counted on falling for each other…

TW/CW: violence, loss of loved ones (past), fire

I’m a huge fan of Zoë Van Dijk’s artwork and I love her cover art for the U.S. edition of Red Star Rebels, but…I can’t unsee the fact that Cleo is doing the Dreamworks face. It haunts me. The thing is, it’s 100% in character for her, which almost haunts me even more.

The main draw for Red Star Rebels is that it’s a pulse-pounding action thriller in space; Kaufman has compared it to Die Hard and Home Alone in equal measure, in reference to both the atmosphere and the amount of interstellar hijinks. All of the events of Red Star Rebels happen in the span of 8 hours (the time it’ll take for the U.N. base to detonate), and it really does feel like it’s all crammed into such a short amount of time. Be prepared to be gripping the edge of your seat, because this novel moves fast—and this is the exact type of novel that needs to go at breakneck speed. The pacing is impeccable. The only drawback is that Red Star Rebels sacrificed some of the emotional potency that I come to expect with your typical Amie Kaufman novel. There’s a reason that her books are normally so thick—she doesn’t hesitate to get in the weeds with character development and poignant arcs. Though Hunter and Cleo’s relationship was charming as ever, some of the emotional aspects of this novel were quite rushed in comparison to her other novels, and I think that can exactly be chalked up to the uncharacteristically short page count—288 pages, in comparison to her often 400+ page whoppers. While the pacing worked for the plot, it didn’t work all the way for the characters—give it at least 50 more, and I think this would’ve been near perfect. That being said, even a weaker Amie Kaufman book is guaranteed to be a cut above the rest, so I’m not complaining.

Every time there’s a chance for Amie Kaufman to write a relationship dynamic where one’s a scrappy criminal and the other is a spoiled, rich brat (both of whom secretly have a heart of gold), by God, she’ll take it (see also: Selly and Lysander from Isles of the Gods, Lilac and Tarver from These Broken Stars, Nik and Hanna from Gemina, etc.). And do I eat it up every time? Absolutely. At least she switches the genders up. It’s a blatant pattern at this point, but she writes it so compellingly that I’m not even that mad. Would I like for her to mix it up a little? Sure, but this is Amie Kaufman we’re talking about—no matter what kind of relationships she’s writing, they’re always so charming and heartstring-tugging, so I’m not here to complain. The setup for Cleo and Hunter’s relationship was a perfect storm, but Kaufman did such an excellent job of making the development of their relationship realistic—it’s a survival situation spaced over eight hours, but never at any point did their romance feel too rushed. They were trapped together with very little interaction from the outside world (other than the antagonists), and there was plenty of time for their chemistry to develop. All in all, it’s another slam dunk from Kaufman—Cleo and Hunter were so sassy, and yes, made for each other. Plus, I’ve loved Kaufman’s casual queer inclusion, especially in terms of bisexuality. Beyond that, it’s so, so important to show that straight-passing relationships are just as valid and still queer, so I’m very grateful to Red Star Rebels for showcasing this!

Red Star Rebels should be a masterclass in why you shouldn’t underestimate the craft that goes into good YA novels. The best part about Amie Kaufman’s books is that sure, they look like cheesy YA (and in some ways, they are, but tastefully so) on the surface, but 9 times out of 10, they’re Trojan horses for top-notch, exhaustively researched worldbuilding. Aside from the Illuminae Files, Red Star Rebels might honestly be some of the hardest science fiction that she’s ever written. There was a ton of thought put into the physics and logistics of establishing colonies on Mars, and every aspect was pored over in exceptional detail, from the nutrients you’d need to survive on Mars to how the gravity affects the red planet’s permanent residents. Not only that, Kaufman goes headfirst into discussing the geopolitics of international Mars settlements. All of this fed into some great commentary on corporate space exploration and how corporations have unjustly been able to buy their way into influencing world politics. Kaufman’s vision of 2067 is basically what would happen if Elon Musk—[ahem] Graves had his way with things, and the commentary was an excellent way to scaffold the worldbuilding.

Back to Cleo and Hunter—as well as the worldbuilding—what I really appreciate about Kaufman’s class-divided relationship dynamics is that the less privileged person in the couple doesn’t sacrifice their values. There’s some potent class commentary in Red Star Rebels, and I love Hunter’s arc in seeing that their colonialism has consequences, and that the exceptionalism of his family came at a bloody cost. There’s also some sharp commentary on how poor people have to circumvent the law in order to make a living and are punished for it, but rich people use the same methods and get away scot-free—for instance, Cleo and Hunter ending up on the U.N. base in the exact same way, but Cleo being the only one who would be theoretically imprisoned for it. There’s a fine line in these dynamics where the poorer person in the couple ends up excusing the power imbalance and the narrative ignoring any issues of class disparity and the circumstances that made them so, but Kaufman is always right on the money (no pun intended) with imbuing her relationships with a strong sense of justice and class commentary.

All in all, another win for Amie Kaufman, full of outer space hijinks, crafty characters, and romance. 4 stars!

Red Star Rebels is a standalone, but Amie Kaufman is the author of several other books for children and teens, including the Isles of the Gods duology (The Isles of the Gods and The Heart of the World), The Illuminae Files (with Jay Kristoff; Illuminae, Gemina, and Obsidio), The Aurora Cycle (with Jay Kristoff; Aurora Rising, Aurora Burning, and Aurora’s End), The Other Side of the Sky duology (with Meagan Spooner; The Other Side of the Sky and Beyond the End of the World), and many more. Her next book, co-authored with Meagan Spooner, is One Knight Stand, the sequel to Lady’s Knight, which is slated for release on June 4th, 2026.

Today’s song:

gonna be honest…I wasn’t a huge fan of The Mountain, but this song was fantastic, so it’s not a complete loss.

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

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 3/1/26

Posted on March 1, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: lots of watery songs this week—you’re either in a swimming pool or standing mysteriously in the pouring rain, so pick your poison.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/1/26

“Nobody New” – The Marías

Apparently, 2025 was an exceptionally fruitful year for women who make music that sounds like you’re underwater (see also: Cate Le Bon). There’s a broader spectrum of both vibes and aesthetic here without a doubt, but in separate ways, María Zardoya and Le Bon have made music that sounds like dunking your head into crystal-clear water and watching tiny fish dart past your face. Of course, Cate Le Bon’s completely on another planet, but although The Marías don’t snag me nearly as much as she does (and nobody makes aquarium gravel music like Cate Le Bon), they’ve clearly perfected their own art of making music that sounds like light reflecting off the bottom of a swimming pool.

Here’s another contender for my list of songs with specific lyric pronunciations that scratch a very specific itch in my brain; pretty much everything that comes out of Zardoya’s mouth is downright ethereal, but the way she sings “nadie como tú” in the chorus feels like a massage on the tired folds of my brain. Gently wistful and listless, “Nobody New” has the heavy-eyed feeling of the first thoughts that tumble through your head after you drag yourself out of a dream you can’t quite remember. It’s sleepy, but in a way that instantly draws you in—in my limited experience, the best Marías songs feel like slipping into the sea, but fully embracing the swell of the waves as they crest over your head. It’s simultaneously weightless, like hair billowing underwater, but sagging with the weight of yearning.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Seep – Chana Porter – “Baby, I promise/There’s nobody new/I’m being honest/There’s no one like you…”

“Raymond Chandler Evening” – Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians

I often lament that perfect songs are too short. I’m the last person I’d expect to say that about a Robyn Hitchcock song that barely scrapes past the two minute mark is just the right length. “Raymond Chandler Evening” only repeats its chorus once, and it’s generous to even call it a chorus when there’s only just verses apart from it. But some songs were meant to be a brief but potent punch, and “Raymond Chandler Evening” is one of them. It’s a series of polaroids strung together from the atmosphere of a noir detective novel—fitting, since the song itself is a tribute to detective fiction author Raymond Chandler. Every darkly humorous turn of phrase creates a vivid image that can only seen in black and white, from the abandoned body to the rain-soaked pavements. The only burst comes from Hitchcock’s description of the “yellow leaves [that] are falling/in a spiral from the sky.” It smells like rain. But interspersed within that noir backdrop is some of Hitchcock’s most wry lines: “I’m standing in my pocket/And I’m slowly turning gray” and “There’s a body on the railings/That I can’t identify/And I’d like to reassure you/But I’m not that kind of guy.” Hitchcock knows exactly how to package so much vitality and wit into such a short amount of time—as usual, Hitchcock doesn’t get the flowers that he deserves by and large. But the song was included in the comic The Crow, and a Cyberpunk 2077 side quest also paid homage to it in title, so it’s made more than a few ripples in pop culture—and rightfully so.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Even Though I Knew the End – C.L. Polk – “It’s a Raymond Chandler evening/And the pavements are all wet/And I’m lurking in the shadows/’Cause it hasn’t happened yet…”

“Queen of the Bees” – Jack White

I wish that there was a real, tangible reason for Jack White to get on my nerves. Scratch that—maybe it’s good that it’s just his personality that’s grating. It could be way worse. I’ve just never recovered from how much of a pretentious prick he came off as in It Might Get Loud. But he’s recently created his own publishing house and absolutely shredded with IDLES…the man makes it harder and harder to hate him every day.

After No Name proved to be rather samey (I saw a promotional poster last year that said “the best rock record of 2024 has no name“…lmao), it was official that I was just kind of sick of Jack White. After the adventurous two-for-one deal that was Fear of the Dawn and Entering Heaven Alive, White’s sonic range started becoming the same song over and over. So I let him fade into the background…and somehow forgot about this gem from Entering Heaven Alive. How could I have possibly forgotten about this song? “Queen of the Bees” is one of my favorites of his. He’s putting on every ounce of bluesy airs, but this time, but it doesn’t feel as posturing as some of his other stabs at the genre. So much of his solo work is very bluesy, but there’s a point where he almost becomes a caricature of himself (we once again circle back to It Might Get Loud). But “Queen of the Bees” feels like an honest embodiment of the genre. It’s a slick, charming strut where every strike of the mallet against the xylophone feels like a Cab Calloway-style cartoon feeling a visual chill up its spine. White’s rasping croon, though indebted to past rockers, comes straight from the soul, surpassing mere tribute. Yes, almost everything about the man is a meticulously curated performance, but I’ll give him this: he never half-asses anything. Everything you get from him is a labor he puts every ounce of his passion into.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li – “I’ll butter your toast/While you’re taking it easy/My tea needs honey/’Cause it’s not so good/And who cares if I’m misunderstood/’Cause I love you…”

“Alien” – Beach House

NOTE: definitely proceed with caution before watching the music video if you have epilepsy or any kind of photosensitivity issues.

Sometimes there’s no use in giving a big preamble about how I found this song. The other day, I just thought to myself, “isn’t there a Beach House song called ‘Alien?’ Wonder what that’s like,” and here we are. I’m just glad that it’s good—but then again, I’ve never met a Beach House song that I didn’t like. Them naming a song “Alien” is almost redundant, because all of their songs that I know have an equal degree of spaciness, and this track is no different. But it’s pure shoegaze indulgence; the distortion roars like the engine of a rocket careering through space, while Victoria Legrand’s vocals are whispers clinging to the soaring jet trail hurtling through the stratosphere. The lyrics verge on being surreal, but the castoff “helpless and glimmering” feels exactly how it is to be carried away on the comet’s tail of this song.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ocean’s Godori – Elaine U. Cho – this track would fit in with the shining, sci-fi world of this novel: glistening, but with traces of rust and grime around the edges.

“There She Goes” – The La’s

“There She Goes” has to be one of the more ironic stories in rock music history. It’s considered by legions of musicians, music critics, and music directors for every rom-com under the sun to be a perfect song. It heralded a renewed appreciation of the ’60s styles of The Beatles and The Kinks, but is often credited with being one of the songs that jumpstarted Britpop in the early ’90s. Yet by all accounts, its architect, Lee Mavers, hated it. Even when you brush past the inevitable “this song is popular and mentions veins once, it’s gotta be about drugs” (it’s been confirmed by multiple band members that it isn’t about heroin) rumors, there’s so much mythos swirling around this song; most of them are about frontman Lee Mavers, who hates the band’s one and only album. The characterizations span from troubled perfectionist at best to irascible and impossible to work with at worst, cycling through dozens of producers and band members just to achieve the unreachable, perfect sound in his head. It has to be a tragedy to never have that satisfaction be reached, and to have your legacy be the runoff from those fruitless sessions. And yet…how the hell could “There She Goes” be considered a failure? This ought to be the guidebook for a pop song—catchy, charming without being cloying, and guaranteed to make you nostalgic. This song is a must if you want to make your bus ride into a rom-com montage. It’s jangle pop royalty, and rightfully so—nobody jangles like The La’s, and not many have jangled quite so well since.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Isles of the Gods – Amie Kaufman – “There she goes/There she goes again/She calls my name, pulls my train/No one else could heal my pain…”

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!

Monthly Wrap-Ups

January/February 2026 Wrap-Up 🌨️

Posted on February 28, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Saturday, bibliophiles!

We’ve all felt it, right? Like the past two months have simultaneously crawled by excruciatingly slow and then sped up, and then the cycle repeats itself? Anyways, I’m in denial that tomorrow is the first day of March, but in the meantime, I’ve got some books to recap.

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Before I go on: my heart breaks for the trans community, and especially all of the trans folks in Kansas. I’d like to direct your attention to somewhere to donate to/a potential resource if you need to get out of a dangerous state—the Trans Continental Pipeline, an organization based here in Colorado that helps relocate queer and trans people from unsafe environments. Donate if you can! Sending all of my love to my trans siblings, today and every day. You are loved.

Alright, so here goes nothing with this recap of the first two months—

Wait, first two months? Insert that one Tintin meme (“What a year!” “Captain, it’s only February…”) here.

But if there’s anything that those two humble months have taught me, it’s the value of staying busy during difficult times. The government committing war crimes not even a week into 2026 feels about as American as apple pie and baseball at this point. I can’t remember a time since the age of 12 where it hasn’t been at least partially a scary time to be alive, but January and February both exemplified that, what with the horrors of ICE in Minneapolis (and elsewhere in the States) and the formal declaration that our government is a rat’s nest of the richest and most depraved pedophiles (what else is new?) imaginable. I’m rarely grateful to be this busy. What with the honors thesis and everything crammed into my final semester of undergrad, I’ve had so much to keep me busy, and this period of work couldn’t have come at a better possible time for me. I get frequent flashes of guilt that I should be doing more: the world is burning, and I’m just chiseling away at this thesis in a coffee shop. But this is my education we’re talking about, and I’m trying to focus on not falling into stagnation creatively and keep my mind limber, which isn’t nothing. And I did knit the Melt the ICE hat—I spent about 75% of these past two months learning how to make a hat in preparation for this, and I’m glad I’ve got this finished project to show for it.

It’s difficult for me to separate politics from the past two months. But I’ve still been going at a number of projects. There’s all the reading, which has also kept me afloat both intellectually and emotionally. I’m taking a class on People of Color and Social Movements, and I’ve already gotten several great books out of that. Ever since picking up knitting, I’ve discovered that I’ve accumulated and awful lot of hobbies. But what better time to have a ton of hobbies? So I’ve been knitting my way through the horrors. I’ve been chipping away at some Cate Le Bon and Robyn Hitchcock on guitar…to varying degrees of success. I’ve been sketching out sci-fi soldiers and spaceships and ordinary people to better visualize my thesis and my novel. And speaking of said novel…ANOTHER DRAFT DONE, BABY! 108,000 WORDS! The key for me here, above all, is to not become stagnant—that’s when it’s easiest for both my negative anxiety thoughts and excess rumination on the bad news to take hold. At this point, Instagram has made it so that sticking my head in the sand isn’t an option, but I sure can limit my intake of negative news. So don’t underestimate the value of putting the phone down, hanging out with friends, and your craft of choice—and, obviously. reading.

Anyways, here’s my Melt the ICE hat:

BONUS: I meant to slip this in as a bonus after one of my Sunday Songs posts, but there’s one, singular thing that has made me feel patriotic as of late, and it was the Benito Bowl. Have I ever really cared about his music? Nope, but I respected his politics. I did not expect to be crying while watching the Halftime Show the morning after the Super Bowl. I full-on saluted my phone with tears in my eyes when he shouted out Colombia. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

JANUARY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books in January! Though there were some misses here and there, I had an absolute slam dunk of a month, with two 4.5 star reads and one 5 star read. If that’s not a good start to my reading year, then I don’t know what is!

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Broposal – Sonora Reyes (⭐️⭐️)
Son of the Morning – Akwaeke Emezi (⭐️⭐️)

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance Trilogy, #1) – N.K. Jemisin (⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
The Will of the Many – James Islington (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
If We Were a Movie – Zakiya N. Jamal (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
A Swift and Sudden Exit – Nico Vicenty (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope – edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older (anthology) (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
Pod – Laline Paull (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)

4 – 4.75 stars:

Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance – Nick Estes (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Absolute Martian Manhunter, vol. 1: Martian Vision – Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25)
Ancestral Night (White Space, #1) – Elizabeth Bear (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Railsea – China Miéville (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)

5 stars:

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza – Gloria Anzaldúa (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza – 5 stars

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

FEBRUARY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 12 books in February! I mixed it up with new-to-me and familiar authors, and although I had my first book in the 1-star range this month, there were tons of fantastic books that I discovered too. I thought I’d get lower than this because I ended up reading several VERY thick books in a row, but I’m happy with this number. And as it’s Black History Month, I focused on Black authors.

1 – 1.75 stars:

Every Variable of Us – Charles A. Bush (⭐️.75)

2 – 2.75 stars:

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours – Helen Oyeyemi (⭐️⭐️)
This Great Hemisphere – Mateo Askaripour (⭐️⭐️.5)

3 – 3.75 stars:

Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America – Daryl Maeda (for school) (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
Until the Clock Strikes Midnight – Alechia Dow (⭐️⭐️⭐️.5)
She Who Knows (She Who Knows, #1) – Nnedi Okorafor (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
The Rosewater Insurrection (The Wormwood Trilogy, #2) – Tade Thompson (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)
This Town Is on Fire – Pamela N. Harris (⭐️⭐️⭐️.75)

4 – 4.75 stars:

Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines – Joy Buolamwani (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
The Sovereign (Magic of the Lost, #3) – C.L. Clark (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Salvation: Black People and Love (Love Song to the Nation, #2) – bell hooks (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: The King Must Die – 4 stars

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Black History Month (2026 Edition)

Today’s song :

NEW MITSKI, HOW ARE WE FEELING

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

Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (2/24/26) – Every Variable of Us

Posted on February 24, 2026February 24, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve read a lot of great books this month, but a lot of the ones I’ve read recently are sequels to books that I haven’t reviewed, so it feels weird to review a book 2 or 3 when I haven’t even review book 1. Hence why there have been more negative reviews this month. However, I do feel like I have to get my feelings about Every Variable of Us off my chest, because it promised something so positive, but crashed in burned in so many ways. It was a sore disappointment for sure.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Every Variable of Us – Charles A. Bush

Alexis Duncan loves basketball—and she’s counting on it to get her the scholarship she needs to escape her impoverished neighborhood and turbulent home life. But when she’s injured in a shooting and can no longer play basketball, her dreams are crushed. With no other option, she turns to Aamani, the new student in her school. Aamani encourages Alexis to join their school’s STEM team to get the scholarship she needs. Alexis is skeptical—she knows nothing about the sport, and she’s reluctant to fit in with the nerdier crowd. But as her skills—and her confusing crush on Aamani—develop, Alexis realizes that there may be more to her than meets the eye.

TW/CW: racism, gun violence, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, ableism (internalized/external), drug abuse/addiction themes, mentions of child abuse

I’m a little ashamed to be giving this novel such a negative review, but I firmly believe that negative reviews have their place. This novel was clearly a labor of love for Bush, being a debut novel about a queer, Black, and disabled girl, a story that’s exceedingly difficult to get out there in this climate. There’s probably some kids out there who think that this is just the book for them. Without a doubt, Every Variable of Us is an important book to have out there. But I think there’s a lot of valid criticism to be had for this novel, and it’s important to note that a book being diverse doesn’t absolve flaws in its writing…of which this novel had many.

In theory, I think Alexis is a great character to have for a YA audience; there’s this expectation in the genre that even your characters can’t be flawed in terms of their worldview, because that might be “problematic.” It’s good for teens to see a character that starts off narrow-minded and comes out the other side more tolerant or understanding. I tried to roll with Alexis’s inner monologue with that in mind. There’s a lot that you have to put up with—in the beginning of the book, Alexis is…practically everything-phobic: Islamophobic, racist towards other minorities, fatphobic, homophobic, and ableist. There’s a clear setup for her to learn from her mistakes and be more understanding of other people’s cultures, and in turn, accept her own status as a disabled, bisexual person. However, there doesn’t end up being much development on her part, when both the novel and the marketing want us to believe that she undergoes this dramatic arc and becomes a whole new person. Alexis becomes more tolerant towards queerness and Aamani’s Indian heritage and traditions, but save for that (and her success in becoming an asset to the STEM team and getting a scholarship), her arc is practically a straight line. Her lack of self-reflection wouldn’t have been a problem if Bush wanted the reader so badly to think that she’d magically changed into a better person, when in reality, she was in a very similar place to where she was at the beginning of the novel. I’m all for flawed characters, but don’t tell me that a character’s had this monumental shift in her worldview when she really hasn’t.

Which brings me to the complicated issue of the diversity of this book. I really appreciate that Bush put a lot of effort into making Every Variable of Us have a diverse cast. However, a lot of the diverse characters ended up feeling like props to reinforce lessons for Alexis about being tolerant about other marginalized people. To be fair, Aamani had more development than the rest, but there were moments when she was clearly only there to teach Alexis about Indian people and Hindu traditions, as well as queerness. It was more blatantly evident in characters like Matthew; I appreciated the note at the beginning where Bush acknowledged that he’s not autistic and wanted to represent autism as respectfully as possible. I can’t speak to the autism rep specifically, but as a neurodivergent person, I found Matthew to be decently represented. That being said, it very much felt like he was there just so that he could challenge Alexis’s ableist worldview. At a certain point, I could see the checklist in Bush’s head: “oh, wait! Maybe we can add an Asian character here, jot that down!” Diversity can only be successful when its intent is to provide representation of minorities, but also minorities as people, not teaching moments for the main character; otherwise, it becomes disingenuous. Every Variable of Us unfortunately fell straight into this trap.

I’ve talked about this with several YA books, but there’s a very vocal camp in the YA world that’s staunchly against pop culture references in the story. I’ve never really understood the argument—why not have your characters engage with media that current teenagers like and/or that you liked as a teenager? Why not have something that a teenager can relate to or be introduced to because of this book? However, there is very much a wrong way to do it, and that’s to cram every possible reference into the narrative for no reason. Dear Wendy is another example where that approach nosedived (too many references, not enough actual story), but it pains me to say that Every Variable of Us is also a masterclass on how not to write pop culture references into the narrative. Every other sentence had a reference. Even when I was Alexis’s age, and deeply, deeply nerdy (especially about some of the same things that Aamani is passionate about, namely Marvel comics), my inner and outer monologue didn’t contain an Avengers reference every 10 seconds. It got to such a ridiculous point—nobody, not even nerdy people, talks like that at all. As a result, almost all of the characters ceased to become real to me. People just do not speak like that. It’s like Bush was trying to relate to every possible teenager by thinking of every possible thing that a teenager could like, and then translating it into dialogue, making it exceedingly hammy.

That issue of trying to relate to every possible teenager felt like the core of my issues with Every Variable of Us. It’s an issue that I often see in a lot of debut novels: authors want to cram every possible thing that they’re passionate about into a single novel; at best, it’s a labor of love, and at worst, it’s quite bloated. This novel suffered from this without a doubt. He just tried to tackle far too many issues, and as a result, the analysis of them was often surface-level. Bush talks about gang violence, abuse, having a parent with an addiction, homelessness, suddenly developing a disability, religious bigotry, and queerness all in one novel. While it’s admirable to write about this much (and there are of course people who live in these circumstances), Bush clearly didn’t have the page time to do justice to all of them without only giving an underdeveloped take on all but maybe…two or three of these issues. I do appreciate the handful of moments where the exploration of these topics actually did land; the moment at the end with Alexis’s mother was one of the only parts of the book that was emotionally impactful to me. But for the most part, this was just way too much for a single debut novel to be doing. In an attempt to try and address every issue that he seems to be outspoken about, Bush ends up hardly addressing them at all.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that you can’t please everybody with a single novel, whether it’s the audience you’re appealing to or the groups that you’re trying to represent. Charles A. Bush just seemed too concerned with trying to make every possible reader in every parallel universe happy, which stretched the narrative thin. I get that there’s an insurmountable amount of pressure with a debut novel, but you do not need to please everybody! It’s okay! Breathe!

All in all, a debut novel that tried too hard to do too much, and ended up spiraling into a mess as a result. 1.75 stars.

Every Variable of Us is a standalone, and Charles A. Bush’s debut novel.

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/22/26

Posted on February 22, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: even though I mention both Water Moon and Underwater Moonlight in this post, they’re somehow not paired together…sorry. Plus, songs about grief, love, and illegally keeping wild animals in your apartment.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/22/26

“The Man Who Stole a Leopard” – Duran Duran

I didn’t expect to be putting such critical Madeline Todd lore here on the blog, but it was recently dredged up from the annals of my mind after not thinking about it for, at minimum, a decade. So here you are.

I’ve been something of a Durannie from a young age. Second-generation Durannie on my mother’s side, if you will. My mom was at the critical point of fandom for Duran Duran, being a tween (and then a teen) in their heyday, and from an early age, she passed down that love to me. I have lots of fond memories of watching their music videos from a DVD on our old TV, along with listening to their CDs while we played with Barbies, some of which my mom had passed down to me as well. That brings us to All You Need Is Now, which came out when I was in elementary school; a lot of the tracks have heaps of nostalgia attached to them, including “The Man Who Stole a Leopard,” which I loved at the time. Fast forward a few years, and I now had my own iPod nano that I could listen to music with at night. “The Man Who Stole a Leopard” made its way onto the first playlist that my dad lovingly made. But at night, this song transformed into something that scared the shit out of me. Specifically, the violin sample beginning at 5:52. “Scared the shit out of me” is an adequate description, but what might be more accurate is that it gave me the absolute willies. My heebies were jeebied, dude. Something about the mild distortion of the violins, under cover of darkness, sounded so fundamentally wrong to my 10-year-old mind, huddled under blankets. Thankfully, I got my dad to remove the song from the playlist, and the nightmare ended.

Naturally, this was a very pleasant thing to remember when I woke up at 4 am a few weeks back. But when I revisited “The Man Who Stole a Leopard,” I found that my memory had completely distorted my perception of that violin sample that freaked me out all those years ago. Admittedly, I get a kind of knee-jerk sense of dread in the lead up to it, but I was pleasantly surprised that it sound completely innocuous to me—a little distorted and reverby, but just a handful of fuzzy chords to give a flourish to the outro. I’m now hovering where I was in the pre-iPod era, when I was allured by this song. Despite what the fabricated (yes, FABRICATED, I’ve been living a lie since 2011) news broadcast might lead you to believe, this tale of the man who stole a leopard and kept it in his apartment is entirely fictional. (Granted, some of the wording in the broadcast clues me in to the fictionality of it now, but it’s still fairly convincing, especially considering that they got the real newscaster Nina Hossain to record it.) What stands out to me about this track, along with most of the tracks I fondly remember from All You Need Is Now, is that there’s hardly a sense of Duran Duran trying to put their youthful, ’80s glory days in amber and imitate it. Sure, there’s a very “Hungry Like the Wolf” sensibility to the subject matter, but its prolonged runtime (6:15) and more eery atmosphere better fits their earliest albums, before they became perennial pop icons of the ’80s. Like a prowling cat, it’s a drawn-out, seductive crawl through a tale of toxic seduction and love that isolates you from all else. But from all of these memories, there’s one crucial lesson I have to take from this: things tend to sound a lot more sinister when you’re in the dark. Shed some light on it, and this track—like so many other things—will lose the fangs you thought they had. What a relief it is to not be 10 anymore. I love this song.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Open Throat – Henry Hoke – I think there’s enough overlap between a big cat being inside human houses and almost being domesticated to bridge the gap between a leopard and a mountain lion. Literary fiction isn’t always my favorite, but this was an excellent read.

“Queen of Eyes” – The Soft Boys

At its worst, a lot of punk music and culture became a caricature of itself; There was such a dogged determination to “sticking it to the man” that, in declaring that they were different from the mainstream, they created a different kind of conformity in sound and style. If you’re not exactly like x, y, or z, you weren’t punk. As insufferable as that is in retrospect (and today, presumably, though I don’t keep up with a lot of modern punk), it did breed a veritable garden of absolute weirdos who weren’t punk enough in a myriad of ways—bands like XTC and The Soft Boys, whose quirky members adhered in some ways to punk’s musical style, but were too sincere—and literary-minded—for punk, because punks don’t write about statues who come alive and wander out to sea. I’ve definitely been influenced by some aspects of punk bands and aesthetics over the years, especially when I started becoming more aware of politics; however, I feel like the bands I identify more with are the ones that were a little too soft, melodic, or just authentic enough for punk. And I think that’s where my expression falls too—I’ve always identified, in terms of my makeup and my clothes and my politics and my music, with “alt,” just because it’s an umbrella term for anyone who falls outside of those strictly-defined, often social media-enforced lines in the sand between one aesthetic from another. My music taste was bound to fall here eventually.

I’d loved about half of Underwater Moonlight ever since I saw Robyn Hitchcock for the first time, but now that I’ve started collecting vinyl, I picked up a copy of the album when I saw him again at the beginning of the month—AND GOT IT SIGNED BY THE MAN HIMSELF!! I’m still in shock, honestly, so on the off chance that you’re reading this, Mr. Hitchcock—thanks again. It’s been in the background of my life consistently for the past month, and I can’t think of any downsides, other than my neighbors hearing the lyrics of “Old Pervert” through the walls. (Look, it’s not my fault that they made a song called “Old Pervert” but also made it an indisputable banger.) I was agonizing over which song to include here, since they’ve all more or less been on a loop in my brain, but “Queen of Eyes” stuck out to me, probably the sunniest inclusion on the record, especially on the heels of the jagged, leering stylings of “Old Pervert.” Even this early on, Hitchcock was nothing but himself: his half-nonsensical, half sweetly sincere and lovesick lyrics are wrapped in a wallpaper collaged from the psychedelic Beatles, Syd Barrett, and something that could have only come from his brain and his alone. Bright, jangly, and infectiously catchy, it embodies this line from the booklet that came from my record booklet, written by David Fricke: “the Soft Boys dared to ask: did punk rock and the end of the 1970s…also have to mean the end of joy, literacy, and bright voices?” That torch remains the same one that Hitchcock has carried for the rest of his prolific career. What struck me while listening to Underwater Moonlight is that this same spirit has always been there—his sprightly musical vitality has only brightened since his early forays into music.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Song of Salvation – Alechia Dow – “Here I am again, it’s no surprise/Locked in orbit ’round the queen of eyes…”

“Sienna” – The Marías

Expect a lot more about The Marías in the coming weeks—they’ve been a very calm anchor in the chaos of…well, everything in my life. I’ve spent the past week digging more into their music, but this song was one of the first I discovered, in no small part because it was the soundtrack to a recent art trend that went around Instagram and TikTok. (The one I linked is from @zaiciart on Instagram, who has such a wonderful style!) From what I’ve heard of the album, Submarine really was the best possible name—every song feels like it’s been submerged, crafted from trails of bubbles and that special kind of whispery echo that happens to your voice when you’re trying to talk to your friends in the pool. María Zardoya has such a uniquely ethereal voice, so much so that it was genuinely jarring to hear her normal, lower speaking voice on their (excellent) Tiny Desk concert. “Sienna” is a wistful track, but one that only really harpoons you in the gut out of nowhere once you look into the lyrics—the backdrop is the fallout of Zardoya’s previous relationship, but specifically mourning the baby she imagined having with her partner: “she would have done all these things like us. But because we broke up, Sienna will never exist,” Zardoya said about the origin of the track. The track’s ghostly qualities crystallizes once you know that meaning—this entire future that Zardoya imagined is nothing but mist now; it’s fitting that, as this future fades away, so does the song, and Submarine as a whole—”Sienna” is the last breath before the album closes, an exhale of resignation before Zardoya’s wishes become ephemeral.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Water Moon – Samantha Sotto Yambao – “And I smile when I think of all the times we had/On the beach in the winter, when the waves were mad/Down by the water, crystal clear/See her face in the forest, then it disappears…”

“Cuckoo Through the Walls” – Cate Le Bon

Sunday Songs has basically become one of those Scooby-Doo villain reveal scenes. You rip off the “Sunday Songs” mask, and it’s just a weekly excuse for me to blabber on about Cate Le Bon. You fools all fell for my trap!

Did Cate Le Bon just casually come out of the womb with years’ worth of fully-formed talent? I still have two albums of hers that I haven’t listened to, but I swear that she’s incapable of making a bad album. Mug Museum feels a lot more like a standard indie rock album than her more recent works, but even the more (marginally) accessible style couldn’t keep her from her quirky engine firing on all cylinders. Moments of somber contemplation (“Mug Museum”) are hand in hand with ragged rage (“Wild”), and yet all form the weave of Le Bon’s experiences surrounding the album. Most of it deals with the death of her grandmother and how Le Bon processed her sudden absence from the matrilineal line; for her, it was less about what her grandmother meant to her as an individual and more about how her family rearranged and shifted in wake of her absence. The titular Mug Museum is a kind of haunted house of sorts where memories live: she called it “an imaginary place where relationships are looked at and thought upon.” Walking through this album does feel like strolling through a museum built inside of someone’s old house; small objects hold centuries of memories, and every strand on a curtain or crack in a window holds a deep history. “Cuckoo Through The Walls” is one of the tracks that I felt exemplified this feeling the best. Its more restrained, steady pace feels like tentatively peering through all the corners of said aging, dusty house, glancing at the light illuminating unseen gaps in the floorboards. Le Bon describes a state where these memories have anchored her to the house, to the point where she almost becomes the house itself: “And I watched the dinner drown/I drank for hours/Never leave the house/Cuckoo through the walls/Lay still on the ground/Exhale the sound of symphonies.” Like her signature, left-of-center takes on the most universal emotions, her grief doesn’t keen, but sinks into all the hollows of her mind and body—and that might be more of an honest depiction of it than most songwriters are willing to take.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Immeasurable Depth of You – Maria Ingrande Mora – “I will not sing your name/And tie my heart to Jupiter/And watermelon dreams/I felt the fear of change…”

“Au Pays du Cocaine” – Geese

Alright, you got me. The jury’s still out if Getting Killed is getting lobbed onto the mounting pile of albums I want to listen to, but “Au Pays du Cocaine” makes me understand a modicum of the hype. Sometimes an album invades your Instagram feed for no reason, but half the time, there’s at least something to it, even if that something boils down to only a song or two. This song just makes me feel…safe. Yes, it’s seems more to be about a relationship with someone who’s ruined their life, but it feels so safe to me. It sounds like the friends you give you a ride when it’s too far to walk, and the people who texted me and offered their showers when the hot water shut off in my apartment. It’s a hastily-built up lean-to to give you a fleeting moment of shelter in the rain. The middle ground between my feelings about “Au Pays du Cocaine” and the more literal lyrics is that it’s a promise: believing that people can change, and being ready for them when they do. I’ve learned the hard way that for some people, you just have to let them heal on their own terms, but that you by no means have to forgive them, or even be there for that healing. There’s a hard-won freedom in that realization. But this song is for the ones that are worth sticking around for—the people you love despite their faults. It’s rare to find those people worth sticking around for, but maybe that’s why I feel such solace in this song—those people are few and far between, but this song is for them.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers – “You can be free/You can be free and still come home/It’s alright/I’m alright…”

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!

Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (2/17/26) – The King Must Die

Posted on February 17, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Confession time: I was not a fan of Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s debut, The Splinter in the Sky. I didn’t think I would read any of her other books. But my hunger for sci-fi knows no bounds, and when I saw this, I was intrigued enough by the premise to give her writing a second shot. Thankfully, the gamble paid off—The King Must Die was an unexpected delight, full of rebellion, blood, and the friendships that somehow spring up from those other two things.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Newearth was once humanity’s last hope, a planet terraformed by incomprehensible, alien overlords. Now, it’s on the verge of destruction, with dwindling resources divided unfairly amongst the struggling poor and the Sovereign that rules over them. What’s more, the Sovereign has the power of the omnipotent, alien Executors on their side, willing to do their divine bidding at a moment’s notice, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Fen, the daughter of anti-imperialist rebels, is on the run after the assassination of her fathers. With a target on her back, she flees for a neighboring rebel faction. But when Alekhai, the ruthless heir to the Sovereign, stumbles directly into the plans of the rebellion, Fen is faced with a brutal choice: join forces with him, or let the rebellion fall prey to the Sovereign.

TW/CW: murder, loss of loved ones, gore, blood, violence, descriptions of injuries, torture

I almost passed on this novel when I saw that it was by the same author as The Splinter in the Sky. But sometimes, every once in a while, it’s worth it to give an author another chance; if not for second chances, I wouldn’t have loved Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel, for instance! I’m glad I took the chance with Kemi Ashing-Giwa, because The King Must Die was an action-packed, adrenaline-filled story of rebellion and intrigue.

My issue with The Splinter in the Sky was that the story did not feel original. A recurring thought I had while reading it was that it had poorly copied A Memory Called Empire‘s homework—there wasn’t enough about the story that was original. I can excuse some of it, since this was her debut novel, but debut novels can have a story that doesn’t border on being a rip-off. That being said, I do remember liking some of Ashing-Giwa’s prose. Thankfully, she’s worked on both of those fronts, creating an original story to go with said prose, and the prose itself has been leveled up significantly! Ashing-Giwa had such a vibrant way of describing the imagined world of Newearth and the many people within it, so much so that I could easily see myself walking through its war-torn jungles. Her dialogue is snappy without being corny, and her metaphors added a poetic flair to an often bloody and dreary landscape. The King Must Die is a marked improvement from Ashing-Giwa’s debut, fleshing out what I felt lacked in her writing on the first time around.

Whenever I say that an adult novel is a good transitory novel between YA and Adult age groups, it always seems backhanded. I guess that’s because literary circles still turn their noses up at YA for the most part. Listen—even though I’ve aged out of the target audience, I read a fair amount of YA (although adult novels have eclipsed them), I write YA, and I have a deep respect for it as an age group (it’s not a genre!). There’s a difference between YA (novels that genuinely portray the complex emotions of teenagers and their circumstances) and YA (tropey slop banking on the latest fanfiction/TV trends). And I think there’s something about The King Must Die that felt like it could be an excellent book to introduce older teens to more adult genre fiction. Sure, the kill count and amount of blood in general is very much adult, but Ashing-Giwa hits that balance between the political intrigue that’s more present in Adult novels with the character drama that I associate more with YA. It has the fast pace that I associate with some of my favorite YA sci-fi romps that I ate up in high school, but with a level of maturity that would have been lost on me at that time. It’s difficult to balance this kind of complicated worldbuilding and politics while also having this character drama, but The King Must Die had both in spades.

The main part that felt YA (affectionate) to me was the character dynamics. The dynamic between Fen and Alekhai is a classic YA setup; she’s a runaway rebel, and he’s the heir to the empire she wants to destroy. Will sparks fly? …no, evidently, but they did make for some seriously compelling character dynamics. I appreciated that, although there were multiple opportunities for Fen to be paired off with any number of characters, all of them were platonic, and they still gave me that juicy, delectable drama that’s usually only reserved for romances. Fen had such excellent chemistry with Mettan, Sinjara, and the other rebels, but what stood out the most was her relationship with Alekhai. I love a good redemption story for a villain, but it’s even more impressive given how much that Ashing-Giwa establishes about him that honestly…shouldn’t be that redeemable. But his development over the course of the story culminated in something so emotional, and the slow cracking of his shell from a ruthless, indestructible royal to someone who only wanted love in return was incredibly poignant.

The King Must Die is still sci-fi for sure, but I’d place it somewhere in the nebulous category of space fantasy. There are some elements that solidly ground it in science fiction: the alien Makers and their terraformed planet, for one, but also some of the technology. However, much of the action that we see on the ground was very fantasy, what with battles waged with intricate swords and quarterstaffs. I loved the strange, often horrifying beasts that we encounter throughout, though I would’ve liked explanations about how they fit into the ecosystems; we get a lot of tidbits of creatures that supposedly went extinct centuries ago, but are showing up for…reasons, and are never brought up again. As a whole, there were a handful of holes in the parts of the worldbuilding that didn’t relate to a) the politics or b) the terraformed Newearth, but for the most part, the world of The King Must Die was a compelling one without a doubt.

In general, I liked the ending and the epilogue; on a more technical level, Ashing-Giwa is excellent at writing battle scenes that really pump up your adrenaline. Some of the imagery, as well as Askrynath’s dialogue, reminded me of the final battle in the throne room in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which, if you know me well, is a compliment of the highest order. Conceptually, I like how the ending and epilogue resolved—through selflessness and collective community work, the empire was dismantled and a more fair system was set up on Newearth. However, it felt wrapped up far too neatly. An empire that size—especially one with the backing of incomprehensibly all-powerful aliens—doesn’t crumble in a day. I wanted to see more of the messiness of rebuilding a new world in the ashes of the old one—the transition just felt too clean to be realistic. To be fair, The King Must Die is already pushing 500 pages, so I get it if that didn’t make the final cut. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying ending—just too satisfying for my liking, and for the tone of the story itself.

All in all, a sci-fi adventure that balanced genuine political critique with fast-paced action and dramatic, snappy dialogue—it’s rare to find a book that succeeds with both. 4 stars!

The King Must Die is a standalone, but Kemi Ashing-Giwa is also the author of The Splinter in the Sky and the novella This World Is Not Yours.

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/15/26

Posted on February 15, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: some of my favorite women in music getting unabashedly weird with it, the pioneering bisexuals of Britpop, and…crabs.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/15/26

“Wonderful” – Cate Le Bon

In her review of Crab Day for Pitchfork, Laura Snapes said this about the album’s inspiration (Cate Le Bon’s young niece replacing the mean-spirited pranks of April Fool’s Day for Crab Day, where you celebrate by drawing crabs): “nonsense is often the best response to nonsense, that the constructs we use to prop up our lives are often totally arbitrary.” Le Bon has had a deep sense of absurdity, but Crab Day as an album is built all about taking ordinary things in our life to task, but also about being faced with the fact that half of the things in our lives are arbitrary, flimsy constructs. Some of it’s done gleefully, as in the creation of Crab Day, but for others, it’s more emotional—“I Was Born on the Wrong Day” came out of Le Bon’s mother digging up her birth certificate and admitting that they’d had her birthday wrong for decades. Crab Day, both lyrically and musically, explores the pain that comes from realizing that our world is built on the flimsiest stilts imaginable, but also the glee that comes with spitting in the face of them and embracing life’s absurdity.

There’s always been quirkiness surrounding Le Bon’s music, but Crab Day feels like the moment that the eggshell split open and she fully embraced offbeat, unconstrained creativity. That’s not to say that any of her earlier work isn’t creative—quite the opposite, having just listened to Mug Museum—but this album is where her current sound began to coalesce in earnest. It’s much more guitar-oriented than her more recent works, but it’s got all of the hallmarks of what’s become her signature style: artful blares of saxophone, offbeat lyrics, and slanted melodies and rhythms that read like the audio version of a picture frame hanging at a crooked angle. “Wonderful” exemplifies that crookedness, easily the most unfettered moment of weirdness on the album. The guitars scream Lodger-era David Bowie, and the lyrics of mid-’70s Brian Eno. But the fact that seemingly every commenter in the YouTube comments section has an entirely different band comparison as to what it sounds like proves how original Le Bon’s unique arrangement of elements is. With everything from the xylophones to Le Bon’s vocals at a breakneck pace, it’s an ode to being constantly in motion: “I wanna be your motion-picture film, oh yeah/I wanna be your ten-pin ball, ball, ball.” In the context of the album’s crusade to expose life’s absurdity, it feels like a concentration of her spirit throughout this album, but also her career at large: to be adventurous in all sorts of ways, and to be constantly be searching for a new way of setting creativity and weirdness in motion.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Floating Hotel – Grace Curtis – it’s difficult to match a song as singular as this to a book, since it’s so distinct; but if anything, this would match the bustle of a Wes Anderson-esque hotel in space.

“Marigolds” – Kishi Bashi

Realizing that Kishi Bashi had written a song named after my favorite flower was already an exciting revelation, but finding out how engrossing of a song it is made that discovery all the better. Tinged with both joy and melancholy, “Marigolds” surrounds cross-generational experiences, and bridging the gap of realizing that everybody around you has a complex inner life, separated by time, but united in the here and now: “It’s the realization that another person’s perception of the world is just as real to them as yours is to you, and that this humility is the first step in living in harmony on a planet that is ultimately made up of 8 billion parallel universes.” With that emotional core to the track, the field of marigolds couldn’t be a more perfect metaphor—each bloom appearing similar on the outside, but each one having a unique, complex makeup that can’t be seen from the outside. His usual lush string arrangements are layered in a glimmering swarm evoking the delicateness of flower petals and the ephemeral wingbeats of songbirds. Paired with a gorgeously animated music video by Geoff Hopkinson, featuring marigolds that turn into fantastical, jellyfish-like beings, “Marigolds” is an utterly transportive track, scented with pollen and wistful longing.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Record of a Spaceborn Few – Becky Chambers – “I wish that I could grow up with you/I wanna see the world the way you do/I want to fall off the edge with you/I want to have fun with you…”

“Drink Deep” – Florence + The Machine

You guys, I’m sorry. Every time I hear a Florence + The Machine song, it’s described as some masterpiece that leaves permanent claw marks on your heart, and then I listen and I come back feeling…perfectly alright? I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, but some things just aren’t everybody’s cup of tea all the way. Objectively, Florence Welch has great vocal range, and I’ve never hated any song of hers, but I’ve also never thought to myself, “I need to listen to more Florence + The Machine.” Maybe part of it’s just that she’s been unfairly associated with the TikTokification of female rage (or, “female rage is when a woman sings loud and man is bad”) and “divine feminine” becoming a buzzword, but that’s not her fault at all. However, as I follow a lot of music publications online, I saw that Mark Bowen of IDLES was one of the producers on her latest album, Everybody Scream, so I was at least intrigued.

One of my dearest friends has been trying to convert me for quite some time (once again, SORRY), but I heard a snippet of this one, and I was hooked out of nowhere. It sounds almost nothing like any of her other songs I’ve heard. Again, Welch has a great voice, but I feel like a lot of her songs seem to rely on the strength of her voice in order to amp up the emotion, and the rest of the music doesn’t always follow. “Drink Deep” is more contemplative, but also, a lot eerier than I gave her credit for. Here, Welch translates her experience with her life passing her by as she’s touring (while everybody else moves about normally in their lives) as akin to being prisoner to the fae, trapped and ageless in their realm for hundreds of years while everyone else ages naturally: “What I thought was a night was a thousand years/What I thought was a sip was a thousand tears/But still, they said/Drink deep.” It devolves into a kind of Celtic-inspired folk horror where what Welch ends up essentially cannibalizing herself at the will of the fae—an apt metaphor for what the music industry puts its performers (especially women) through. The atmosphere of “Drink Deep,” with an ominous, thundering drumbeat, chimes, and a warbling choir reminiscent of Kate Bush’s “Rocket’s Tail,” evokes the passage into another, darker realm, a descent into an unbreakable deal made in blood.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo – “They gave me gowns and riches/Cut gold thread with their teeth/Every night I went to see them/No, I did not sleep/And every cup they brought to me/Oh, you know I did/Drink deep…”

“Moon” – Björk

Every time I mention Biophilia, it’s inevitable that I go on and on about the app—which is appropriate, since it is the backbone of the album. But I feel like you’re missing an entire chunk of the album if you don’t talk about the delicately constructed visual language of it—for me, you’re missing half the story if you don’t see the elaborate costumes and the artistry of the visuals. All of the music videos for Biophilia are showstopping, and the music video for “Moon” feels like the best introduction to the album’s aesthetic. Literally, it’s a moving version of the album cover, but the superposition of the moon phases over Björk’s body visually convey the lyrics and the concepts behind them. I love the jagged, glowing constellation-shapes surrounding her, both a map of the app and of a galaxy itself; and I cannot get enough of Björk’s costumes for this album cycle. That combination of her rusty, Mars-orange wig and the metallic shades all throughout her bronzy dress and the playable harp corset, against the stark black of the backdrop, are just such a memorable, cosmic color combination to me. The blue ringing her face and eyes brings out the contrast spectacularly. This is the epitome of a wholly realized creative vision brought to life. Granted, this is much later in her career, but it gives me some hope that maybe, in some ideal timeline, some of the projects that I’m envisioning can someday can get as much of my creative freedom inside of them as possible.

The best way that I can describe “Moon” is that I feel as though I’m listening to a perfect circle. Set in 17/8 sign to mimic the phases of the moon, the chorus of harps seem to circle each other, an elaborate, delicate Ouroboros that encircles itself forevermore. It takes a. rare genius to make a song sound like a shape, but that’s exactly the kind of musician that Björk is. Her mind!! Her MIND!! Having a lighter, more celestial tone for a song about the moon, a subject that often invokes more ominous, sweeping majesty or loneliness (see: Radiohead’s “Sail to the Moon,” Bachelor’s “Moon”) makes it stand out from its many, many peers; the instrumentation is so pearly and dewy, and her line about “adrenaline pearls” makes me think of “Cocoon” in the sweetest way. And more poignant still is how she relates these lunar phases to the phases we cycle through in life—”Best way to start anew/Is to fail miserably/Fail at loving/And fail at giving/Fail at creating a flow/Then realign the whole.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Activation Degradation – Marina J. Lostetter – “As the lukewarm/Hands of the gods/Came down and gently/Picked my adrenalin pearls/They placed them in their mouths/And rinsed all the fear out…”

“The Drowners” – The London Suede

I think I just like 90% of Britpop. The only band in the genre that I’ve never liked is Oasis, and I’ve heard some argue that they’re not stylistically Britpop, but were just lumped into the genre because they blew up at the same time as bands like Blur and Pulp. I’m not sure if I can agree in good conscience just because I despise Oasis, but given what I’ve heard of them…it makes sense. Other than them, I’ve loved everything I’ve heard from the rest of the Big Four—and “The Drowners” is really convincing me that I need to listen to more of The London Suede.

At the forefront of every other explosive new subgenre, you will find a bisexual. The London Suede were one of the first bands to be called Britpop in earnest, and contributed a significant amount to its sound, although they were focused less on British social commentary and more on a dramatic, glam rock resurgence that recalled David Bowie’s storytelling and subversive sexuality and Morrissey’s literary-minded lyrics (and half-unbuttoned shirts). In their earlier days, they very much banked on the profitability and controversy of the queer imagery and lyrics in their band, as Bowie did back in the ’70s, from the lesbian couple on their self-titled album cover to Anderson’s obliquely queer lyrics and androgynous presentation. If he wasn’t bisexual, I’d honestly feel like it bordered on queerbaiting, relying on the shock value of subversive sexuality to make more money. But it’s not his fault, necessarily—God knows there’s legions of glam rock/metal artists from the ’70s and ’80s who glommed onto the queer aesthetics for the money it made them, and later disavowed queerness entirely. (Lookin’ at you, Alice Cooper.) Ultimately, The London Suede feel more like they’re indebted to English literary tradition to me—often queer, often subversive, and dramatically indulging in themes of class division and excess. That’s what Anderson and co. feels like to me, and “The Drowners,” with its cult of ambiguous sexuality, glamor, and wealth, feels like a worthy tribute.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Atlas Six – Olivie Blake – this brand of Britpop being big and dark academia being a major literary trend missing each other temporally is either a major blessing or a curse—they fit a little too well with each other.

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!

Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (2/10/26) – This Great Hemisphere

Posted on February 10, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

This book came up in several searches I found looking for speculative fiction authors that I hadn’t heard of. It seemed more on the literary side of dystopia/sci-fi, but the premise seemed interesting enough, so I took the leap. Unfortunately, This Great Hemisphere falls into the same trap as many other literary sci-fi novels: all literary, hardly any sci-fi—or basic worldbuilding to speak of.

Enjoy this week’s review!

This Great Hemisphere – Mateo Askaripour

In the 26th century, Earth has become unrecognizable, and so have its people. Parts of the population have become Invisible; those who cannot be seen are relegated to manual labor and pushed to the margins of society. Sweetmint, and Invisible woman, has worked her entire life to ensure that she becomes more than another statistic, securing a top apprenticeship with a legendary non-Invisible businessman. But when her missing brother becomes the prime suspect in a politically-motivated murder, Sweetmint sets off to find him—and convince the rest of the world of his innocence.

TW/CW: racism, misogyny, violence, sexual assault, murder

I really just need to steer clear of literary sci-fi, at this point. Once in a blue moon, you’ll get something incredible, but I feel like authors who go from literary fiction straight into sci-fi forgo world/character building and just slap the same faux-deep prose into a vaguely speculative setting. To Mateo Askaripour’s credit, This Great Hemisphere goes slightly further than that, but beyond the basic premise, there’s not much about this novel that holds water.

Overall, This Great Hemisphere left a lot to be desired in terms of the worldbuilding, which I’ll get to later. That being said, the one part I really enjoyed about the novel was how fleshed-out the concepts of the Invisibles were. It’s the only bit of worldbuilding we really get, but at least what we have was somewhat substantial. I loved how Askaripour outlined not just how Invisibles are marginalized in this far-future society, but their own cultural quirks; I love the “scent-prints” that Invisibles recognize each other by without sight, and the fact that some paint themselves in order to be visible in DP society was fascinating to me. Askaripour fleshed out their social world well, and it made that part of the novel feel real. From the get-go, it’s easy to see how this becomes allegorical for racism. I found the allegory a little shallow, personally—it doesn’t go far beyond “racism is bad and it’s systemic,” and I would have liked it to have more nuance—say, the psychological effects of it or how a character like Sweetmint might view herself because she’s been socialized around this racism. But as it was, it was a decent way of showing how racism could manifest in a speculative setting.

However, the Invisibles concept is where my praise for This Great Hemisphere ends. One of my biggest issues with this novel is that all of the characters were flat, and as a result, I had significant trouble connecting to any of the characters. Sweetmint was the protagonist who we were supposed to root for, but she had no personality outside of being an object of marginalization; I know that she gets beaten up and wants to save her brother, but those aren’t character traits. Strip the plot away, and Sweetmint would be nothing. The same applied to most of the other characters in the novel, who were either hollow caricatures of various kinds (ex. Croger was an eccentric billionaire, the Rainbow Girls were gossipy, catty women), or just not given any personality traits at all. This was most detrimental when it came to Sweetmint’s brother; since we spend the whole novel searching for him, surely we’ll get a taste of what his personality is like, as well as his relationship with Sweetmint, right? Apparently not…once again, he’s just there to move the plot along. This Great Hemisphere could have been a solid novel with the bones that it stood on, but without any substantial characters, it was practically skeletal.

Beyond the Invisibles, there’s almost no worldbuilding, and what’s there makes almost no sense. It’s the 26th century, and we’re in…a forest of some sort. Climate change has affected…something, but Askaripour refuses to tell you what. There aren’t any major technological innovations in 500 years, seemingly—and even if this were some kind of society where everybody had become luddites for whatever reason, that’s not explained either! Chief Architect Croger is the one responsible for molding modern society into what it is, but do we know how? Also no. There’s a government, and it’s bad, and they have…elections? That’s about all I know. There’s just absolutely no scaffolding for any of the worldbuilding, nor is there context for it. If Askaripour hadn’t said anything about the time period, I fully would’ve assumed that this was set, at the furthest, at the end of the 21st century. If This Great Hemisphere had been set in a climate-ravaged 2080’s, or something, half of these problems wouldn’t even exist—but it would still take at least some modicum of effort to convince us that this was set past 2024. It was just blatantly clear that Askaripour did very little work to make his speculative fiction truly speculative—it felt so modern, and that continued negligence for the worldbuilding made suspending my disbelief exceedingly difficult.

I’m always wary of male authors writing from the perspective of female characters, and This Great Hemisphere reminded me of why I have those fears in the first place. Don’t worry—we don’t get into “her boobs breasted boobily” territory here, but it’s not great, either. The bar is in the Mariana Trench, but Askaripour is still somewhere in the twilight zone at best. Already, the characters were developed poorly and presented little opportunity to get attached, so Sweetmint, regardless of gender, was not a compelling character. But her gender factored greatly into the discrimination in this novel, which is where it gets messy. There are so many scenes with her being beaten up, groped, and otherwise abused, which bordered on gratuitous. And yes, This Great Hemisphere is about a (somewhat) fictional kind of discrimination, but Askaripour didn’t seem to reflect at all about how gender would intersect with this fictional marginalization. Instead, we got page after page of Sweetmint facing gender-based violence with no nuanced reflection on it. It just rubbed me the wrong way that these things were being done so thoughtlessly to a female character. It wasn’t gratuitous enough to be torture porn, but it came close to it. In addition, when the female characters weren’t underdeveloped entirely, they felt rather shallow; I did appreciate that Askaripour kind of humanized a few of the Rainbow Girls, but they were very much a caricature of gossiping, oversexualized women in the end. Again! He could’ve made some very potent commentary on that, but no, apparently this novel needed the same caricature in every color of the rainbow…for some reason.

All in all, a speculative dystopia that talked the talk in terms of its themes and metaphors, but largely failed to walk the walk and follow through on its own ideas. 2.5 stars.

This Great Hemisphere is a standalone, but Mateo Askaripour is also the author of Black Buck.

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!

Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/8/26

Posted on February 8, 2026February 8, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: unfortunately, the pink theme couldn’t be scheduled for the week of Valentine’s Day, so enjoy your pink disentangled from the holiday. Also, Madeline being pretentious from the age of 5, a whole lot of beep-boop-beep, and Kathleen Hanna’s answer to these trying times.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/8/26

“This Island” – Le Tigre

All rise for the anti-ragebait national anthem! The litany against ragebait, if you will.

I’m sure there’s some activism/politically-involved situation that Kathleen Hanna hasn’t written about, but you have to give it to her—in that sphere, she’s got a song for almost anything. Since 2024, every new Le Tigre song that I discover has hit hard in this political context, whether it’s the perennially relevant reminder to “Get Off The Internet” (destroy the right wing!) or the rallying cry of “Keep On Livin’.” Even in 2008, the internet already had shown the ugly side of not just enabling faceless trolls to spread misinformation, but for anger-inducing content to get the most engagement; it’s been a disaster for everything, really, but especially activism. Pair that with social media’s penchant to push the most shocking angles on news stories that are already shocking (and the sheer volume of said shocking, disheartening news), and you’ve got a recipe for disaster for anybody who wants to doggedly keep hope. It’s ground so many would-be activists into the ground, turning them into despairing doomers convinced that there’s no hope for the future.

“This Island” isn’t exactly the uplifting chant of “Keep On Livin'”, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be. Its target is that kind of person who’s so hopelessly entrenched in internet-peddled doom that they need a bucket of ice water to the face to snap them out of it. It’s tough love (part of the chorus is just a repetition of “You’re a mess!”), but it’s vital if you want to carry on. The brutal 3.3/10-rated (3.3? Did Le Tigre kick your puppy?) Pitchfork review of This Island lamented that the album sacrificed its normal political bite in favor of making it more watered down and commercially accessible. Yet although the instrumentals are smoother and the beats poppier, no major label production could ever defang Hanna and co.; “This Island” rings as an unflinching slap upside the head and a call to remember all of the good things happening in the world; the backdrop of the album was the War on Terror, but now, in…well, a new iteration of just that, this last verse hits harder than ever:

“The horizon’s like a ship in flames tonight/You say you just don’t know/If you can take this city, cause the/Rent’s high, and the war’s on/And it’s last call/Even your friends look worried/My friends all think you’re smart/We think you’re super-fine/But it’s high time/I mean it’s high tide…”

I’m not above doomscrolling. Goodness knows that I’ve needed said splash of cold water in my face more often than not. It’s not our fault—social media has been deliberately manufactured to keep you hooked as long as possible; in just the same way, the ruling class wants to keep you hopeless and constantly posting so that you only make money for their corporations and don’t rise up. What matters most is what you are—and what you do—outside of the internet. What matters is that you have the strength of your friends and community beside you. Even when it seems like all hope is lost, we can take this city. Le Tigre took this city in 2004—who’s to say that we can’t do it in 2026?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

We Will Rise Again: Speculative Stories and Essays on Protest, Resistance, and Hope – edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz, and Malka Older – several of the stories in here have a similar aim that Le Tigre did back in the day: to merge political awareness with art.

“Always On My Mind/In My House” (cover) – Pet Shop Boys

Separately, the elements of this song should not work. If you just said, without context, that this was an ’80s synth pop cover of an Elvis song (which was, as with most Elvis songs, a cover in and of itself) that devolves into acid house halfway through and stretches to nearly 10 minutes long, I’d probably be put off, to say the least. It’s like the musical version of “I hate gay halloween, what do you meanyou’re dressed as [insert combination of niche references]?” Things that were only possible in the late ’80s, folks. But against all odds, this is incredible. A few weeks back, I was listening to this on repeat while making a digital drawing, and I got into a flow state so queer that the drawing practically flew from my fingertips. Originally conceived to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death, this, “Always On My Mind” later morphed into the 9-plus-minute remix and combination with “In My House.” Retrospectively, most of the writing on this song talks about how, by all accounts, this shouldn’t have worked. And yet Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe make it look like the combination of Elvis, house, rap, and random firework samples was always meant to be. It’s a case study in lulling a listener into a false sense of security before letting the floor drop out from under them. Every beat drop and twist works seamlessly—the switch from house back into the Elvis cover at 5:26 knocks me off my feet every time. You already need a boatload of talent for a song to sound effortless, but to be able to unite so many disparate elements and make it into a chart-topper—this was the #1 Christmas single in the U.K. in 1987.—takes a special kind of band.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Swift and Sudden Exit – Nico Vicenty – thematically, it fits nicely with this book, but this had to have been hidden somewhere in the ’80s scenes (or the ’90s ones, for that matter).

“Cover Me” – Björk

I always come back to Post. To me, it’s one of her most experimental albums, but not in the sense of musical genre—it’s one of her more accessible ones, right after Debut. But it’s much more experimental in its mindset. She sends her feelers out in every possible direction, and the joy of the album comes from the sheer range of emotions and genres she explored, from grimy, electronic tracks to an attempt to channel Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” (in the way that only Björk could). The adventurous spirit that she first fostered on Debut, playing the role of ingenue in both her life and music, practically explodes out here. You can hear it more clearly on the louder songs, whether it’s the bevy of strange instrumentals pulsating outwards or Björk herself actually screaming—another staple of her music that’s carried on 30 years post-Post.

“Cover Me,” the penultimate track on the album, is often forgotten in the deluge of other masterpieces stacked on top of each other on Post. But to me, it represents, both lyrically and musically, a key part of where Björk would go later on in her career. It’s a prickly yet twinkly song—the main body of the instrumental consists of hammered dulcimer, which is played in such a way that it feels cautious, like any sudden movement or snap of branches could trigger a trapdoor; the feeling is accentuated by the humid, jungle-like atmosphere, with all sorts of rattling noises that disappear just as quickly as they appear. Without a doubt, it’s one of the less accessible tracks on the album. Every time I listen to “Cover Me,” I feel like I’ve stepped into Henri Rousseau’s painting “Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!),” pushing aside the woodcut-looking leaves and treading lightly so as not to alert the snarling tiger inches away from me; it’s fearful, but the fear is outweighed by the ecstasy of proving that “the impossible really exists.” Her lyricism feels fairytale-like, as though she’s mapping out an entirely new land, looking over her shoulder to guide you with her commentary; With a sly smirk, she declares, “I’m going hunting for mysteries.” Taking another step forward, she whispers back to you, almost afraid to admit: “This is really dangerous/But worth the effort.”

According to Björk, she wrote “Cover Me” to poke fun at herself for making the process of making the album so pointedly different, and purportedly, difficult. And yet, as the black sheep even in an album swarming with oddball anthems, it’s paved the way for exactly the kind of career that Björk has made for herself. Every part of her life has been about pushing music to its limits, whether it’s bridging together music, science, and technology to make a stunning album and an educational app or creating entirely new instruments for her tours. Björk has never shied away from what’s dangerous, and her willingness to bend, stretch, and outright break boundaries, musically and societally. Though she’s known by more iconic lyrics, this one might just be the best to describe her career so far: “I’m going to prove the impossible really exists.” And if there’s anything to be learned from her endeavors, is that all of that danger was well worth the effort.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Search for Wondla (The Search for WondLa, #1) – Tony DiTerlizzi – “While I crawl into the unknown/Cover me/I’m going hunting for mysteries/Cover me/I’m going to prove the impossible really exists…”

“Circuit” – Apples in Stereo & Marbles

Tragically, this song (and the album, Expo) aren’t even on YouTube. Criminal, if you ask me! But I think it should tell you how concerningly niche my music taste was, even as a child—”Circuit” was my favorite song when I was about 5. Less of a brag and more of a grim foreshadowing of me becoming an insufferably pretentious adult. Back in the day, I had this great little Hello Kitty CD player; I’ve got a specific memory of having this song on a playlist and having to press down on those thick, 2000’s buttons just so I could hear this song over and over, ad nauseam. I stand by 5-year-old Madeline—it never gets old.

Though it’s labeled under The Apples in Stereo, Marbles is the solo project of Robert Schneider, the Apples’s frontman; if you thought that you can’t possibly get any more beep-boop-beep than The Apples in Stereo…buckle up. Chiefly consisting of synths, Expo is nothing but electro-pop—emphasis on the electro. Every song I’ve heard from the album sounds like the kind of music that could only be made by squeaky robots from some ’50s pulp sci-fi movie. Little me specifically imagined Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba! singing it. It’s a self-contained sci-fi universe, complete with its alluring protagonist, some sort of robot or cyborg woman who “perceives circuitries/Inside everything she sees.” Lo and behold, this is the work of a man, not a machine. But with the precision applied to every single part of this track, “Circuit” truly is a well-oiled machine. Like the intricate, fragile fragments of a circuit board, every flourish of processed orchestral samples and every bubbly synth chord all work as cogs in a machine with so many moving parts, yet with effortless cohesion that so many artists can only dream of reaching. This is how you make a pop song. Embrace the beep-boop.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Infinity Particle – Wendy Xu – The robot is gender-swapped here, but he sure does see electricity.

“Typical Love” – Cate Le Bon

“Typical Love” was cut from the Pompeii sessions, but according to Cate Le Bon, was “disassembled and reassembled it many times but it always felt like a second cousin to the other tracks so was put aside for a rainy day.” It’s in limbo between the production of Pompeii but with the kind of lyrics I would’ve expected on Michelangelo Dying, cataloguing the quiet, suffocating mundanity of a relationship gone stale. If it had any closer cousin on Pompeii, it would probably be “French Boys”; it has the same kind of wry comedy of Le Bon putting on airs—she might as well be muttering “Typical love, typical love” before taking a drag from one of those long, old-fashioned cigarette holders. But as with most of her tracks, “Typical Love” is anything but typical, with percussive bursts of her own breath, saxophone blares that bleed out like oversaturated watercolors soaking through thin paper, and an Eno-like taste for taking repetition to its logical limit, stretching melodies and words until they no longer feel like their original forms. It’s all at once angular and circular, like an abstract painting, woven from brightly-colored, dancing shapes.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Embassytown – China Miéville – “Nothing ever changed in your corridor eyes/Rely on me, baby/Rely on air/Only a shadow again/Typical 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!

Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Black History Month (2026 Edition)

Posted on February 4, 2026 by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., February is Black History Month! Another year, another post where I lament the erasure of history by the Trump administration. There’s no end to the irony of this erasure when our country was quite literally built off of the labor of enslaved peoples. This is just somebody’s blog and not some grand antifascist statement, but I can’t help but think that education, and reading in particular, is one of the best ways to combat the government’s erasure of the contributions of Black people in the U.S. And if my post gets just one person who didn’t know about our history to look further, then I feel like I’ve done something good.

This year, I’ve included nonfiction as well as fiction, many of them concerning the often glossed-over history of Black people in this country. But during any month celebrating marginalized people—and every month in the year—it’s so important to go looking for the history that your school, your government, or your peers have left behind. Black people always have been, always are, and always will be an integral part of United States history, from its literary tradition to its very foundation. Denying this is monstrous, and sets a dangerous precedent for the national perception of our country. So, as with every post like this I make: go out and read books by Black authors, and educate yourself about Black history in February and every month!

Below are some links to Instagram, but they provide resources for Black History Month—and every month!

For my lists from previous years, click below:

NOTE: not all of these books strictly adhere to the genres that I placed them in; a lot of them are fairly genre-bending, especially in the two genre fiction categories. It just goes to show how much of a creative bunch these authors are—we’ve got a lot of authors here who break and bend the rules of fantasy and sci-fi. Also, just for new readers—the “YA” on the cover image is a bit of a misnomer, but once again, I’m too lazy to make a new graphic for it and there’s only so much space for my WordPress media.

Let’s begin, shall we?

THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR BLACK HISTORY MONTH (2025 EDITION)

FANTASY:

Needy Little Things – Channelle Desamours | YA | magical realism, urban fantasy, mystery, disability | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Daughter of the Merciful Deep – Leslye Penelope | Adult | historical fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Somadina – Akwaeke Emezi | YA | LGBTQ+, romance, epic fantasy | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
The Maid and the Crocodile – Jordan Ifueko* | YA | epic fantasy, disability, romance | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75
Fate’s Bane – C.L. Clark | Adult | high fantasy, novella, romance, LGBTQ+ | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms – N.K. Jemisin | Adult | high fantasy, romance | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.25

*NOTE: this novel is set in the Raybearer universe, but is a companion novel that can be understood without reading the original duology.

SCIENCE FICTION:

The Ephemera Collector – Stacy Nathaniel Jackson | Adult | LGBTQ+, disability, dystopia | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sky Full of Elephants – Cebo Campbell | Adult | speculative fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Do You Dream of Terra-Two? – Temi Oh | YA | romance | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions – Nalo Hopkinson | Adult | anthologies/short stories, speculative fiction | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Library of Broken Worlds – Alaya Dawn Johnson | Adult | space fantasy, LGBTQ+, romance | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75

REALISTIC FICTION/MYSTERY/THRILLER:

All the Noise At once – DeAndra Davis | YA | disability, contemporary | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Afrotistic – Kala Allen Omeiza | YA | contemporary, disability | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
If We Were a Movie – Zakiya N. Jamal | YA | LGBTQ+, romance | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
When No One Is Watching – Alyssa Cole | Adult | mystery, thriller, romance | ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Trees – Percival Everett | Adult | literary fiction, mystery, thriller | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

NONFICTION:

All About Love: New Visions – bell hooks | Adult | essays, feminism |⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism – Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar | Adult | memoir | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
How to Be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi | Adult | politics | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts – Rebecca Hall | Adult | graphic novel, history |⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness – Austin Channing Brown | Adult | memoir |⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
A Black Women’s History of the United States – Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross | Adult | history |⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches – Audre Lorde | Adult | memoir, essays, feminism, LGBTQ+ | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir Manifesto – George M. Johnson | YA | memoir, politics, LGBTQ+ | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Inciting Joy: Essays – Ross Gay | Adult | essays, memoir | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of the books on this list, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by Black authors that you’ve read recently? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

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