Posted in Books

A Reading List for the Coming Four Years | Books for Rising, Resisting, and Keeping the Hope

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles…sort of. We’re in for a long four years.

It’s already been said what a slap in the face it is to have Trump sworn in on the day we normally set aside to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr., one of America’s preeminent champions of civil rights. (I’m sure the administration will find some way to spin it in their favor, the same way that Trump spun the Women’s March. Eurgh.) I’m grieving. I will continue to grieve, so long as our country is once again helmed by a tyrant who uplifts the wealthy and bigoted while the marginalized are squashed underfoot. My processing this won’t end until we get him out of office (because I refuse to believe that this is the end), and that’s okay.

But today, as with most of the activity on this blog, I’d like to talk about books.

Anyone who has even had a semblance of a pulse on the news in the last five years or so has seen the increased hateful rhetoric surrounding books—particularly those concerned with promoting diverse voices. Mass book bans have swept the country, with everything from the most innocuous picture books to critical feminist knowledge being stricken down across the board, all in the name of “protecting the children.” The process of objecting to a book is frighteningly simple and straightforward, leading to bans on the basis of misinformation—just look at the time Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb was challenged after a single complaint…and attributed to Oprah Winfrey (ah, yes, because all Black women are the same person, apparently). Apologies for the strong language here, but to quote a great button that I have on one of my jackets, “you know these fuckers banning books don’t read shit.” It’s true. Rarely do those in charge of banning, especially those in the highest offices in the country, consider the actual contents of the books—they simply get a whiff of anything that smells to them of D.E.I. or the “woke groomer agenda” and try to smite it out of the public consciousness.

It was never about the children. The majority of the books that are being banned to “protect children” aren’t even aimed at children. And even if they are, it’s only for superficial reasons—inclusions of, god forbid, diverse perspectives (LGBTQ+, POC, disabled, etc.) or acknowledgments that maybe, just maybe, America is not perfect and has never been perfect. It truly is dangerous. We’ve seen how the Trump campaign was built on twisting and exaggerating lies about this country, feeding its supporters that we must go back to some nonexistent, golden age. Of course it never existed, but the way that they do it is by blocking off access to information on all levels—perpetuating lies and attacking those who spread the truth. Book bans are how this is done at the largest level; it starts with the very youngest, and they claim to “protect the children” as they restrict their access to learning about how this country—and the world—truly is. The regimes that put blinders on its populations—especially the ones banning or burning books—never land on the right side of history.

I believe that the best way that you can combat this deliberate shielding of the truth is to read. In a world where the ruling class relies on you being complacent enough to accept their lies as fact, reading is the ultimate form of rebellion. We read to learn: about other kinds of living, other kinds of people, and possibilities in the imaginations of people you know nothing about. Literature is the site of change because it shows us this possibility—if you can imagine an alternative world, you can put it into action. When you feel powerless, remember that you have boundless knowledge at your fingertips.

So I’ve compiled this reading list for anyone looking to rebel. I’ve gathered books of all age levels and from all kinds of diverse voices that Trump and his cronies would have you believe neither matter nor exist. Whether your stance is to directly fight the power or quietly rebel by imagining a way out, there are books here for you. Fiction and nonfiction, here are the tools you need to combat misinformation, bigotry, and hatred—and have a great read, too.

A READING LIST FOR THE COMING FOUR YEARS | Books for Rising, Resisting, and Keeping the Hope

FOR THE FIGHT:

These are the books about resistance, in the real world and in imagined worlds. If you need the motivation to stand up and fight for your rights and the encouragement to not pull punches when doing so, these are the books for you.

FOR A BETTER TOMORROW:

Here is something I want to emphasize going forward: it’s important to fight, but not all of us have the strength to do so—and that’s okay! Plenty of people aren’t ready to get out into the streets, and we need to respect that perspective. (This is coming from someone who isn’t quite ready either.) What we need the most in these times is hope, and though there is injustice in these books, they present stories where, despite hardships, joy prevails. They also present vital alternatives to the now—one of the most powerful ways of resisting, in my opinion, is to have the ability to imagine a better tomorrow, whether it’s alternate history, the distant future, or simply a kinder present.

FOR KNOWLEDGE:

The best way to combat misinformation is to inform yourself. Here are some of my favorite nonfiction books about resistance and feminism and its many facets—race, sexuality, gender, ability, and more. Ranging from revered feminist scholars to more contemporary perspectives, I hope there is something for everybody here.

A SELECTION OF GREAT BOOKS BANNED FOR RIDICULOUS REASONS:

Here in the U.S., we’ve seen a deeply disheartening uptick in book bans for a number of reasons—none of them valid. Standing up to book bans is essential in these times, and through it, you can discover some excellent literature, whether they’re classics like Maus and The Bluest Eye or newcomers like The Poet X.

RESOURCES FOR FIGHTING AGAINST CENSORSHIP:

  • PEN America – if you’ve been paying attention to efforts against book banning, you’ve likely seen PEN America come up, and for good reason—they are one of the foremost organizations fighting for the rights of authors and journalists, as well as the freedom to read and write.
  • Authors Against Book Bans – self-explanatory, but this organization has a variety of resources on how you can fight against book bans around the country.
  • M.K. England (Substack) – although my list didn’t end up containing any of their books (sorry 😬), England has provided a comprehensive list of ways you can fight back against the potential threat of Project 2025 in terms of queer literature for younger (MG and YA) audiences.
  • SUPPORT! YOUR! LOCAL! LIBRARY! Wherever you are in this country, use as many of your library’s resources as you can! Whether you’re checking out books physically or digitally, or using their non-book services, libraries need all the support that they can get in these coming years.

That being said, this list is by no means exhaustive! I encourage you to look beyond this list to find even more books you love that live up to these principles. Scour the internet and your local library, and you are sure to find many more examples. Let me know in the comments what your favorite books about making change, resisting, and keeping hope are!

Today’s song:

it’s a relevant song for this post, but also, I did just listen to Humanz for the first time over the weekend. Not their best, but this was one of the highlights; as much as I despise Oasis, I do find it poetic that Albarn and Noel Gallagher sang together on this one after having the most ridiculous, decades-long rivalry. (To say nothing of Liam…)

That’s it for this post! Have a wonderful day, and…I know I put this at the end of every post, but please take care of yourselves. I love you.

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 1/12/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: in which being a DC comics fan and a fan of British alt-rock goes awry.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 1/12/25

“Can’t Help Falling in Love” (Elvis Presley cover) – Lick the Tins

Imagine going so hard on an Elvis cover that you have to add not one, not two, but THREE Irish polkas at the end just so that it reaches the three-minute mark…I don’t find myself saying this often, but that pennywhistle kinda goes crazy.

“Can’t Help Falling In Love” has been covered hundreds upon hundreds of times—it’s so simple and iconic that it’s an obvious go-to for anyone to wring some emotion from the audience. (Whether or not they’re always successful is debatable. At worst, it can be the easy way out.) I can’t definitively find just how many times it’s been covered since Presley’s original release, but it’s got a slew of big names parading behind it: Kacey Musgraves, Beck, Chris Isaak, U2, Erasure, Zayn of One Direction, and Christine McVie isn’t even scratching the surface. (Though this one isn’t technically a cover, Spiritualized’s “Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,” one of my favorite songs of all time, adds the lyrics to J. Spaceman’s melody. It gets me every time…) And…well, as with any song that’s covered as numerously as this one, even the greats blend together sometimes. Rarely do they stray beyond the lazy, slow-danceable tempo. You can’t do much to a classic…

…unless you’re Lick the Tins. Their take on “Can’t Help Falling in Love” is one of the only takes that makes it sound lively. From the minute the drums kick in, you’re propelled by the spirited energy that the Irish band injected straight into the heart of this song. It’s considerably sped up, but beyond that, they make it so naturally celebratory. Alison Marr and the chorus behind her make every verse feel like a victory lap, a joyous sprint fueled by the essence of that feeling of falling in love. Of course, said speed meant that they had to add said three polkas at the end, all performed with the same Celtic inspiration that fueled the rest of the cover (and their very small body of work), but it makes it feel like the most triumphant of endings: the rickety car is driving into the sunset, the bouquet has been caught, the girl has been got. John Hughes clocked that quickly in his decision to put it at the end of Some Kind of Wonderful—this song couldn’t be any more ’80s rom-com if it tried. But long before I saw that movie, there was always a kind of purity to it—nothing could taint the memory of a song that so embodied the unbridled joy of running through a field, bathed in sunlight.

I haven’t sampled any of the Lick the Tins originals, but this song was released on their first and only album, Blind Man on a Flying Horse. Maybe there is some kind of shame to be only known for an Elvis cover and then disappearing from the face of the earth, but if I had a cover as near-perfect as this one…I dunno. I think I’d be happy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Flowerheart – Catherine Bakewell – though I didn’t enjoy every aspect of this book, I do feel like this cover would suit the homely, comforting atmosphere that it boasted at its highest points.

“Little Spacey” – Cocteau Twins

It now the dead of Cocteau Twinter. It’s been in the 20-degree range for several days now, and I’ve had several…questionably fruitful sessions of attempting to learn to knit while listening to this album. My expectations were high after how consistently fantastic the albums I’ve listened to before this (Heaven or Las Vegas and Blue Bell Knoll) and how pleasantly “Oomingmak” has lingered with me for six months, but to this day, Elizabeth Fraser and co. have not failed me.

Take out the inspirations from David Attenborough’s The Living Planet: A Portrait of Life on Earth, and it would still be a distinctly winter album. With bass player Simon Raymonde absent for the recording of this album (he was recording for the This Mortal Coil record Filigree & Shadow), the sound is more delicate than a pointed icicle dripping from a rooftop; the album’s lack of a distinct bass gives its the delicacy it needs to feel as atmospherically Antarctic as it does. (A great playlist transition for you: “Lazy Calm,” the opening track, with David Bowie’s “V-2 Schneider”…what, you thought you could escape one of my posts without a mention of David Bowie?) “Little Spacey” in particular has to be one of the iciest songs on the album. Normally, that word has the connotation of being prickly or unfeeling, but in this case, I say icy in the sense of how winter sunlight reflects crystalline colors off of it, or how it begins to melt at the corners once that sunlight comes out, or how snowflakes cling to the toothy tip of an icicle during a snowstorm. Fraser arranges and layers her harmonies in such an otherworldly way that it sounds more like an overhead flock of cooing seabirds than anything human. It has the ice of an Antarctic winter, yet all of the comfort of watching it from a TV screen, in the same way I imagine the band gathering inspiration for the album.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Even the Darkest Stars – Heather Fawcett – frigid, windy, and wintry, but glittering with starlight.

“I Me Mine” – The Beatles

…yeah. It’s not like George Harrison wasn’t also a jerk during the Get Back sessions, but oh my god…being in the studio with the rest of The Beatles for that long would make me write a song about how the world is ruled by ego too. Being around John Lennon does that to a guy…and Paul McCartney bluntly correcting your grammar. Jesus. Without a doubt, it’s a bitter note for The Beatles—”I Me Mine” was the last new material recorded by them, depending on which criteria you’re going off of*—but even through the bitterness, you can of course count on George Harrison to weave something timeless from it. The oscillation from the boat-rocking-on-waves sway of the verses to the urgent clanging of the organ during the chorus seems like an accurate picture of the volatility of these sessions—sometimes, they made progress that would eventually become Let It Be and Abbey Road, but it would whip around into heated arguments (take a wild guess who started most of them) just as easily. Given the more charitable and spiritual person Harrison became as he departed from The Beatles, it’s hard to imagine him throwing any sort of truly mean-spirited shade—but I feel like “I Me Mine” could be argued as a diss track. No names named, but it’s about John and Paul. We know. Or a diss track on the concept of egoism. It’s both.

*there’s a considerable amount of debate over what counts as the last true Beatles song; “I Me Mine” had only 3/4 Beatles present for the recording.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Brightness Between Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #2) – Eliot Schrefer – in the less-far future side of this novel, there’s an awful lot of “I Me Mine” going on in the Cusk household…

“Good Blood Mexico City” – Elbow

Man…I love comics, but any given comic fandom is just so painfully full of contrarians. You’ve got a bunch of dudebros wasting away in basements whining about how none of the comic book movies coming out are actually comic accurate, but then the Superman trailer comes out, and those same people are whining about Guy Gardner and his glorious bowl cut? It’s pure campy comic perfection. IT’S COMIC ACCURATE. It was never about comic accuracy, was it—

Oh? What’s that you say?

…oh. Wrong guy. Wrong Guy. Garvey, not Gardner, I’ll see myself out…great song though, right?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora’s End (The Aurora Cycle, #3) – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff – “This is the day for big decisions, you know/Follow your lodestar/Starry eyes, smoky eyes, urgent eyes/This is the surge of the good blood rising/If you’re running, I’m coming…”

“Love’s Ring of Fire” – Anita Carter

If I had a nickel for each time in music history that Johnny Cash became known and adored for a cover, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but in this instance, it’s really not weird that it happened twice. The man was supremely talented—he didn’t just cover said songs, but undeniably elevated them (the other, in this case, being his gut-wrenching rendition of Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt”). In this case, a fair amount of people know that “Hurt” is a cover. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but it hit me like a sack of bricks when I found out that “Ring of Fire” was a cover. (The one time I’ve actually learned something from YouTube shorts—specifically this one by Tommy Edison.) I was just so accustomed to hearing his version and nothing else; I assumed with his stature that he’d written it just the same.

Turns out that Anita Carter was responsible for the original version, sister of June Carter (who Cash eventually married), who wrote the song along with Merle Kilgore. Carter’s voice is a noteworthy contrast to Cash’s—the way she croons the iconic line “I believed you like a child/oh, but the fire went wild” tickles my brain in that special sort of way that only a handful of songs do—as does the way her high note fades into a sunset sky at the end of every repetition of the chorus. Yet despite, that, it’s rather subdued for a song comparing love to, y’know, a whole ring of fire; to quote my mom upon hearing it, she sounds “emotionally distanced from the ring of fire.” Yikes…but it is awfully slow for the metaphor at hand. It could be a consequence of being able to see clearly after being chucked through said ring of fire and coming out the other side with more than a few burns, but you don’t exactly get that fervor that’s inherent to the metaphor. Johnny Cash, being Johnny Cash, took that sign, sped up the chorus, tweaked some lyrics, and added some mariachi horns after dreaming about a rendition of the song backed by them, as the story goes. To me, it’s two observers’ perspectives on the same phenomenon, but distance is the key: maybe it’s because Cash sung his view directly from said ring of fire that his version became more enduring. Either way, seeing the first evolution behind an enduring country hit was a surprising journey.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Good Luck Girls – Charlotte Nicole Davis – Anita Carter’s specific version wouldn’t be out of place in the Western-inspired setting of this duology.

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (1/7/25) – The Infinity Particle

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

First book review of 2025, and so far, the best book I’ve read this month! Granted, we’re only a week into the month, but it still counts for something, right? loved Mooncakes, which Wendy Xu illustrated, but I had no idea until recently that she had published a solo graphic novel—and a sci-fi one! What resulted was an incredibly emotional read to start the year off with: robot romance and explorations of how relationships make the universe work.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Infinity Particle – Wendy Xu

Clementine Chang is headed for Mars. In the distant future, it’s a place of peace and industry, and it’s precisely the place that Clem wants to start her new life. A clever inventor, Clem has a knack for working with AI. She hopes to continue her education under Dr. Marcella Lin, a legendary AI engineer who inspired her work. But Dr. Lin is not what she seems—and she’s hiding a secret from the scientific world: a lifelike, humanoid AI that she refers to as her son. His name is Kye, and he yearns for a life outside of the one that Dr. Lin programmed for him. As Clem gets acquainted with him, she discovers that Dr. Lin’s intentions in making him were not as noble as she once thought—and that she may be falling in love with her former hero’s creation.

art by Wendy Xu (p. 150)

TW/CW: emotional abuse (past/present)

You know me. I’m a sucker for a good Frankenstein story. Oh, so you brought a conscious being into existence, expected it to be completely obedient to you and your whims, and didn’t expect anything to go wrong? Surely this will not have a domino effect of consequences…

That being said, The Infinity Particle isn’t just a Frankenstein story. We’ve been inundated with stories about AI and the ethics of giving robots human-like consciousnesses since day one of sci-fi’s conception (back to Frankenstein), but The Infinity Particle does what many of those stories try and fail to do: make the story human. It weaves both engineering and the complicated legacies of familial trauma into a story that is ultimately about relationships: that of parents and children, but also of young lovers. It’s a story of breaking cycles and of forging something newer and better out of their ashes. All of it is worth your time.

Wendy Xu’s vision of Mars in the distant future is one that I want to live in, which isn’t something I often say about sci-fi novels. The world of The Infinity Particle is a cozy, comforting one. In spite of the more emotional moments of the story, Xu’s setting is one you can get lost in. Rendered in a pastel color palette that’s easy on the eyes, it’s a world full of greenhouses, cafés, and cobblestone paths. Here, Mars is the perfect place for a museum date—except here, the museum features all manner of robots from bygone centuries. Although there are ethical conflicts with some of the AIs (this forms the central conflict of the novel), none of Xu’s AIs are malicious creatures—they’re all in the form of cuddly cats or owls, and in the case of Clem’s custom companion, a cat-moth hybrid. (SENA!! WE LOVE SENA!!) It’s a world I was eager to escape to, and one that I could dwell in forever.

Clem’s motivations were part of what made this story stand out. As she begins to dig deeper into Dr. Lin’s true motives for creating Kye, the way her former hero treats her AI creation begins to mirror how she was treated as a child; the emotional abuse from her mother is very similar to the emotional abuse by Dr. Lin to Kye. The Infinity Particle is a fantastic example of how very far-fetched, sci-fi concept can be used as incredibly emotional metaphors. We have Clem, who is a clone of her mother and was raised to live out the dreams that her mother could not, and Kye, an AI made to replace Dr. Lin’s son and live out her fantasies. Admittedly, the clone part was very on the nose, but the way that Xu delivered with care, giving The Infinity Particle an undeniable heart. In part, The Infinity Particle is a story of how trauma always echoes into the present, and how it can create ripples that both tear apart and rebuild relationships with others.

That shared trauma is part of what made the romance between Clem and Kye one that I was rooting for from page 1. Not only were they the most adorable couple (museum dates! Philosophical conversations in greenhouses!), their shared connection allowed them to help each other in ways that made the relationship blossom. Clem had experience with having to escape from the same kind of emotional abuse that Kye was undergoing, and as they realized that connection, their relationship deepened. However, it wasn’t just that aspect that made their relationship so lovable. Their chemistry was some of the best I’ve read in a YA novel in a long time—they were both such curious and sensitive people, and that combined curiosity not only drove the plot, but the course of their romance. Every shared moment was sweet, but never saccharine—The Infinity Particle was just a warm hug (and a kiss on the cheek) in so many ways, this being one of the most prominent.

However, even though Dr. Lin was objectively in the wrong, I appreciated the way that The Infinity Particle humanized her; never once were her actions condoned, but in the end, she wasn’t a purely evil person—she was a person who slipped so far into grief that she failed to realize how she was treating those around her. She did horrible things that could not be undone, but she was also capable of healing. It’s an incredibly difficult line to toe between acknowledging a character’s humanity and acknowledging that their actions were inexcusable; most media gets it wrong (I am looking directly at Encanto), but in the short time that was given to this plot, Xu did a graceful job of hitting that balance. Dr. Lin did some unspeakably terrible things, but deep down, she is still human. My one (minor) complaint is that this was squeezed into the end and didn’t have as much time to develop as some other parts of the novel, but it was executed thoughtfully nonetheless.

And the epilogue…hnnnnnnnngh do I love a good “the fabric of the universe is made up of love” story AUUUUUUUUGH

All in all, a heartwarming, sensitive, and thoughtful story of love, robots, and what it means to have—and to want—a mind and a life of your own. 4.5 stars!

The Infinity Particle is a standalone, but Wendy Xu is also the co-creator of Mooncakes and the creator of Tidesong.

Today’s song:

I feel like I remember this song about every 5 years and realize how much I’ve missed it…

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 1/5/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy near year!

First post and the first Sunday Songs of 2025! No pressure. This week: new verses on new songs, new(ish) takes on old(er) songs, and…oh, god, Eric, please put your shirt back on—

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 1/5/25

“POP POP POP (feat. Danny Brown)” – IDLES

Dread it…run from it…TANGK always arrives. One of the best albums of 2024, hands down. I already talked about “POP POP POP” back in March, but at the end of the year, IDLES added one more flourish to an already excellent track—a guest feature by Danny Brown. Of course, I say that knowing next to nothing about Danny Brown up until this point, but the spin he and IDLES put on one of the most prominent highlights of TANGK is an interesting one—and catchy, too. In places, the beat has been treated like an accordion, stretched out in some areas and compressed in others—the final, spoken-word monologue has been sped up, while the first five seconds are jumpstarted, recreating the static of plugging a guitar amp in. Meanwhile, Brown’s guest verse hurtles at breakneck speed; For me, there are some lines that come across rather corny (“On the surface/Looks like a circus/All these clowns around, pull the curtain”). However, at the very end, Brown’s lyrics align with the ethos of “POP POP POP” in the first place: an assertion of purpose, that purpose being staying true to yourself, spreading love, and being a source of protection for others. The final line sums it up nicely: “Took a couple wrong turns/Don’t know right from left/But found my way to the home that I strayed/And now I say everything is okay.” Can “POP POP POP” ever be improved? I highly doubt it, but I also doubt that this was meant to be an improvement—it’s more the kicking around with a preexisting idea with other collaborators, and in that experimentation, it creates an exciting take on one of the 2024’s best songs.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Forever Is Now – Mariama J. Lockington – “Searching for something you cannot hide/Looked in the wrong place, but should search inside/Relied on things that just let me down
But now I see what its really ’bout…”

“Sugar in the Tank” – Julien Baker & TORRES

Personally, I’ve never quite gotten on board with the queer cowboy aesthetic, but I can respect how queer people have been taking it back. In the first place, I think any kind of cowboy mythos attracts the kind of people who want to forge their own trails and make their own way without the constraints of society, a Venn diagram that seems to attract, strangely enough, both conservative people wanting to go back to “traditional values” and queer people who see an out from heteronormative culture. Growing up in the mountains, my association with much of it came from the former, even in our fairly liberal town (I say fairly liberal because there was the odd confederate flag or “if you’re reading this, you’re in range” sign on someone’s house). But I don’t mind seeing a bedazzled cowboy hat or a boygenius photoshoot out in the desert every now and then. Evidently, I’m too much of a city slicker.

The reclamation of country by queer people has gone in much the same way, and I’ve never been one for country in the first place (same association as above), but what I will give a try 8 or 9 times out of 10 is anything that Julien Baker is involved in. Now here’s an example of queer cowboy/country reclamation done right: nothing better than two lesbians making a song with a title referring to slang for an effeminate man and turning it into something positive and sensual. Musically, there’s twang aplenty, but at least for me, Baker’s talent screams at you like a neon sign—she’s whipped out the banjo once more, and it contrasts with the hazy overdrive that TORRES has applied to her excellent guitar work. The boygenius fan is me is more partial to how Baker’s harmonies fit with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, but it’s clear that she’s well-matched with TORRES, musically and vocally. I’m not 100% on board with the more country direction—it’s more on the alt-country side, but very much country-sounding—but I’ll give it a chance for Baker.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Road to Ruin – Hana Lee – will something close to post-apocalyptic, biker cowboys suffice?

“Man Research (Clapper)” – Gorillaz

I remembered this track after getting into “Bill Murray” a few weeks ago; as wonderful an album as Gorillaz is, I often find myself forgetting about some of the songs sandwiched in the middle; this one has the job of following up “Clint Eastwood,” and with how many tidal waves that classic made in the early 2000’s, any track following that up, like “Bill Murray” and “Feel Good, Inc.,” has an exceedingly hard act to follow. But in much the same way as “Bill Murray” brings down the tempo but keeps the creativity, “Man Research (Clapper)” provides a bridge between some of the more energetic heavy-hitters—“Punk” comes up right after it. Buoyed by a sample from Raymond Scott’s instrumental piece “In The Hall of the Mountain Queen” (delightful, honestly—feels like the title screen music for an ’80s video game and not in a cheesy way), it’s dominated by the rasping repetitions of Damon Albarn pushing his higher vocals to their limits—maybe there’s the excuse for why I forgot about it. A good portion is just him going “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah,” but that’s the mark of a great musician—sure, he’s just going “yeah yeah yeah” in front of a sample and some record scratches, but I eat it up every time. There’s a smooth cohesion to his craft that makes every separate element seem as though this song is their final form, their ultimate destiny to be brought together.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver – I picked this one more for the atmosphere than the lyrics—a similar kind of hazy and raspy energy, but with an undercurrent of vitality.

“The Slide” (Tall Dwarfs cover) – Shayne Carter

Some covers prove that the singer understands some part of the song more than the original creators. Not to front on Chris Knox, incredibly talented and oddball songwriters as he is, but Shayne Carter’s cover gets to the heart of what Knox and co. were going for as far as the tone and the emotion of the lyrics.

Tall Dwarfs aren’t going to be anything but jangly, and their original version of “The Slide” is no exception. It’s got a psychedelic, ’60s sway to it, faintly sunny…and then you get to the lyrics. And then you get the whiplash from hearing those upbeat guitars against the lyrics: “The doctors should kill/She’s terminally ill.” I’m sorry, WHAT? I’m not saying that songs can’t have lyrics that don’t match the mood of their music, but in this case, Shayne Carter’s interpretation does the song more justice. In contrast to Knox’s upbeat instrumentals, Carter employs solemn pianos, muted strums of an acoustic guitar, and an electronic drone that begins to circle around you at the 1:58 mark as you listen like vultures circling carrion. The acoustics sound like they were recorded at 3 a.m. in an abandoned gym with walls covered in mold. That atmosphere captures how disturbing the lyrics are—sparsely told, it recounts the experience of an 80-year-old, terminally ill woman wasting away in an institution. That cold, chilling echo gives the song a much more tangible setting and emotional depth; the spareness of it all makes the setting so much more unforgivable, with its featureless walls and constant chill in the air. That Radiohead-like, droning dread comes about as close as I would imagine to capturing that imprisoned, monotonous feeling of your mind slip away and being powerless to do anything about it, all the while surrounded by nurses who barely want to be there. It’s a tragedy of a song—it was written in the 1990’s, and while I’m sure conditions have somewhat improved for patients, these situations are a reality for so many people, whether or not they have control of their minds. The pen that Chris Knox and co. put to paper was a respectful and sympathetic one, but Shayne Carter deserves so much praise for how much his musical interpretation brought out the original sentiment—and made it even more emotional.

Sadly, it’s a story that partially came true for Chris Knox; he suffered a stroke in 2009, and has had a limited vocabulary ever since. He’s made a handful of public appearances and performances in the last decade or so, but he’s largely off the radar these days. However, “The Slide,” alongside many more of his covers from both his solo work and of Tall Dwarfs, were compiled on Stroke: Songs for Chris Knox in order to initially help his family pay the medical bills. I hoped that he hadn’t accidentally predicted his own fate with “The Slide,” but it seems that his family has been going to great lengths to make sure he’s taken care of. Even amidst the horrors he described, there are bright spots worth celebrating—namely, the love of family and friends during unpredictable situations such as his.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth – Andrew Joseph White – the institutions in this novel are different than the one in the song, but it’s just as oppressive—and deeply haunting and eerie.

“You’re Too Weird” – Fruit Bats

…okay! Going into this, I didn’t expect to be that well-acquainted with Eric Johnson’s chest hair while he stared longingly into my eyes, but here we are? 😀 Don’t think I needed all that…thank you Eric, very cool

Either way, it’s all part of the ’80s-parodying cheese of the music video, complete with mullets, long pearl necklaces, everyone’s hair being artfully blown by an invisible fan, and even a keytar. The best part is that every single band member is fully leaning into the cheese, with every band member hamming it up whenever the camera is on them. If I can erase the strategic view of said chest hair via Johnson’s unbuttoned shirt, “You’re Too Weird” is a great little indie track; Johnson has one of the more distinctive voices in indie music that I can think of, and he takes it to some of its extremes, hitting higher notes than I’d expect even from him. Like the ’80s music and videos that “You’re Too Weird” takes cues from, it’s an endlessly catchy love song, peppered by a tasteful guitar solo and tambourine here and there. I’ll have to bring this back once the weather gets warmer—it’s the perfect song for staring out the car window on a summer evening.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If You Still Recognize Me – Cynthia So – “They say that I’m not supposed to be in love with you/They say that you’re too weird for me/And you’ll leave eventually/But then I’m the only one who ever believed in you…”

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

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

The Great Big Wrap-Up of Everything | August-December 2024

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy New Year’s Eve! 2024 was…well. It sure was a year, wasn’t it? Things happened! Too many things. Man.

I’ll keep it short, because I’ve said something along the lines of the same thing for several months now. I like doing these wrap-ups, but they’re certainly time-intensive, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with the monthly schedule going into 2025. However, my brain does like sorting things into silly little lists with bullet points and whatnot, so I thought I would throw this together for the end of the year. Even though I was working so much, I did get to a lot of fun reads, and I didn’t want to leave them out! As I said in my 5-star Reads post, it’s been a rocky and anxious year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t populated with good reads—and moments in general—throughout. So, for the last time in 2024, here’s a wrap-up of everything from August to December.

Enjoy this massive wrap-up!

WRAP-UP: EVERYTHING I’VE READ SINCE AUGUST

AUGUST

I read 17 books in August! I don’t think anything for the rest of the year will measure up to having two 5-star reads back to back, but either way, this ended up being a lovely month for reading. Also, before everybody comes after me for DNFing Remarkably Bright Creatures…you can’t blame me after this line was said by a supposedly 30-year-old character: “bicep day was lit at the gym today.” How do you do, fellow kids?

Book Reviews:

1 – 1.75 stars:

Shark Heart

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Prince and the Coyote

3 – 3.75 stars:

Agnes at the End of the World

4 – 4.75 stars:

Contact

5 stars:

Beautyland

SEPTEMBER

I read 15 books in September! I was so caught up in my reading schedule being disturbed (somewhat) by school starting that I didn’t even realize that I didn’t have any 1 or 2-star reads! Miraculous. Either way, between my work, I was able to squeeze in some great reads for both Bisexual Visibility Week and Latinx Heritage Month.

Book Reviews:

3 – 3.75 stars:

If You Still Recognize Me

4 – 4.75 stars:

Ander and Santi Were Here

5 stars:

The Crumrin Chronicles, Vol. 1 – The Charmed and the Cursed

OCTOBER

I read 15 books in October! Spooky season, busy as it was, another great month for books—new Crumrin Chronicles, new books from Amie Kaufman and Eliot Schrefer…oh, and I finally read Hamlet after all these years. I’ve seen so many adaptations that I just found myself going “HE DID IT!!! HE SAID THE LINE!!! HE SAID THE LINE!!” whenever I saw a passage I recognized.

Book Reviews:

1 – 1.75 stars:

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Merchant of Venice

3 – 3.75 stars:

Scout is Not a Band Kid

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Heart of the World

5 stars:

The Crumrin Chronicles, vol. 3: The Wild & the Innocent

NOVEMBER

I read 14 books in November! I shouldn’t have to explain why I decided to read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet on Election Day. Jesus fucking christ. Also, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but either I’ve grown out of Rachel Caine, or I just read her better books in high school…maybe I should’ve read Ink and Bone when my taste was less discerning.

Book Reviews:

1 – 1.75 stars:

Ink and Bone

2 – 2.75 stars:

Timon of Athens

3 – 3.75 stars:

Time and Time Again

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

DECEMBER

I read 13 books in December, and rounded out my Goodreads challenge with 199 books read this year! I’d say that’s pretty impressive. December proved to have a solid bunch this month (to say nothing of the pretentious, 212 pages of nothing that was Orbital).

Book Reviews:

2 – 2.75 stars:

Orbital

3 – 3.75 stars:

A People’s Future of the United States

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Tempest

In lieu of my usual songs/albums that I’ve been listening to lately, enjoy some selections from my Apple Music Replay. It appears I’ve lost my hypothetical Welsh street cred (no longer in the top 100 listeners for Super Furry Animals…it’s been an honor), but it’s been replaced by being in the top 500 for XTC? I did listen to “This is Pop?” and “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” an unhealthy amount…

In addition, here are my Sunday Songs for each month:

AUGUST:

SEPTEMBER:

OCTOBER:

NOVEMBER:

DECEMBER:

Today’s song:

it’s finally cold enough to allow myself to listen to Victorialand! Great album to close out 2024 with.

Now, how to wrap up a wrap-up…all I can say is that I love you. My blog may not have the numbers of views and likes that it used to (even though the follower count has gone up…620 of y’all, oh my god, thank you!), but I treasure the small community that I’ve got here. I write these things mostly to write out into the world what I want to see and ramble about the things I love, but I’m grateful that, through it all, you’ve all stayed to stick it out and listen. I’ve always done it for myself and not in the service of getting more likes or views, so I’m glad that someone’s listening anyway.

I hope you all find love, solace, hope, or whatever it is you need in this coming year. In the grand scheme of things, I’m frightened (and hoping that my Canadian cousins have a room to spare up north, hahahahaha [SCREAMING]), but on the smaller scale, with the things I can control, I’m glad to be turning over a new leaf. It’ll be difficult, but I’ve built up the tools to go forward in a healthier, compassionate, and more loving way. Whoever you are, I hope 2025 brings what you need, big or small. As always: spread love, not fear or hate. Look at the stars. Keep on reading, watching, listening, and engaging with what you love. And most importantly, be kind—to others, and to yourself.

Lots of love,

Madeline

Posted in Uncategorized

The Bookish Mutant’s 5-Star Reads of 2024

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Some years make it difficult to focus on the good things. It would be easy for me to look back at this year and see that it’s been ruled by anxiety, because…well, a good portion of it was. I was incredibly anxious about a number of things this year, I’m on the precipice of some big transitions in my life, and we’re entering a dark time in our country’s history. It can be so all-consuming that I forgot that it did not, in fact, consume all. I do have some pretty proud achievements to count towards myself this year, but most of all, I got through it. Whatever gripped me, whether or not I should have been worrying about it, I got through it. And I’m here. And I’ll be here through 2025.

The amount of books I’ve read gets smaller every year, but it’s allowed me to be more selective. Sure, my 5-star reads shrink every year, but it’s proportional to how much I actually read. I’m more selective now that I have less time to read—that doesn’t mean that bad books slip through, but I feel like the amount of stinkers I’ve read has decreased, and I’ve expanded my DNF criteria to just mean books that aren’t egregiously bad, but that I don’t want to continue with simply because life is short. My 5-star reads this year consisted of the return of old favorites, anticipated sequels, and new-to-me books that blew me out of the water—a diverse patchwork of a rocky but ultimately fruitful year—and they were a part of what made this year good.

NOTE: I will not be including re-reads on this post; I re-read The Galaxy, and the Ground Within as well as the entire WondLa trilogy this year—obvious 5-star reads.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S 5-STAR READS OF 2024⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

HONORABLE MENTIONS (4.5 stars)

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you enjoy them as much as I did? What were your favorite reads of the year? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

That’s it for my favorite books of 2024! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/29/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: Patchwork songs, and a few too many lyrics that hit me like a train. It’s the final Sunday Songs of the year…I might as well ramble.

Enjoy the final Sunday Songs of 2024!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/29/24

“Tuesday” – mary in the junkyard

“this is my california” was my introduction to mary in the junkyard, but “Tuesday” was what convinced me to like them. [slides glasses up bridge of nose] Having listened to their entire discography now (read: a four-song EP and three singles), I gather that, whenever it comes time for them to release an album, I’ll be happy with the product, but I really, really hope that “Tuesday” is more the direction that they go in.

“Tuesday” might as well be three songs Frankensteined together into a neat five minutes, but in its shambling, stitched-up form, it packs an unexpected punch. Imagine: three figures hunched over a cauldron. One adds something adjacent to your typical sadgirl indie, one adds the juiciest bass-line you’ve ever heard, and another adds a skittering tribute to Radiohead’s “2+2=5.” Pieces of the patchwork monster reveal themselves in the light in the form of Clari Freeman-Taylor’s lyrics—a favorite of mine is “I feel like an alien here/Breathing from a separate hole.” As…gross an image that potentially conjures (no, not that hole, GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER), it’s apt for the jerkily combined spare and found parts of this song. It’s an urgent sprint through a foreign landscape, furtive as it darts into alleys and backroads as it tries to find its way around. The disheveled yeti in the music video seems more whimsical than the lyrics imply, but it’s nonetheless a story of a creature out of its element.

Freeman-Taylor, when interviewed for The Line of Best Fit, explained that “Tuesday” was written about living in the city for the first time: “[I] was feeling very small…I wanted to write about my yearning for chaos and realness—we all have wildness within us that we might be suppressing and we shouldn’t feel like aliens because of it.” Wildness and chaos are what stands out to me—”Tuesday” scampers with the speed of a frantic prey animal, cornered as it finds a new burrow to dart into. Cities and nature have a very different kind of chaos to them—a city’s chaos feels bred by the bustle of machinery and productivity, and it becomes so compressed and rushed that order births chaos; nature’s chaos comes only from the cycle of itself. That clash of opposite breeds of chaos is where “Tuesday” finds its not-so-happy, alien(ated) medium, the space between the shards of flint where the embers crack away.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino – isolation, alienation, and surviving both from suburbs to big cities.

“Julie” – Horsegirl

First off: in concert with an excellent song, I have to praise this incredible music video by Daphna Awadish Golan! Her style melds so well with the collaged aesthetic of Horsegirl’s album covers and sound; the music video consists entirely of black and white footage of cities, animals, and people colored in with pastels that jump away from the grainy shades of gray.

As for “Julie” itself, the song makes me even more excited for Phonetics On & On just because I entirely can’t pinpoint the direction that Horsegirl are going in—and that excites me so much. Sure, albums have their more energetic points and their slower points, but this track is only one song away from “2468” and lands just past the halfway mark of the album. Their first album, Versions of Modern Performance, was fairly cohesive in its tempo and the invitations of different sounds and lyrical styles; aside from the instrumental interludes, there were never any slowdowns unless it was to watch a song crumble (“The Fall of Horsegirl”), but even that was crunched out and artsied-up to the extreme.

That’s not to say that “Julie” isn’t artsy, but it touches a more introspective side that the band have rarely reached thus far. The skeleton, aside from the slower tempo, is as Horsegirl as ever: guitar slides that dart around like frightened koi in a pond, buzzing synths, and a healthy dose of “da-da-da-da”s integrated throughout. (Is it really Horsegirl if there’s no da-da-da-da?) Yet the lyrics deviate from their usual style of sticking nonsense phrases together. Whether or not there’s a real Julie behind it, they extend reflection and comfort towards a figure: “Well, there’s something on your plate/You wish it was morе than you could take/We have so many mistakеs to make/What do you want from them?” It feels like an encouragement to break from monotony and form; the colored-over footage of subways in the music video emphasize that impression, but the mistakes to make feels to me like an encouragement to be human, to break free of a routine or lifestyle that isn’t necessarily crushing, but nonetheless doesn’t serve you either. With the way that the Horsegirl gang has with weird words, it doesn’t surprise me that they have something more emotional in them, but either way, it’s a promising glimpse of Phonetics On & On.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Some Girls Do – Jennifer Dugan – “To have the same dream three times a week/Favors too big for you to keep/I have so many mistakes to make/Mistakes to make with you/You know I want them too…”

“Dory Previn” – Camera Obscura

The two-week gap between it doesn’t do it justice, but I’m reaping the benefits from Suki Waterhouse’s episode of “What’s In My Bag?” She’s got taste.

What is it with Scotland and cranking out soft-sounding indie pop bands in the late 90’s and early 2000’s? Does the weather necessitate that kind of tempo? No complaints of course, knowing that they produced this and Belle and Sebastian, who Camera Obscura were heavily influenced by. Even from all the way across the pond, “Dory Previn” has a nearly country twang, but it’s distinctly indie-pop, with its ever-stargazing, wistful delivery of Tracyanne Campbell’s lyrics or the muted instrumentals. The album title, Let’s Get Out of This Country, suggest more urgency, but “Dory Previn” implies that the sentiment is more out of quiet resignation; it’s a song at the crossroads, not ready to give up a lover, but at the same time “Sick of the sight of my old lover/Went under sheets and covers to get away from him.” Simultaneously wrapped up in the waning colors of the sunset and right smack in the emotional middle of 2 a.m., it feels like the exhausted yet determined position right after you’ve cried your eyes out; you’re embarrassed it took this long to decide, but you’re making a change—for Campbell, it’s the mantra-like repetition of “I think it’s time/I put him out of my mind.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Man o’ War – Cory McCarthy – “So I took a glimpse of Montana/Now nothing else matters/I’ll heal eventually…”

“The Wrong Child” – R.E.M.

Can we talk about Green? Genuinely, I think the only thing wrong with the album is that the album cover isn’t green. Probably a joke between the band members and the album artist, but the burnt shade of yellow on the cover does somehow fit how the album feels—sunny, but in a humid, Southern way. Sometimes it’s the eager yellow of energy and intent (“Get Up,” “Stand”), and other times it’s the fading yellow of a sunset over memories curling up and going sepia (“I Remember California”).

I’ve loved this album since late high school, but “The Wrong Child” was one that I was so used to skipping when it came on shuffle that it became lost. To be fair, the beginning is one of the less listener-friendly ones of the album, immediately opening with the out-of-sync clash of the mandolins and the key that Michael Stipe is singing in. (Can we talk about those mandolins? If anything else, Green will make you appreciate what a mandolin can do.) Once you stay with it—and I’m so glad I did on that fateful night in early December—it contains some of Stipe’s most evocative poetry on the whole album. The first verse should be in masterclasses about the ability of music to set a scene:

“I’ve watched the children come and go/A late long march into spring/I sit and watch those children/Jump in the tall grass/Leap the sprinkler/Walk in the ground/Bicycle clothespin spokes/The sound the smell of swingset hands…”

The smell of swingset hands! It’s so specific, but I can smell exactly what Stipe is describing, the medley of the sweaty scent of skin with the tang of metal smeared all over it. There’s some gravel mixed in if I dig deep enough. I can feel the tickle of every blade of grass, each ray of sunlight. But more than that, I can feel the deep-seated aching of this song. Over the years, there have been a variety of interpretations of the song, everything from a burn victim reintegrating into society to a young gay boy’s experience of homophobia. In 2008, Stipe admitted that he’s “fine with any and all interpretations that aren’t manifested in real life as harmful, hateful or violent,” but that it was loosely centered around “a kid who is physically handicapped, and left it purposely undefined.” It is distinctly othered song. I can’t relate to the severity of what the subject experiences, but even some of it rings true for me; I did feel isolated from my peers for quite some time, in part due to my SPD, among the varied things that made me different. There was never that outright bullying, but I could see it all in the periphery, the kids that laughed behind their hands whenever I had what they saw as an overreaction to an unexpected sound—some of that “Hey those kids are looking at me/I told my friend myself/Those kids are looking at me” certainly put a bit of a knife in my gut. But this subject has become so removed from society for whatever reason that they yearn for the outside world, even if its occupants do nothing but torment them. They attempt to self-soothe, but in the end, they try to mold themself to the outside world instead of the other way around, repeating the chorus like a mantra: “I’m not supposed to be like this/But it’s okay.” And god, Stipe’s delivery of “it’s okay,” the bleeding rawness of it…oh, god. Yeah. It gets me every time. It delivers that sense that the subject is trying so hard to justify their existence and their right to play with the other kids that they’ve convinced themself that they are inherently wrong. They try and try, but never reach the happiness the other kids have, and the only way they know to try to reach it is to convince themself that they’re the problem, not the prejudice and taunting of the others. That is what any kind of prejudice does to you: it convinces you that, even if you were born in the same way as humans have been reproducing for millions of years, that you’re wrong, and not the fabricated idea of rightness taught from a young age. In the end, I’m glad that Stipe kept the subject undefined, because it does provide a kind of sanctuary, a reassurance that none of us are alone in this experience, whichever lyric rings true.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Reckless Kind – Carly Heath – “Hey those kids are looking at me/I told my friend myself/Those kids are looking at me/They’re laughing and they’re running over here/They’re laughing and they’re running over here/What do I do?”

“The Key” – Kristin Hersh

“You don’t inspire a metric ton of trust/’Cause I’m on fire, and so is all my stuff.”

There. I could just leave it at that, and it would explain the whimsical cleverness of this song, kind of like “Little Bird,” which I talked about back in July. Once again, that wouldn’t work, simply because there are just too many good lyrics here. Leave some for the rest of us, Kristin! God. So selfish. Can’t we get some of whatever creativity inspired “If I lived in a pumpkin shell/I’d have the key/And if I had a daughter/She’d look a lot like me?”

I may use the word “whimsy” quite liberally, but there’s a kind of ethereal whimsy to “The Key” that I can only describe in images. This song was a frequent visitor in my dad’s car when I was young; I associate it the most with nights spent on the car ride back from dinner or road trips. As the sky darkened, so did the images in my mind—not in emotion, just in the amount of light that was let in. Kristin Hersh felt candlelit, the kind of music meant to soundtrack a child’s nursery in the early hours of night. The lyrics nearly call to mind Lewis Carroll—save for the absence of made-up words, I wouldn’t bat an eye if you attributed “Copper and snow/Make a dusky blue boy” to one of his poems, if he’d condensed them more. Less British, of course. (Maybe that’s for the best.) We’re not getting too “Walrus and the Carpenter” with it, but we sure are close. “The Key” is inherently soft; in that children’s bedroom, dated maybe 100 years ago, with flowery, peeling wallpaper and lacy curtains, I can see a pink, plush blanket over a bed tucked in the corner, yellowed by a lantern on the dresser. Hersh’s fingerpicking has a comforting repetition to it, chords blending into each other as gently as freshly-washed hair splays out across a pillow. In between all of these images, there’s a ballerina in a music box that squeaks as it spins in a circle. Sometimes it’s the one I had as a kid, sometimes there are subtle tweaks—longer hair, different painted eyes. Like that music box, the repetition is soothing in a way that few songs are—the song’s outro of “and we’d dance all night” is a promise, and one filled with golden-lit joy to come. As Hersh’s guitar fades out, I see that mother and daughter, dancing in circles. I didn’t quite get it when I was younger, but that repetition, that security, swaddled me up like a blanket.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer – “If I lived in a pumpkin shell/I’d have the key/And if I had a daughter/She’d look a lot like me…”

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

That’s it for the last Sunday Songs of 2024! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (12/24/24) – The Lost Story

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and a merry Christmas Eve (and Christmas, in advance) to those who celebrate! No matter your beliefs, I hope you’re staying warm and spending time with your loved ones this week. Happy holidays! ❄️⛄️🎄🍪

I discovered Meg Shaffer’s debut novel, The Wishing Game, about a month back and loved it. (Bottom line: if you’re an adult who wished they could’ve gotten Willy Wonka’s golden ticket as a kid, READ IT.) Naturally, I moved onto The Lost Story the minute it became available at the library. Although it wasn’t as strong as Shaffer’s debut, The Lost Story is a testament to the healing power of fantasy.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer

When they were 15, Rafe Howell and Jeremy Cox went missing in the West Virginia woods. Six months after their disappearance, they came back, seemingly unscathed. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is that they escaped to a fantasy world hidden deep in the Red Crow State Forest. But only Jeremy remembers their odyssey. Now, distanced for 15 years, Rafe remembers nothing about what happened that day, and Jeremy has a magical knack for discovering missing persons.

Emilie Wendell has gotten wind of Jeremy’s talent for locating the missing, and enlists his help to find her older sister, who vanished in the same stretch of woods where he and Rafe went missing all those years ago. With Rafe and Jeremy in tow, Emilie discovers a magical world that could have only sprung from the mind of a child, only visible to those who look hard enough. But confronting this world and its secrets may lead to the very reason that Jeremy and Rafe never spoke of their time together—and the reason why Emilie’s sister never returned.

TW/CW: near death situations, discussions of child endangerment/kidnapping (past), abuse (physical and emotional), homophobia, loss of loved ones (past), fantasy violence, mentions of suicide (past)

I never got around to reviewing The Wishing Game (which I liked better than The Lost Story) here, but it’s safe to say that Meg Shaffer is out here doing the good work, and by the good work I mean writing books about reclaiming childhood innocence and joy via the stories we loved as children. Having read both books, Shaffer really gets the power of stories—and the power of rediscovering them in adulthood. The balance between childlike wonder and whimsy and the harrowing realities that come with adulthood are a difficult balance to strike, but The Lost Story lives in the reality between them and never denies either aspect. Rafe and Jeremy’s journey of healing, rescuing people who may not need to be rescued, and realizing their love for each other was a rickety, emotional ride, but one that, once the plot got going, paid off in spades. Plus, I love that Shaffer made this story a distinctly queer one—I always love queer books, but the fantasy escapism plot with their queer identities made so much sense when you consider how fiction can be a sanctuary for queer people.

Part of what made that aspect of The Lost Story land so well was that Shanandoah truly felt like a child’s wonderland. There was a charm to the misplaced names (the Valkyries being only what a young girl would think of the real Valkyries of Norse myth, for instance) and the over-the-top magical ones, and each fantasy element had the nonsensical aspect of a child’s mind. This world is full of magical horses, impossibly sweet fruit, vengeful spirits, and everything a child could possibly populate a fantasy world with—and all of it is delightful. The Narnia influence was clear (it’s wonderful! Imagine C.S. Lewis without the proselytizing), but there was a whimsy to it that Shaffer excelled in—even if it was separate from the real world, she fully succeeding in making a world feel like it was ripped from the pages of a 13-year-old girl’s notebook.

However, I really didn’t see the point of Emilie being a part of the story. In contrast to Jeremy and Rafe’s complicated relationship, the only thread connecting her to the narrative was the fact that it was her sister who happened to have gone missing. Her personality bordered on grating—there wasn’t much to her other than a determination to find her sister and having her “teehee! so quirky”-isms when the plot called for it. (But did it really call for it?) My main issue with her is that she didn’t have the development that the other characters did. She witnesses the wonders and horrors of Shanandoah and comes out of it having barely changed, save for the fact that she’s reunited with Shannon. In contrast with Rafe and Jeremy, it just seemed increasingly obvious that she didn’t have as much business being there, even though she was purportedly the main character. The Lost Story might have been stronger if she had been nixed entirely—she was placed as the protagonist, but at its heart, it was the story of Rafe, Jeremy, and Shannon, not her.

Additionally, The Lost Story had some issues with its pacing. It took nearly halfway through the book for the characters to reach Shanandoah, the whole premise of the book. The first third or so, although Shaffer’s establishment of the exposition was spread out evenly, tended to drag. Instead of more development that could have lead more to the (excellent) arcs of the characters later on, we get drawn-out scenes of banter between the main characters once they reunite, as well as some tired training montages that could have been flattened out into a much shorter scene. As a result, the first half of the events in Shanandoah were rushed together—our heroes reach this famed fantasy land, and almost immediately, they’re separated and thrown on wildly different adventures that only converge in the last quarter or so. For such a grounded story, there needed to be more even allocation of events that truly mattered, which is why I couldn’t give it the full 4 stars.

That being said, I loved how the duality of the themes were tied together in the end. For all of the characters, the land of Shanandoah was escapism, but they had different ways of handling reality while in it. For Rafe and Jeremy, they couldn’t stay because there were real monsters they had to confront; Shanandoah worked both as a place for them to rekindle their relationship, but also to confront the very real demons back in the real West Virginia. For them, they had to return to the real world to heal. But for Shannon, Shanandoah was the realest part of her life. She had gotten into a situation that no child should ever be placed in, and for that, her childhood wish for another world came true, and it became her sanctuary. If The Lost Story had gone with either interpretation, I would’ve been happy, but I loved Shaffer’s approach in depicting both sides of fantasy and escapism. Fantasy can be a place to ignore all of your troubles, but also a place you return to when you need healing. Even if it’s fictional, it can be the truest, realest part of you. Both can be true.

All in all, a heartfelt and heartstring-tugging fantasy for all of the kids who wanted to return to Narnia. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

The Lost Story is a standalone, but Meg Shaffer is also the author of The Wishing Game.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/22/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

Before I begin, here are the Sunday Songs from the past two weeks, as I had to crawl my way through finals hell and didn’t have time to write here. As with Hounds of Love, I PROMISE that I’ll end up talking about Before and After Science: Ten Pictures someday, because that album is spectacular. In the meantime…

12/8/24:

12/15/24 (or, “I haven’t seen Priscilla, I’ve just seen Suki Waterhouse’s episode of What’s in My Bag“):

This week: I didn’t intend for a) my color scheme to line up with the trans flag or b) the cover of this week’s Book Review Tuesday, but trans rights. Obviously.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/22/24

“Well Well Well” – Le Tigre

There’s nothing like looking through YouTube comments on this video and slowly piecing together that there was some kind of huge argument under them circa 2008 that, because of it being so far back, is impossible to trace the beginning or end of because the reply function gets weird to track after 10 years or so. Not to be defeatist about these things, but it seems that so long as there arises new technology, humans will find a way to use them to engage in pointless arguments. Given the band, there’s probably some butthurt republican of yesteryear at the end of it, but the point still stands. (But also, who the hell goes into a Le Tigre song and thinks “ah, yes, this will align with my conservative views?”)

Le Tigre is going to prove a vital wellspring to tap into for the next four years or so. In these dark times, we look to the gospel of Kathleen Hanna. (Also to my mom, who was the one who remembered “Well Well Well” in the first place). This is one of the songs where Le Tigre’s switch from Bikini Kill’s guitars to synths makes perfect sense—it’s a song of going through the motions, not unlike a machine. Hanna and Johanna Fateman deliver the lyrics with all of the enthusiasm of reading an instruction manual: “Well, what do you like/And what do you need?/How should I act/And who should I be?” Never have I heard a song so delightful in its over-the-top performance of being perfunctory: there’s no pleasure to any of it.

Which brings me to the subject matter—given some of the subtle (and not so subtle) sexual references in the music video (which was incredibly made, so kudos to Elisabeth Subrin and her direction), there’s an overtone of women being expected to exist only to please men, especially when sex is concerned. It’s all about men’s pleasure, and as with the lyrics, there’s no regard of what the woman wants—it’s all just “What, where, when, how, when, who?” on the woman’s part. Even if, sadly, that one Ben Shapiro tweet is fake (we all know that the sentiment behind it is probably true), even now women are expected to always be receptive, anticipate of every single need of men, and exist only to fulfill their needs. Obviously, it extends far beyond sex and into any aspect of life, as any woman or AFAB person knows all too well. That’s part of the genius of Subrin’s music video—aside from the fact that the fonts and animations are gloriously early-2000’s, the corporate atmosphere of it does capture the restriction of being under those patriarchal expectations: going through the motions and constantly awaiting another mindless task that brings you no pleasure. Genius.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Luis Ortega Survival Club – Sonora Reyes – the story of an entitled boy who thinks that he can get away with anything—and the students who push back against his chauvinist actions.

“this is my california” – mary in the junkyard

A promise for the new year, or at least for the next few weeks: this is not the last you’ll be hearing of mary in the junkyard here on The Bookish Mutant. The band name (who’s mary and why’s she in the junkyard?) was what originally grabbed me, but discovering them turned out to be those once-in-a-blue moon finds—they combine a reverence for 90’s alt-rock with an artsy sensibility that’s distinctly 21st century, unafraid of letting their melodies collapse like a crushed-tin can and reform as an entirely different creature. They’re good. They’re the product of a collapse of sorts—founding members Clari Freeman-Taylor and David Allison were originally part of Second Thoughts, a band that found success on TikTok but grew increasingly stifled by the music that made them popular. Their move? Break up, switch around some members, and start anew.

“this is my california” is one of their gentler, more restrained efforts (you’ll see what I mean next week…stay tuned), but even their restraint feels fresh somehow. I’ve pinpointed several comparisons for mary in the junkyard, but the one that immediately comes to mind for this track is Luna. From the easygoing, sidewalk-ambling pace to the warm pulsation to guitars to…well, you can’t blame them for the California part. It doesn’t help that “this is my california” rings close to “California (All the Way),” but it doesn’t feel like a rip-off—in fact, that wide body of songs about California makes the pairing enhance the lyrics. Freeman-Taylor has never been to California, but described it in an interview with Northern Transmissions as “a paradise or idea of success that didn’t really resonate with me.” Her California, as it I’m sure it is for hundreds of people, owing to Hollywood and its side effects, is an ideality, but one that’s just out of reach—”My dream/Comes from the pale light of a bright blue screen.”

It feels like a critical part of growing up and realizing that your lifestyle doesn’t align with what you once thought it did. You’re stuck in that place and think that you’re the only one feeling this way, but you realize that the path before you is even clearer than before. That image of California is a place for other people’s dreams, but not yours—there’s a physical distance, too. Certainly fits with that separation from the earlier sound they were boxed into before forming this band. These lines sounded wistful to me at first, and there’s plenty of wist to go around, but one of the last ones sounds more liberatory now than anything: “If you go to California/We will not stay in touch/I’ve never been to California/And I will keep it as such.” I feel this song echoing through me in every transition—getting away from my middle school classmates in high school, then realizing in college that my high school classmates wanted a different kind of college lifestyle than I did and forging my own path. Not everybody needs California. Lots of natural disasters and whatnot.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Where You See Yourself – Claire Forrest – diverging from other people’s expectations, but also the ones you’ve set for yourself.

“Memories” – White Poppy

If anyone on this Earth is deserving of being named Crystal, I think it’s a musician who makes a song like this. Her name is Crystal Dorval, and I really, really wish I remembered how I discovered her song, for the life of me. It was all a haze. I realize I’m talking like an aging stoner recounting the sixties. But no, it was the COVID lockdown, and to this day, I’ve never touched drugs of any kind, unless you count coffee. I floated from album to album, song to song, not quite absorbing all of them, but all of them sticking to me anyway. “Memories” is one such artifact from that time. I don’t remember where I found it, but it sticks—unpainfully and untainted thankfully—as a distinctly May 2020-or-thereabouts artifact.

“Memories” is one of those rare songs where the feel of the song, the album title and the album cover collide to create the most cohesive picture of the music possible; the pale blue and pink filter on the cover, combined with a lens flare that punctures the image of a person walking down a bridge into a forest, is as rippling and light as the music itself—Paradise Gardens is the name of the album, and, very likely, where that bridge leads. (Was this what George Bluth Sr. was missing all along?) As crystalline as Crystal Dorval’s name, “Memories” twinkles along in a dreamlike haze, untethered save for the thick baseline keeping it anchored. Even that anchor ripples with the rest of the glimmering, the edges blurred along with Dorval’s echoing vocals, which do sound like the whispers echoing from inside of a glittering geode split open. It took me until my Cocteau Twins summer to bridge the gap, but if you’re searching for something close to a modern analogue, look no further. Nobody can top them, of course, but Dorval has most certainly attended the Liz Frazer School of Dreamlike Music. I suspect the reason that she didn’t get a perfect score was because her lyrics are decipherable and have a concrete meaning. Either way, if you need to drift off for four minutes and five seconds, climb aboard.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Stardust Grail – Yume Kitasei – the album cover for Paradise Gardens, as well as the dreamy feel of the music, ripples in a similar way to how I imagined Auncle’s chromatophores. I promise it makes sense.

“Bill Murray” – Gorillaz

The joys of being a fan of a band with a treasure trove of B-Sides (or D-Sides, I should say) never end. It’s intimidating to see two whole albums of B-Sides from Gorillaz in particular, but if anything positive can be said about the Apple Music algorithm, it reminds me that they exist.

Being the B-Side for “Feel Good Inc.” has to be the worst job in the world for a song. It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it. When I say that “Bill Murray” is an afterthought, I don’t mean it in a derogatory way at all. It does feel distinctly like a B-Side, but some songs are meant to be B-Sides—products from restless minds that were never meant to be center stage, but create a more nuanced picture of what came out of their famously fruitful sessions. Even the title is a bit of an afterthought—the lyrics aren’t much to go off of, but Jamie Hewlett suggested the name off the cuff after seeing his name in a magazine while discussing the song with Damon Albarn. Even though it only came to fruition during Demon Days, it traces its origins back to 1999, for the recording of Gorillaz’s self titled album. “Bill Murray” screams Phase 1, and that’s what so charming about it to me—Albarn’s wistful vocals, backed by The Bees, call back to the plaintive high notes of “Man Research (Clapper),” while the easygoing rhythm could fit right in with “Slow Country.” Had it been sandwiched between, say, “Sound Check (Gravity)” and “Double Bass,” it could have been a smooth transition—a temporary cooldown for an album brimming with energy. But on its own, “Bill Murray” proves that even the songs that Gorillaz cast aside in its early days were constructed with nothing but passion and intricacy.

As I said, even Gorillaz’s afterthoughts had plenty of polishing up on their own. Here’s an extra from the special edition of Bananaz, where you can see Albarn, Hewlett, and The Bees recording this song, complete with the usual antics (and chicken noises).

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Full Speed to a Crash Landing – Beth Revis – “Bill Murray” seems right at home in the atmosphere of this novella—even amidst all of the climactic space opera machinations, Ada has time to quip and slip into her easygoing personality.

“A Bowl and A Pudding” – Wilco

Cousin, huh? It truly is the gift that keeps on giving. As full of hidden miracles as Cruel Country was, I think I’ll side with Cousin at the end of the day if we’re picking sides as far as 2020’s Wilco albums. (But why pit two Tweedys against each other?)

The more Cousin reveals itself to me, the more the album art makes sense. The original art is a photograph by sculptor Makoto Azura; this piece is Frozen Flowers 2023, and it’s one of his many botanical sculptures, many of which are frozen and propped into snowy landscapes. As much of a visual learner as I am, his sculptures immediately draw me to the sense of touch; with every separate flower frozen into its neighbor, I can imagine the ridges of icicles under my fingertips, of the curve of each individual petal and leaf as they were compressed into coldness. It’s so befitting of Cousin because the whole album is an exercise in textures. As with each individual shade of the vibrant botanicals in the sculpture, unique sounds blister and twirl next to each other, from the ear-popping cacophony (and possible all-time album opener, for me) “Infinite Surprise” to the dusty dewdrop softness of “Sunlight Ends.”

“A Bowl and A Pudding” was one of the Cousin tracks that flew under the radar for me. The bar was unreasonably high after some of the tracks that I mentioned, as well as “Pittsburgh.” No skips, the more I think about it, and this track adds to that pantheon. In comparison to some of the more in-your-face textures on the album, this song is more understated; it’s more of the woolen fibers of a sweater or the gentle trickle of water after you’ve left the faucet running by mistake. It’s softly cyclical. The acoustic guitar notes swallow themselves, the fingerpicking as gentle as sunlight through a window. Tweedy’s lyrics are similarly cyclical, every one parroting the other in whispers, laying bare the dissolution of a relationship. That calmness makes the title feel like a still life. It’s up to you whether the bowl and the pudding are two separate items or if the pudding is in the bowl by design…or maybe that’s the point of the lyrics. Is it? Is the togetherness of the bowl and the pudding meant to reflect the separation and alienation that Tweedy narrates as someone he loved slips away from him? The bowl loves the pudding because it fills up the empty space that was molded to hold something. The pudding loves the bowl for the security, but does the pudding want something more? Can it be contained? Is the pudding in question the kind that is even served in a bowl in the first place? Is the bowl sick of being created solely as a vessel to hold other things?

Oh, god. Got too English major with it. A note to my parents: I guess this means that my degree is going to good use?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Feeling of Falling in Love – Mason Deaver – “I can tell/How long this night is gonna be/And the one you love/Is not me…”

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (12/17/24) – Can’t Take That Away

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

For the time being, I’m back! Safe to say I was swamped this semester, so I’m glad that I’ll have about a month of rest before I go back to school for the spring semester. When I wasn’t writing here or in my WIPs, I wrote around a combined 24 combined pages for various papers…and they say being an English major is easy…

Either way, I’ve had Can’t Take That Away on my radar since it came out in 2021. As with most other books on my TBR, there’s no real rationale for it languishing there for so long. I ended picking it up because of the premise; queer YA and MG books are bearing the brunt of bans and challenges here in the States, so I wanted to support them whenever I can (even if it’s already a good amount of what I read). (I can’t find anything definitive on whether or not this one was actually banned or challenged other than one Goodreads reviewer shelving it as such.) Either way, though it had its flaws, the storyline of Can’t Take That Away feels ripped right out of the headlines, and it’s a vital piece of literature for trans teens looking to find their voices.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Can’t Take That Away – Steven Salvatore

Carey Parker was born to be a diva. With an unwavering love for Mariah Carey and aspirations of stardom, they have fought tooth and nail to express themself the way that they want. So when a friend convinces them to audition for Elphaba in their high school’s production of Wicked, they seize the opportunity—and land the leading role. Yet in spite of their apparent talent, parents and teachers cause an uproar about genderqueer Carey’s casting in the role of a leading lady. With mounting threats to kick them out of the play and dismantle the production all together, Carey must find their voice in order to prove that they deserve to be heard—and sing.

TW/CW: homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, misgendering, physical assault/violence, descriptions of injuries, bullying, gender dysphoria, suicidal ideation, cheating, loss of loved ones

I have nothing against Wicked, but reading this while being oversaturated with all things Wicked every time I opened up Instagram was an experience, for sure…I guess if Carey were a real person, they’d be over the moon at the prospect of the movie, so there’s that.

Without a doubt, Can’t Take That Away is a story that needed to be told. For the most part, I applaud Steven Salvatore for delivering this novel with unflinching realism (about 90% of it, at any rate. More on that later). The plot—parents and teachers cause an uproar when a genderqueer teen takes on the role of Elphaba in their high school’s production of Wicked—feels like a headline waiting to happen. I have no doubt that it’s already happened. My only minor complaint is that the main villains (Mr. Jackson and Max) felt cardboard, but they too, in a way, felt like the adults raving and ranting about “gender ideology” and the online trolls bent on tearing queer people down. They leaned on the side of exaggeration, yet…some people are just like that, unfortunately. That realism is what fueled the story; Carey’s manifold struggles, from grappling with gender dysphoria, bullies, and first love, was delivered both candidly and sensitively. Salvatore didn’t hold back from the ugly parts of some of these topics (be warned—happy ending aside, it’s a rough ride), but it made them all the more important to show that, like the plot, Carey is as real a person as your trans classmate. Carey could easily be someone in your life, and that was what made the story ring so resonantly.

That being said, I felt that the romance was incredibly messy, and not necessarily in a good way. Having Carey have their first love as they’re fighting to find themself was a good side plot in concept, but…it was just a dumpster fire for no reason. I don’t know if this is just me reading YA and no longer being a teenager, but half of the romantic drama felt unnecessary in contrast to the very timely, very upfront main plot. Why did Carey need to kiss some random guy in a basement while they were dating Cris? How are Carey and Cris just okay with everything that the other did? Maybe this is just me, but if my partner kissed somebody else in a basement while we were dating, I wouldn’t come running back…see? MESSY. Can’t Take That Away already had high drama aplenty, and I know that’s a hallmark of YA to some extent (that I appreciate), but this bordered on ridiculous.

I’m rather conflicted about the ending. It was wrapped up quite neatly, which isn’t inherently a crime, especially since it’s YA. There are bound to be some things that are tied up more nicely than they would be in real life. Can’t Take That Away is aimed at high schoolers, and unless it’s too neat, this quality isn’t always an instant flaw in YA books. That being said, Can’t Take That Away bordered on taking that to an extreme. After the protest, the cops are immediately on the side of the queer people and people of color, and have almost no hesitation about punishing the white male perpetrators of the hate crimes. Carey’s protest immediately goes viral, and they get so famous that they get free tickets to see Mariah Carey and go onstage and sing with her. The bad guys get their comeuppance almost instantly, and the good guys get the greatest rewards possible. I’m not saying that Carey and company didn’t deserve a happy ending—they absolutely did—but it felt unrealistic to a point where it almost felt like the fulfillment of a fantasy. Sure, that’s what writing’s for to some extent, but when dealing with a plot that felt ripped from the headlines, the resolution felt much less so. You can give characters a fulfilling, satisfying victory that feels earned and realistic!

Yet at the same time, queer kids deserve these kinds of stories. There are easily infinite examples of straight characters getting unrealistic endings that end in instant fame and wish fulfillment, so why shouldn’t Carey? Why shouldn’t all of the trans kids reading their story? Yes, it made me roll my eyes a little when this story, one that ended well enough, had to escalate everything to “and then Carey got everything that they ever wanted in life! Yippee!” But after the deluge of hatred and violence that Carey endured throughout Can’t Take That Away, why shouldn’t they get that ending? This novel is not escapist by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s a kind of necessary escapism in these stories—very real circumstances resolving with the absolute best possible outcome with no strings attached. Sure, it was a stretch, but Carey deserves it—and so do all of the queer teens reading this book.

All in all, a book with flaws here and there, but ultimately proved a timely story about finding your voice. 3.5 stars!

Can’t Take That Away is a standalone, but Steven Salvatore is also the author of And They Lived…, No Perfect Places, The Boyfriend Subscription, and the forthcoming novel When Love Gives You Lemons, which is slated for release in May of 2025.

Today’s song:

this is the least fitting pick for a book about a teen who loves Mariah Carey, but I only pair books with songs in my Sunday Songs, so…enjoy the whiplash. Bon appetit!

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