This book has been on my radar for quite some time—I’m always up for a good urban fantasy every once in a while, and the V.E. Schwab comparison had me hesitantly optimistic. I figured it would be a good read for AAPI Heritage Month, but…alas, it was such a mess, and ultimately not worth my time.
Joan is set to have the perfect summer. She’s staying in London with her late mother’s side of the family, amidst historical buildings, a steady job (with a handsome co-worker, Nick), and the smell of magic in the air. But when a disaster leaves most of her family dead, Joan is confronted with an ugly truth—she comes from a long line of time-stealing monsters. Worse still, the handsome Nick comes from a long line of monster hunters. Can Joan hone her powers before the monster hunters track her down?
TW/CW (from Vanessa Len): murder, violence, blood, loss of loved ones (on & off-page), substance abuse, xenophobia (fantasy), racism, interrogation, brainwashing, weapon use
DNF at 27%.
Before I get into my rant: I’ll always appreciate how much time and love it takes to write a book and put it out there. Any kind of creative output like this is highly admirable, and I can give this novel a certain degree of slack knowing that it’s Vanessa Len’s debut novel. That being said, Only a Monster really wasn’t it for me, and sometimes 1-star rants can be good for the soul as long as they aren’t actively hurting anybody. Gotta air it all out sometimes.
I went into Only a Monster expecting for it to be a nice break from some of the denser books I’d just read—something fun, something charmingly over-the-top. And…well, the over-the-top element was very much present, but not in a good way at all. From what I read of this novel, it was really just a mess that lacked any sort of nuance whatsoever.
We had the setup right from the start—a monsters versus monster-hunters conflict, “Joan is not the hero of this story,” et cetera, et cetera. Before reading this, I figured a lot of that language was just going to be for the sake of putting a nice hook on the front cover and other marketing purposes; I assumed that the book was going to get into some of the morally gray (as much of a buzzword that’s become with books these days) aspects of that conflict, but…no. From the get-go, we’re hit over the head with a comically large sledgehammer that JOAN IS NOT THE HERO OF THE STORY!!! and that BEING A MONSTER IS BAD BAD BAD!! and that MONSTERS AND HEROES!!!! DO NOT MIX!!! EVER!!! It’s not so much a theme so much as it is a metal pipe that gets painfully shoved down your throat. It got to the point where I felt like it was insulting my intelligence—I didn’t need to be told all this over and over. I really didn’t. Jeez. It could’ve been developed somewhat compellingly, but….no.
Beyond that, I didn’t know going in to Only a Monster that there was going to be a dreaded love triangle, which…[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]
If there’s anything that can instantly ruin a book, it’s that. THERE’S NO NEED. And the setup wasn’t even anything that hasn’t been done before—each love interest is on one side of the conflict (monster and monster-hunter), and while I didn’t care to stick around to find out how it was resolved, I had a feeling that it would end up as a trash fire. What I did manage to get, however, was the description of Nick as “stupidly good-looking.” Can we please, as a society, get rid of this? Please? It’s starting to become just like “she let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding” at this point. Again: zero nuance.
All in all, a bitter disappointment of a book that lacked the creativity and nuance that the blurb and reviews promised. 1 star.
Only a Monster is the first in Vanessa Len’s Monsters trilogy, which will continue with Never a Hero (slated for release this August) and an untitled third book.
Today’s song:
WE LOVE THE MAGNETIC FIELDS IN THIS HOUSE
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This post was brought to you by the never-ending Dark brainrot (it consumes), my disappointment in Kindred’s TV show adaptation, and the continued Palehound Panic™️. But this is all merely the calm before the storm, because now we’ve got the news that Blur is coming out with a new album in July…BRACE YOURSELVES
Somehow, it was this song, and not the original, that made me realize that the line was actually “the dark, sacred night” and not “the dark, say goodnight.” Whilst I was crying my eyes out at the Dark finale. Whatever it takes.
It’s been about two weeks now since I finished Dark and got through that gut-wrencher of a finale, and I can say with absolute certainty that I doubt I’ll ever emotionally recover from…well, anything about that show. I’ll spare you any spoilers, other than the fact that this song is present. But hopefully that part shouldn’t be a surprise, at least, with how the show-runners have now triple–dipped with the Soap&Skin needle drops, including the theme song itself. I may be an atheist, but the atmospheric covers of Soap&Skin and the eerie, dew-covered-forest, small-town-murder-mystery-that-turns-into-something-way-worse aesthetic of Dark together is a match made in heaven. There’s something that she brings to this near-untouchable song (except for a third grade singing program that I did? I think), that no one else could have—it’s got all of the makings for the same haunting instrumentals of her cover of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil,” but it’s impossible to take any of the love or hope out of this song. The synths make it sound like something that would’ve been in the running for a Golden Record candidate (or at least the backing track to a shot of a satellite in space), and Anja Plaschg’s rich, cavernous voice create a shadowy atmosphere, but one illuminated by an undeniable light at the end of the tunnel. It’s impossible to make this song sound anything but hopeful, but there’s different ways that hope can sing—and this was a perfect fit for the tearful, bittersweet ending to a series that’s taken up a welcome amount of space in this brain.
But while I’m here, I will offer the following…this was a great song to send off Dark with, but consider: “Blood of Eden?” Again, no spoilers, but…it’s all right there.
Except this time, one show is a time-travel masterpiece, and the other is FX’s adaptation of Kindred. Octavia Butler deserves better than THAT. (@ the showrunners: Kevin being a somewhat static character in the book was NOT a sign to make him into a total dudebro. The X-Ray Spex shirt isn’t fooling anyone.)
However, as generally peeved as I was with that show, if there was one great thing I got out of it, I’d point to this deliciously eerie Beatles cover. I’ve since given up the whole “don’t cover the Beatles” mindset, even if we are living in an uncharted sea of awful “Here Comes the Sun” covers, because with how influential they were on…well, almost every aspect of rock music that you can think of, there’s infinitely many things that can be done with these songs, classics as they are. Take picking this song to cover—the original song is nothing short of experimental, psychedelic insanity, deliriously noisy and filled with rubber duck noises at random intervals, as one does. It’s glorious. It’s a childhood staple of mine. But Junior Parker’s taken all of the trimmings off of it, slimming it down like a tree stripped of its bark. When the dust settles, all we’re left with is bass, soft drums, scattered keyboard chords, and Parker’s sonorous, bluesy voice. The bare-bones construction of this cover makes “Turn off your mind/Relax, and float downstream” feel like a chilling whisper of coercion, not a famous allusion to psychedelics. I never thought that this song could get quite this ominous—and, despite my general beef with the Kindred show, it was a perfect fit for the show’s atmosphere—definitely the best needle drop of the show, right at the end of episode 2. It wasn’t all bad, I guess.
Listen. I only know the basics of studio recording technology, but somehow, it’s “Night Time is the Right Time” that makes me appreciate what they were trying to do in the 50’s—not necessarily what it could do, but what it caught. The version I have on my iTunes library is plenty scratchy, cloaking almost everything in that signature fuzz you get from most recorded music up to the 60’s or the 70’s. It’s charming—it’s the sound of the era. But here’s the thing—the key word is almost. In almost every recording that I’ve listened to, no matter when it was mixed, Ray Charles’ voice sounds as clear as day. You could probably chalk that up to the main goal of said recording technologies being to record his voice first and foremost, but I can’t help but romanticize that in my head, Charles’ resonant voice soaring through any technology and defying any attempts at being aged. But no matter how fuzzy or remastered any recordings get, it’s always a beacon, the foggy gleam of a lighthouse across the sea.
And on the other side of the coin, there’s Margie Hendrix’s iconic voice—not spared the fuzz, but with what I’d argue is an almost equal amount of power. She put everything into that first call of “BABY!” and never slowed down. Her voice did fall victim to the scratchy fuzz, but her declarative growl of a voice almost fits with it; there’s a rough edge to Hendrix’s voice, the kind that makes my throat raw just thinking about belting out those notes. Knowing she was in her early twenties when she sang that makes it all the more impressive. It’s a voice that instantly conjures an image—screwed-up eyes, mouth open wide, putting every ounce of lung power into the verse that you have. The song is a testament to both of their talents, what little that I know about either of them—but either way, there’s a reason that they called Charles “The Genius,” and just as much of a reason for the influx of YouTube comments declaring their love for that iconic shout of “BABY!”
Another find on my quest to absorb as much of Palehound as I can before Eye on the Bat comes out, here’s a single that El Kempner released about a month before it all went wrong. February 27, 2020, to be exact. Yeesh. Simpler times.
I noticed a pattern after listening to both Dry Food and A Place I’ll Always Go—indie-rock lightness and guitar fun are the main priorities, but Kempner always has a few melancholy, slower tracks to balance everything out, nudged just past the middle (“Dixie”) or nestled at the end (“Feeling Fruit”) of any given album. “See a Light” allows this breed of Palehound to stand on its own. It’s the perfect vessel for Kempner’s whispery voice to flourish, drifting along like fog amidst the homegrown, shoegaze-y, bedroom production. It gently crawls along to a slow drum machine and glossy guitar notes, settling in your lap like a kitten. Distortion creeps in at perfectly calculated moments, fuzzing up the edges of the instrumentals and Kempner’s voice. Beyond all of that, it’s one of the best instances of album covers (or single covers, in this case) perfectly matching the feel of the song(s) itself—the combination of the handwritten typeface and the basketball hoop taken over by bright green vibes, set against a cloudy, gray sky, matches all of the bits that make me go back and listen to this song.
📢YOUR REMINDER TO SUPPORT JIM NOIR ON PATREON (link above) IF YOU CAN HE’S AMAZING📢
Ever since Jim Noir has started said Patreon, we’ve gotten a handful of his older catalogue in between the new EPs. One such offering is this—a collaboration from 2000, between himself and a longtime friend, now remastered from the original ten tracks and expanded to 30 (!). (For reference, the tracks are grouped into four chunks on the Patreon link.) It’s not the first time that Jim Noir, under whichever name, has offered up his experience with making ambient music (see Omission Sound, also available on Patreon). I’m not as well versed in ambient music in general, but I’ve gotten tastes of it from him over the years; usually, I’m ambivalent about it—for me, his ambient music functions mostly as background music, plus the odd sample with a nice layer of distortion thrown in. But “Cubist Castle – Part 1” feels different than Omission Sound’s Solutions—there’s something cheerier about it that sets it apart. Including an early version of “Everytime” (a bright soundtrack to many a painful hour studying during the pandemic), “Cubist Castle – Part 1” has calm woven into it. Although some of the later parts get plenty ominous, there’s something so gentle about this first chunk—the tinny, bubbly synths, samples of birdsong and beach sounds…it’s just nice, simply. Nice. Nice is often such an inadequate word, but given the background-music nature of this album, it fits. It’s like the auditory version of a baby sensory video. I’m just glad that all of the essay writing that I did to the tune of “Cubist Castle” didn’t ruin it.
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!
I haven’t been able to do a book tag in a bit, so I figured that it would be a good time to do it now that I’m out of school! I found this one over at Laura @ The Corner of Laura, and the tag was originally created by Aimal @ Bookshelves and Paperbacks. I am a devoted Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s lover and a lover of ice cream in general, so this looked like the perfect tag to do!
Let’s begin, shall we?
🍨 THE BEN ‘N’ JERRY’S BOOK TAG 🍨
VANILLA CARAMEL FUDGE: pick a light, fluffy contemporary
Contemporary usually isn’t my go-to, but Perfect on Paperis one of the best YA contemporary romances I’ve ever read—truly excellent bisexual rep!
MINT CHOCOLATE COOKIE: a new release that you wish everybody would read
The Isles of the Godsis my most recent 5-star read—Amie Kaufman never misses with any of her novels!
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE: a book containing your OTP of OTPs
Not to commit author double-dipping on these tags (I always do…oopsie), but my love for Kal and Auri from the Aurora Cycle knows no bounds. (I’m getting all excited about these books all over again because I got a friend of a friend to pick up a copy of Aurora Rising at the airport…WE CONVERTED HIM)
MILK & COOKIES: two authors, who, if they collaborated, would go perfectly together
I feel like Leigh Bardugo and Roshani Chokshi could do something really interesting together! They’re both excellent at YA heist fantasy novels, so I’m sure their powers combined would result in something super fun…
BOSTON CREAM PIE: a bookthathad you turning pages late into the night
I got House of Hollowfrom a Christmas gift card last year! Even though my expectations were low (I tried to keep them low so all of the hype it got wouldn’t disappoint me), Sutherland’s prose was incredible!
CHOCOLATE THERAPY: a book that makes you feel better after a long day of life
COFFEE, COFFEE, BUZZBUZZBUZZ! : a book not yet released that you can’t wait to get your hands on
I was so excited to hear about A Song of Salvation!Anything by Alechia Dow automatically has to go on my TBR, and I can’t wait to have more adventures in her established universe. It comes out in about two months…
+ anyone else who wants to participate! If you see this tag and want to do it, I’d love to see your answers! If I tagged you and you’ve already done this tag/don’t want to do it, my bad.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this book tag! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
If my constant blabbing about Aurora Rising from the past four years should bring you to any conclusion, it’s probably that I’m a massive Amie Kaufman fan. So when I heard that she was making her solo YA debut this year, I was BEYOND excited!! I immediately preordered, and it came right when I’d just finished up my first year of college—the perfect present! And even though I’ll always pick sci-fi over fantasy, if anybody can make a fantasy that I’ll give 5 stars, it’s Amie Kaufman.
She’s been tagging along with her father on the high seas since she was a baby, but now, he’s left Selly to her own devices in the port town of Kirkpool. Intent on tracking him down, she tries to set sail, only for her plans to go awry at the hands of Prince Leander, who wants to hitch a ride for his own gain—to seek out the storied Isles of the Gods, where the ruling deities of her world are fabled to be laying in a restless, dormant sleep. But when a disastrous assassination attempt leaves Selly and her crew stranded, she has no choice to trust Leander—and make it to the Isles no matter the cost.
From what I can tell, The Isles of the Gods is a book around a decade in the making, a passion project that Amie Kaufman had been crafting relentlessly in between releasing some of her other collaborative novels. So there’s automatically 10 years of love in this novel—and boy, it really did show.
I’ve preferred sci-fi to fantasy for years, but leave it to Amie Kaufman to craft a fresh setting that kept me turning the page for hours! I’m already a sucker for pirates in fantasy, and that aspect was executed with just the right balance of campy fun and nail-biting stakes. And after parsing through all of the rich facets of the world that Kaufman created, it’s left me with one question: what’s keeping authors from creating more industrial/advanced fantasy settings? Consider me done with fantasies with automatically medieval settings, can we do more 1920’s-inspired fantasies that don’t just focus on the jazz age stuff? I didn’t know I could possibly yearn for the melding of magicians and old-timey cars quite this much, but I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again: if anybody can do it, IT’S AMIE KAUFMAN.
Kaufman’s writing, as it always is, was the real star of the show in The Isles of the Gods. There’s something instantly transporting about her prose—from the first sentence, I felt dunked headfirst into this lush, rich world, from the gripping prologue to the delightfully suspenseful final sequence. Maybe this is just a consequence of me being so attached to her writing style, but she has such a way of drawing you into the story in record time. Every book is a little world in and of itself, but hers never cease to feel tangible. Reading fantasies with sea settings are always fun for me, being about as landlocked as you can get here in the U.S., but reading this reminded me of a passage from Neil Gaiman’s The Oceanat the End of the Lane, about the protagonist imagining that the rain pattering against his window at night was waves on the hull of a ship. Good thing it was pouring rain when I was reading this book.
And speaking of Kaufman’s writing—now that I’ve seen her solo and collaborative works, I can say with certainty how clever of a writer she is. She sets up common conflicts that threaten to drag down the book, but whips them into cunningly-subverted left turns that kept me guessing all through the novel. A whole bunch of characters that you *can’t* quite tell apart, but are still personally relevant to the protagonist? Oh look, a botched assassination attempt that gets rid of them! Have a lovable but borderline one-note character who hasn’t had the chance to prove themself? Put that sorry little man in a Situation!™️ It may be diabolical, but it made my enjoyment of the book increase that much more—nothing like trope subversion and avoidance left and right to keep you on your toes.
As for the characters, I’m not quite as attached to them as I was with the squad of the Aurora Cycle, for example, but that’s way too high a bar, even if it’s still Amie Kaufman, but I did adore a lot of them! There was clearly so much love and care put into Selly, and it showed—she had a beautiful arc, and she was such a determined and lovable character to root for. Leander’s type of character—the charming, spoiled prince that the protagonist can’t help but fall for—has been done since time immemorial, but Kaufman’s take on the trope resulted in some lovely laughs and a slow-burn romance done right!
And…yes, I felt a little too called out by Keegan. The “bookworm who hasn’t seen the light of day in way too long” was already there, but…dude. I just shaved my head in January. DUDE. AMIE KAUFMAN, STOP PEEKING INTO MY BRAIN LIKE THAT. YOU COME INTO MY HOUSE, AND YOU MAKE A GENDER-SWAPPED CHARACTER OF ME?
Jude and Laskia (especially the former) didn’t get quite as much page time, but they were incredibly intriguing as not-quite-antagonists, but puppeteering each other and subsequently being puppets to political forces beyond their control. I kept getting hints that Laskia was going to turn to Selly/Leander/Keegan’s side, but now that we’ve seen ✨the cliffhanger,✨ the future is uncertain…hmm. I didn’t quite get the promised “squad” vibe that the blurb promised, but I have a feeling that the two camps are going to merge sooner than later…
Also, we love an absolutely Indiana Jones final sequence. NAILED the fantasy brand of campy.
One sidenote—Amie Kaufman said several times that Isles was going to have LGBTQ+ rep, and all we really got was the lesbian couple that appeared for a total of…maybe three pages? Which, yeah, that’s all well and good, but the question that many readers had about said rep was if any of the protagonists were going to be queer, and…so far, nothing? As much as I loved this book, I can’t help but be a little disappointed on that front.
All in all, a gripping, cinematic, and utterly lovable solo venture from one of my favorite authors. 4.75 stars, rounded up to 5!
bonus Hobbes content
The Isles of the Gods is the first in a planned duology, concluding with an unnamed final book slated for release in 2024. Amie Kaufman is also the co-author of the Illuminae Files, the Aurora Cycle (with Jay Kristoff), the Starbound trilogy, and the Other Side of the Sky duology (with Meagan Spooner). On her own, she is the author of the middle grade Elementals trilogy.
Today’s song:
loving this album hnnnnngh
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy Mother’s Day!! Eternally grateful for my wonderful mom—who knows what I’d do without her. Love you 🫶🏻
Alas, even though “Cool About It” is still my most listened to song of the year so far, the Boygenius Breakdown™️ has made way for some Palehound Panic™️ (or, alternatively, a Palehound Party™️?) so I can catch up on everything before Eye on the Bat comes out this July (!!!!). Feast your eyes on the spring color scheme.
And just when I thought that I’d already gone through almost all of my most anticipated albums of the year…
Even though I haven’t filled in the sonic gaps between this new sound, Black Friday, and A Place I’ll Always Go, I’m all on board with this new Palehound! There’s power in every note of “The Clutch,” from first notes of Kempner’s voice to the unrelenting chords that follow the rest of the song. El Kempner has such a unique voice—it’s hard to think of any other artist whose voice is simultaneously whispery and rowdy, and she embraces the rough edges on every part of this song. Underneath all of the pounding drums and incredible guitar work is some of Kempner’s sharpest lyricism to date: “I didn’t mean to hurt you/You didn’t mean to show me how,” followed closely by “I’m glad that you know better now/And I’m glad that you found yourself/But you didn’t need my help…” WHEW those are some LINES right there…and what better way to close the song with a shouting outro of “you didn’t need my help”? If this song is any indication, Eye on the Bat is gonna be the perfect summer album—and a fantastic album in general. SO glad I got on this Palehound kick all the way back in September. Haven’t regretted a single minute of it.
The only acceptable way to dance to this song is to dance like you’re one of those wooden snakes from the craft store. The ones that make those crack-crack-crack noises when you wiggle them around?? Please tell me somebody knows what I’m talking about, please…
right, THESE ones. Just gotta feel it. Flail. Castanets do that to a gal.
Usually I try to put my album listening in the hands of fate (read: the list randomizer), but after the Palehound Panic/Party subsides, I think it’s shaping up to become Peter Gabriel Summer 2: Electric Boogaloo. Why? It’s only taken 3 songs to convince me to listen to Peter Gabriel 1: Car (because he’s That One Guy who puts out 4 self-titled albums for kicks and giggles and refused to make any title more than one word long after that). I’d already heard this album’s iconic hit “Solsbury Hill,” but after hearing this back to back with the equally wondrously weird “Moribund the Burgermeister,” I just know that Car is gonna be a wild ride.
Fresh off of his split from Genesis, Peter Gabriel’s prog rock action has never quite ceased, but from just this song, it seems to have taken on a life of its own, morphing into something that’s purely him. It’s a song of many faces—starting with quiet synths and weary vocals for the first minute, and then breaking down into some absolutely INSANE castanet/accordion-aided craziness that lasts for all too short of a time. The instrumentals just feel so delightfully kooky (you know it’s gonna go nuts when the accordion comes out) before bursting out into some classically prog sprawl as Gabriel’s voice and lyrics deepen in scale: “from the white star/come the bright car/our amoeba…” And the amoeba, as it happens, was his first daughter, Anna-Marie Gabriel, who had just recently been born. I don’t know about you, but I’d be honored to have a song this weird to commemorate my birth. Just saying.
I was going to say that this was a left turn from the other Palehound song on this post, but…no, “The Clutch” is probably the one that’s a left turn, really, though I can’t say how much of one it is without having listened to Black Friday…nevermind, this is pointless without context…ignore me
After “The Clutch” came out, I made it my mission to start dipping my toes into more Palehound before Eye on the Bat comes out in July. A Place I’ll Always Go was next chronologically, so I went right in—I’m still torn on whether I like it better or as much as Dry Food, El Kempner’s debut, but it’s packed with songs that have kept me listening long after the first run-through. This one quickly became my favorite track off the album; it’s got a sound that’s so close to being fully-realized—all at once, it sounds purely like Palehound, but still reeks of Wilco influence. Kempner’s wry, meticulously constructed lyricism bursts forth in every measure (“Sun above her/never had a lover in my room”), but the instrumentation, even though it’s all her, just screams Wilco—the neat percussion and soft, restrained guitars have Jeff Tweedy written all over it. I can almost see the guy in a buttoned-up denim jacket and a beanie holding his acoustic guitar in a completely horizontal line somewhere in the background. But Kempner’s whispery rasp of a voice, slowing coming out of its burrow, makes sure that this track is all her own—and it’s an excellent one. I can’t help but nod at the endlessly hooky chorus—”she keeps me up/she keeps me up/she keeps me up/at night,” the last word drawn out intoxicatingly.
I haven’t made a habit of consulting any of Apple Music’s auto-generated playlists like I used to when I first started using the platform. But sometimes, when I’m in a musical drought, or if I’m just bored, I’ll have a look. Usually, I only ever find one or two interesting songs, but sometimes there are ones worth keeping.
All I knew about Fenne Lily beforehand was that she’d toured with Lucy Dacus somewhere along the line. But this song is so calming; sometimes, songs linger on the precipice of exploding into sound without ever getting there, but this song never feels the need to stretch itself to places it can’t go. It’s subdued, but subdued in the exact way that it should be. Lily’s voice is smooth like mercury, whispery at the edges but moving along like frigid water in a creek—the perfect indie-folk kind of voice. The song’s title was what originally grabbed me, but from what I’ve heard of her newest album, Big Picture, I love its thesis—trying to write songs about the small things and forgettable days that we let fly by. There’s a comforting coziness to everything about “Dawncolored Horse”—the soft, sparkly guitar riffs scattered throughout, Lily’s voice, and the gentle percussion. It almost feels like I’m in the tiny, model house on the album cover, looking through the glass. And just like the album cover, it really does feel like a tiny memory under a glass case.
And now, let’s end with a relic from my “not-like-other-girls” period in 8th grade trawled up by the enigmatic deep-sea fishermen of my iTunes library on shuffle, shall we?
I got swept up by Car Seat Headrest right in the middle of middle school (and not because of my early teenage crush on Will Toledo…yeah), and if I had to put a soundtrack to 8th grade, they would dominate the glut of it. Every bus ride, vacation, and absentminded hum were probably along to them—probably kind of concerning, given their lyrics, but we all do weird stuff in middle school. I’m almost positive that I bought this one off of an iTunes gift card that I’d gotten for…graduation? Maybe? It’s a distinctly April-May 2018 song for me—I can’t place a specific memory to it, but the feeling is so distinct that it’s become its own little time capsule.
And now, having not listened to it in years, some of these lyrics remind me of what endeared me to Car Seat Headrest all that time ago. Even though I didn’t quite understand it at the time, I still smile at a particular line near the end of the song—”most of the time, I’m just getting older/but I’ll get to heaven standing on your shoulders.” Despite most of this song’s complex grappling with religion (with the many references to both Judeo-Christian religion and Hinduism scattered throughout—he really just loaded this one up, no wonder it’s almost 7 minutes long) and life itself, there’s a darkly humorous element to it; “God” isn’t always God, but Chris Lombardi, the founder of Matador Records (“got to believe that Lombardi loves me”), and the strained chanting of “hey man, we listened to your demos” throughout. This one’s definitely a little contrarian as far as lyricism goes—early on, Toledo claimed that he was attempting to let the lyrics flow naturally and let the words speak for themselves without putting symbolism in beforehand. And yet…after that first verse, he just stuffed it with enough references and idiosyncrasies to fill a Thanksgiving turkey. It’s a rich song, from the callbacks to so much of his earlier catalogue to the thick web of lo-fi instrumentation surrounding his muffled, honeylike voice.
Or maybe that’s all for naught. Maybe it’s just as he claims:
“Bees?”
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!
Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles! I wrote most of this post in advance, but as of now, I’m about to move out of my dorm!! I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY FINISHED MY FIRST YEAR OF COLLEGE!!
Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and I’ve compiled another list of book recommendations for the occasion! Diverse reading shouldn’t be restricted to a single month, but it’s so important to amplify marginalized—in this case, AAPI—voices during this month. My lists serve as guides to read during not just their respective months, but any time you’d like.
However, this year is a little different. Even though I’m too lazy to change the header image (sometimes you’ve gotta be a bit stingy with your media space), I’ve decided to put both YA and adult books on this list. I’ve started to read more adult books in the past few years, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t include some of these books on this list. So it’s a slightly wider pool to choose from this year—read at your leisure!
Huntress (Ash, #0.5) – Malinda Lo: (Fantasy, LGBTQ+) normally I wouldn’t put a prequel/spin-off on a list like this, but this one can stand on its own—worth a read! | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Not Here to Be Liked– Michelle Quach:(Realistic Fiction) a wonderfully feminist read about a high schooler’s battle with sexism in her school newspaper. | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In the Watchful City – S. Qiouyi Lu: (Science Fiction, Fantasy, LGBTQ+) a multilayered anthology-novella centered around a strange cabinet of curiosities! | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Portrait of a Thief – Grace D. Li: (Mystery, Thriller) a group of Ivy League students turned thieves and con artists set off on a mission to return prized art back to China. | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Stories of Your Life and Others – Ted Chiang: this anthology contains “Story of Your Life,” the inspiration for the movie Arrival, and although that was the only story in the collection to absolutely wreck me, all of the stories were fantastic! | ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Light from Uncommon Stars – Ryka Aoki: (Science Fiction, LGBTQ+) if you can think of anything, there’s a good chance it’s in here somewhere—aliens, donut shops, and cursed violins, oh my… | ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75, rounded up to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by AAPI authors? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
I FEEL LIKE I’VE ASCENDED TO ANOTHER PLANE OF EXISTENCE HELP
That’s it for this list of recommendations! HAve a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I put this one on my TBR years ago, and I only fished it out of the void a few days ago, after looking for some books to read for AAPI heritage month. I’d read mixed reviews, so I went in with low expectations, but I came out with a fantastic and nuanced story of feminism in a high school setting!
Eliza Quan knows that she’s qualified for the position of editor-in-chief at her high school newspaper. She’s been with them since the beginning of her high school career, and sure, she may not be the warmest person 24/7, but she has what it takes to bring the newspaper to new heights. The problem? Her classmates don’t seem to think so.
When she loses the editor-in-chief election to Len DiMartile, who only joined the newspaper after an injury prevented him from playing baseball and decided to run against her on a whim, she feels as though all of her hard work has come to nothing. And she knows she’s qualified—so why does this sexist activity keep running amok in her school? After pouring out her thoughts in a manifesto, Eliza thinks it’s all over. But after the manifesto is posted to the paper’s website without her permission, it causes a ripple effect of protest and accusations. Among the sides being taken, can Eliza transform this drama into genuine change at her school?
Don’t you just love it when you’ve forgotten about a book existing, so you go in with low expectations, and you end up dazzled? Top 10 feelings, for sure.
I’ve read my fair share of feminist, realistic-fiction YA in my day, and sadly, it’s easy for them to miss the mark, whether it’s introducing diverse characters for the sake of intersectionality and doing nothing with them (Six Angry Girls) or having a protagonist who only focuses on very surface-level aspects of feminism without getting any more nuanced (half of Watch Us Rise). But Not Here to Be Liked delivered the nuance, heart, and punch that it was supposed to, making for a powerful story of systemic misogyny and leadership.
I think some of the reviews seemed to miss the point when talking about Eliza—she’s a great character, but she’s not intended to be entirely likable. It’s in the title, after all! Sure—she’s determined to make the school paper as good as possible, and sometimes, that comes off as abrasive or strict. But that’s the point—were she a man, these traits would be praised: she’s “too harsh,” but he’s “willing to take charge” or “a fearless leader.” See the double standard? That’s what this book was trying to say all along. And Quach did an excellent job of having a flawed but incredibly root-able protagonist: every position that she takes is a laudable one that’s backed up more often than not. Eliza was robbed of her position, simply because a man’s charisma meant more than a woman’s experience and talent.
Not Here to Be Liked also portrayed how we think of feminism so well! As soon as Eliza’s manifesto is leaked and both support and vitriol begin to flow towards her, many of her classmates stand behind her, but their support is often half-baked; it’s a great commentary on that shallow, hollow white feminism that’s so prevalent among people who aren’t willing to do anything politically uncomfortable: slapping an “I am a feminist” pin on your shirt, saying “smash the patriarchy!” a few times because it’s briefly profitable, and being done with it. This novel does an incredible job of dissecting the true nuance of feminism and teaching others that making genuine change isn’t simple or easy—there are always more layers than you think there are. It’s never just about gender—it’s about race, sexuality, class, and so many other facets of our national (and international) identity. And even though this book doesn’t necessarily cover every bit of it—it’s a big ask for a single book to cover every single component that falls under feminism—it didn’t need to: misogyny and racism were the main focuses, and they were dealt with in a nuanced way. Apart from a misunderstanding of the Bechdel test (the book seemed to interpret a lot of it as how much real women think about men, when Bechdel’s focus was more about how female characters are written, especially in male-dominated Hollywood), it’s a great view of feminism in a YA setting.
Plus, with all of my gripes, Not Here to Be Liked did something of an enemies-to-lovers romance pretty well! Going into this novel, that part was what I was most suspicious about, but Quach, unlike many romances with “enemies-to-lovers” slapped onto them as a buzzword, actually handled in a way that felt authentic. The stages of Eliza and Len’s relationship didn’t feel like it was cut into neat, digestible slices—they had their ups and downs, and the result wasn’t entirely black and white, either. That’s what love is. It’s not quantifiable by any of the labels we put on it, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Personally, I didn’t think that they had a whole lot of chemistry together, but their relationship was well-written enough that I could push some of that to the side.
All in all, an incredible story of one young woman’s fight for justice in her high school that scores high on its protagonist and depictions of feminism. 4 stars!
Not Here to Be Liked is a standalone, but Michelle Quach is also the author of The Boy You Always Wanted, which is slated for release on August 1, 2023.
Today’s song:
almost finished with Kindred on FX, and I have mixed feelings about it, but for now, at least I got this eery Beatles cover out of it
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Here we are in May, and I’m very nearly done with finals (and my first year of college? how 😀), and now I’ve got a fresh batch of songs, brought to you by a wikipedia rabbit hole, a beautifully cursed mashup, and what happens when you absorb too many Twilight memes by osmosis without actually watching or reading it. The internet is a lawless wasteland.
does anybody know if this extended version is anywhere on streaming? I’ve only been able to find the shortened version…honestly a crime if you ask me
Like a lot of songs that end up on these posts, I stumbled upon this one fairly randomly—a Stereogum post on Instagram from a few weeks back commemorating 20 years since Nina Simone passed away. I just heard a snippet, and immediately went hunting for it on Apple Music—there was something so deeply captivating about it. And judging from the wikipedia rabbit hole I went on yesterday evening instead of writing this part of the post, it won’t be the last time. (“Sinnerman?” OKAY I DIDN’T EXPECT TO JUST…ASCEND THERE FOR A MINUTE HOOOOWHEE I’m gonna talk about that one in a few weeks at least, mark my words) But this one’s been on my mind a lot recently. From what I can tell, much of Nina Simone’s legacy is built from her more famous protest songs (see “Mississippi Goddam”), which damaged her career in the sixties but solidified her as one of the most important musical figures of the civil rights movement. This one slightly fits into that category—it’s a cover of sorts, mashing up two songs from the musical Hair (“I’m Black/Ain’t Go No” and “I Got Life” respectively). But even beyond the way Simone made these songs mesh together so effortlessly, there’s something more that she breathed into this song. Given the context of her life and her continued fight to help civil rights efforts in the U.S. and how much that affected her musical career, there’s something that she put into this song that nobody else could’ve. Even as her songs were banned from airplay and her career took a hit, she kept on producing this music, a commanding declaration of “I’m here, and there’s nothing you can do about it—You may have beaten my spirit, but here I stand.” Can’t get much more beautiful than that.
There’s really no feeling quite like when shuffle digs up an old favorite from the depths of your music library. Unparalleled euphoria of remembering what it was like listening to a song for the first time…
That being said, I feel like I’ve lost Pretentious Gay Hipster™️ points since…this is only one of about three (tops) Sleater-Kinney songs that I actually like. Carrie Brownstein is great, don’t get me wrong—I love her work on what I’ve seen of Portlandiaand in The Nowhere Inn, but Sleater-Kinney just rarely does it for me. I saw them live with Wilco a few years back, and…okay, I spent most of their set waiting for Wilco and hoping I’d like something, and I did like a few things. (There was also the secondhand embarrassment of them telling everybody to sing along during “Modern Girl” and very few people singing…oopsie) But I’ve never been a fan of either Brownstein’s or Corin Tucker’s voices—they work together, to a certain point, but they verge on grating for me. And other than this and “Modern Girl,” there’s nothing that’s really pulled me about most of their songs.
And admittedly, the minute that I found out that The Center Won’t Hold, which includes “Can I Go On,” was produced by none other than the woman, the myth, the legend, St. Vincent, it all made sense. I like this song because I like St. Vincent, not necessarily because I like Sleater-Kinney. There’s St. Vincent all over this song, from the plethora of effects on the guitars, which scream and shimmer in equal measure, to the chrome-like polish that doesn’t discredit the indie-ness of the band, but still makes it sound as smooth as ever. And even though I’m not a fan of their voices, the commanding harmonies of the chorus scream in perfect tandem, making for a rallying cry of a song that makes exhausted lyrics sound triumphant. A sprinkle of Annie Clark magic makes everything better.
We know it. We love it. What is there to say about this song that hasn’t already been said? So I won’t bore you. I’ll narrow it down to it’s two biggest contributions to pop culture (I think):
Beach House has been one of those bands that I really should be super into, given my somewhat shoegaze-leaning tendencies. The only reason is that I haven’t gotten around to listening to everything—I’ve loved the handful of isolated songs that I do know (“Space Song,”“Levitation,”“Woo,” etc.), and Bloom is on my insurmountable album list thanks to a recommendation from, of all people, my 9th grade honors English teacher. (I really shouldn’t be surprised about that. I bumped into him at a Spiritualized concert not long before I graduated last year. Shoegaze recognizes shoegaze.) The Beach House awakening, or something along those lines, is bound to happen soon, but for now, I’ll stick to random songs found in random places.
Like this one. Of course the song that I happened to randomly find in the background of a video was on their B-Sides and Rarities album. Again: I don’t have the Beach House experience to necessarily back this up, but with their other songs, I’ve noticed a slight degree of intentional production polish to make their songs sound as spacey as possible—which they absolutely do. But this song has all the lo-fi feel of a demo without losing any of that enchantingly drifting quality, with every instrument cranked up to sound as starry as possible. Victoria Legrand’s vocals always make me want to close my eyes and levitate (no pun intended), as the best shoegaze does—taking its sweet time to sweep you off your feet and into the clouds.
Unlike something like The Kick Inside, I’m not sure, even though scattered Kate Bush songs like these have grown on me a ton, that I’ll go all in on The Red Shoes. The only other song I’ve heard is “Big Stripey Lie,” and…okay, to the disappointment of Kate Bush’s #1 fan (my brother), I really haven’t been able to get into it, now matter how hard I try (sorry 😭). I appreciate the weirdness, but…it doesn’t do anything for me personally. And I’ve heard that the rest of The Red Shoes isn’t the best of her work, but I’m not about to diss everything about her. This queen just got inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, after all, I’ll put some respect on her name. Why wouldn’t I be, since this song stands before you? IT’S SO WEIRDLY CATCHY. I LOVE IT.
This seems like it leans more on the radio-friendly side of Kate Bush, but even she can make radio-friendly as oddball as she can. Her voice transforms from her ordinary singing tone to a velvety hiss to something as springy as the rubber bands she sings of. It’s a delightful trickster of a song—it still sounds firmly 80’s, even though it was released in 1993, but then it devolves into Bush saying “here I go :)” all innocently, and then dropping into the most wondrously weird and distorted “uhh-UHH-uhh-UHH” chorus I’ve ever heard at around the 3:40 mark. There’s a full horns section. You’ve got some Van Halen-y guitar solos sprinkled in. Under the reverb-y, 80’s polish, her weirdness has never ceased. Regardless of how you view the merits of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, you can see how much of a shoo-in she was.
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!
Honestly, it’s a wonder that I managed to get my hands on this book when I did. I heard about it from a few “out this week” blog posts from other book bloggers (thank you!!), and as of today, the book’s only a week old. I put it on hold on the Kindle library, and it came in surprisingly quick, to my relief! I was super excited by the sci-fi premise, and in most of the relevant aspects, it absolutely delivered!
The method of space travel that 17-year-old Jessica Mathers is familiar with isn’t the kind you’d expect. In for the process to work, teleportation is a crucial step—the body that you’re in on Earth isn’t the same one that goes to space. But either way, after six years of waiting to reunite with her scientist parents on a faraway exoplanet, Jessica is going to space.
But when she wakes up, she’s alone in the wreckage of the ship that was supposed to carry her and the crew, stranded on an alien planet. The walls of the wreck are covered in the evidence of something sinister, and her parents are nowhere in sight. And a teleported clone of herself may be the only person she can trust—and the only person for miles around on this planet.
TW/CW: sci-fi violence, blood, murder, body horror, loss of loved ones
tread lightly – this review contains some spoilers!
Sci-fi that references old(er) poetry is an incredibly niche demographic, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t squarely in the middle of it. You got me there.
This book kind of came out of the blue for me—I forgot that Matthew J. Kirby existed after reading a few of his books in middle school (sorry), so Star Splitter was more of a left-field pick for me. But despite its flaws, it was a fascinating and gripping read—certainly a better addition to the world of YA sci-fi!
Hard sci-fi is hard to nail down for a young adult book; astrophysics and quantum mechanics are hard for anybody to understand, but I can speak for myself as an (older) teenager and a longtime YA when I say that it might be even harder to understand for a younger-skewing audience. Not to insult anybody’s intelligence—I’m fully including myself in there, in all my new English major glory. But Kirby hit the near-perfect balance with explaining the mechanics of teleportation, and how it factored into space travel. It wasn’t explained like it was being explained to a child, but it didn’t dump all of the information in an unceremonious chunk of jargon, either. And it’s a super fascinating concept to boot—it adds a layer of suspense to an already suspenseful book, there’s significant ramifications for most everything about the world that Kirby sets up, and there’s an existential aspect too. It’s all great there.
The story itself held a lot of water for me as well! There was so much to pick apart in it‚ from Jessica’s existential conflict about interacting with her own clone (HUH) and her own body to the mystery of what happened to the DS Theseus and its inhabitants. (Also, loved that we had a spaceship called Theseus. I’m assuming it’s a nod to the Ship of Theseus, but it also works on another level when you consider what happened with the crew. I won’t spoil anything about that in particular.) Kirby’s writing consistently kept all of that afloat, juggling two different timelines with suspense unfolding in both of them. His descriptions of the landscape of Hades (Mr. Kirby really likes his Greek mythology, huh?) were also nothing short of lovely—I’m a sucker for any kind of alien planet exploration, and Star Splitter, for the most part, adequately scratched that itch.
I say “for the most part” because, as much as I loved it, there were so many parts that seemed too important that were just left out of the final conflict. The sideplot about the ruins of an alien city with a giant pile of ground sloth-looking skeletons???? Bioluminescence everywhere?? BEING PURSUED BY AN UNSEEN ALIEN IN THE SHADOWS??? That was my favorite part of the whole novel, but we really didn’t get any resolution to it. It felt like such a crime that we never got to see where that thread led, given how much it was foreshadowed and otherwise built up. I get that it wasn’t necessarily the main conflict, but Kirby gave it a similar amount of weight to the main conflict, so it felt like it was in need of a more satisfying conclusion than “Jessica got out of the city ruins somewhat unscathed.” I NEED MORE. GIVE THE PEOPLE (ME) WHAT THEY WANT.
I feel like this happened a lot with Star Splitter for me—aside from the main conflict, there were so many fascinating and inventive things going on with the world that felt so creative, but were just tossed aside as afterthoughts once they were explained. The fauna on Hades? Mt. Ida? QUANTUM GHOSTS? I was just taken aback by so many parts of the plot, only to have them scrapped in favor of the main conflict, which I…halfway understand. All this is to say that said main conflict was excellent, but I just wanted more. It wasn’t like Star Splitter was an exceedingly long novel either—320 pages leaves some room to explore at least a few other aspects of the world, I think. That’s why I’m *officially* putting my rating at 3.75 instead of the full 4 stars—there was so much creative stuff to chew on, but not enough of it was expanded upon. I’ll be needing a sequel, please and thank you. 🫶🏻
All in all, an inventive and fascinating sci-fi novel that presented a plethora of creative aspects to fill up the plot, but still left me wanting in some places. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!
As of now, it looks like Star Splitter is a standalone, but Matthew J. Kirby is the author of several other books for children and young adults, including the Dark Gravity Sequence (The Arctic Code, Island of the Sun, and The Rogue World), The Clockwork Three, A Taste for Monsters, and many others.
Today’s song:
getting caught up on Palehound before Eye on the Bat comes out…another great album!! this song reminds me so much of Wilco
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This monthly wrap-up was brought to you by the letter ‘S.’
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
Well, here we are. It’s nice and warm outside, I’m only about a week and a half away from finishing my first year of college, and “Cool About It” is my most-listened-to song of the year so far, according to Apple Music. Yeah, I’m fine.
Somehow, I’m finally at the stage in the school year where everything is starting to wind down. My really stressful finals finals moment ended up happening…a good two weeks before I really should’ve been doing all that, but there’s something to be said for starting projects early and finishing them before everything is supposed to get stressful. (My secret? Overthinking and overestimating how close due dates are. Works like a charm.) Now that finals are right around the corner, I really don’t have a whole lot to do, blissfully. All is quiet. No stats tests to bomb at 7 am in a building I’ve never even set foot in before. I have achieved inner peace (becoming a humanities major).
That being said, working on all of these projects did eat up a good amount of time that I’d normally be reading, or blogging, and all of my other silly little activities, so my reading did take a relative hit. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t find some great books—I got to some anticipated releases, and I have another 5-star read to tick off the list! There were several non-review/Sunday Songs posts that I was eager to get to (see below), and I managed to get them all written, so I’m glad about that. Also, finally finished the Broken Earth trilogy…[incoherent, muffled screams intensify]
Other than that, I finished Dark (CORRECTION: IT FINISHED ME. GO WATCH DARK), watched Beau Is Afraid (forget Beau, dude, I’m afraid…also very overwhelmed…), had some fun on Easter, got a nasty cough (just now getting over it 😭), and started packing up my dorm. Time…time is a thing, huh?
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 16 books this month! I wasn’t able to read as much because of finals season, but it’s been a decent, if slightly more on the “miss” side of hit or miss, bunch. I did get a 5-star read, but said book was Thom Yorke’s lyrics and poetry combined with Stanley Donwood’s older Radiohead art, so that was bound to happen.
Also, I unintentionally read an abnormal amount of books that start with the letter ‘S’…do with that what you will.
The Bookish Mutant 