Tag: 2025

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/15/25) – Afrotistic

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

April is Autism Acceptance Month, and although I probably won’t have time to make a whole post about it (blame finals), I figured I would review a book with an autistic protagonist and an autistic author! This one’s been on my TBR for a few years, but I was only able to find a copy more recently. Although it wasn’t perfect, it’s a great book to introduce a younger audience to autistic issues, especially from a more diverse perspective.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Afrotistic – Kala Allen Omeiza

15-year-old Noa Ohunene Jenkins doesn’t know where she fits in—or if she can fit in at all. All of her life, she’s never felt Black enough or autistic enough. And now that she’s moving to a new high school, she doesn’t know if she’ll fit into either communities—much less her new school. Noa has her mind set on one thing: a place in the Dean’s Merit Society. The problem is, the only way she’ll get in is if she has leadership experience. Scrambling for answers, she decides to gather up fellow autistic teenagers and forms a group to discuss autistic issues. But will it be enough to show her peers and teachers that she’s just as worthy of praise?

TW/CW: ableism, racism, bullying, mentions of suicide (past), brief mentions of police brutality (in reference to police violence towards autistic people)

Afrotistic has been languishing on my TBR for way too long, but even though it wasn’t a perfect book, I think it’s a great book to introduce people—especially kids and young adults—to autism, ableism, and the intersection of race and disability! It’s already difficult to find neurodivergent representation in literature, but rarer within that category is autistic people of color—for that alone, Afrotistic is such an important book.

For some reason, I misremembered Afrotistic as being middle grade. Who knows why. I kept that assumption going in, and then I of course found out that Noa is 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. Whoops. That being said, going in with that mindset wasn’t all that bad, because I really feel like Afrotistic hits that sweet spot between middle grade and YA that’s so often unexplored. It appeals to a mid-teens age range because of its protagonist, but the writing is accessible enough that I feel like kids as young as 12 or 13 could comfortably read and relate to Noa and the other characters. (The fact that 12-18 is such a huge range of maturity for a single age group is whole can of worms, so I’ll save it for another time.) There are some more mature and sensitive topics that are briefly discussed (police brutality against autistic people of color, for one), but it’s brief enough that I feel like that age range could process and learn from it. Neurodivergent representation is hard to find in books aimed at all ages, and I feel Omeiza’s accessible writing style, as well as the relatability of Noa as a protagonist, makes for a book that could teach tons of pre-teens and young adults alike about Black and autistic identity.

Another reason I’m glad that Afrotistic exists is because of the intersectionality! The primary focus is on Noa’s identity as a young, Black, autistic girl, and how she’s struggled to make her voice heard because of how little attention is paid to neurodivergent (and disabled in general) people of color. Both through the essay excerpts in the story and through her real-time experiences not being believed by her peers and teachers, it was a poignant narrative about how neurodivergent people of color have to fight even harder to have their needs met and understood. Going off of that, I appreciated that within the Roaring Pebbles, there was a lot of intersectionality as well; as well as all of them being autistic, there was a mixed-race character with cerebral palsy, as well as men and women being present.

That being said, I wasn’t as charmed by the characters as the characters themselves seemed to be. I loved Noa and was rooting for her throughout the story, but I found myself less compelled by some of the other characters. It was clear that the friendship between Noa and Brayden was supposed to be one of the core friendships in the novel, but I really didn’t feel any kind of friendship chemistry between them. All Brayden seemed to do was make jokes that didn’t land and make awfully pushy remarks to Noa joining his youth group. I get that Noa is also Christian and doesn’t necessarily mind, but I feel like even if I was also Christian and I had somebody trying to get me to join their youth group that persistently, I’d snap. The issue with most of the other characters is that they were rather underdeveloped; this was inevitable with the amount of characters that were focused on in the Roaring Pebbles, but even the ones that had more page time were boiled down to one or two traits at most. I get that it’s difficult to juggle that many characters, but even the ones that were relatively more in the spotlight weren’t given enough traits to make them stand out. Going back to the whole pushy youth group thing with Brayden, I found it hard to believe that every single member of the Roaring Pebbles were completely fine with their group being filtered through said youth group and having a name with biblical inspiration. I get that if you’re strapped for resources, any venue you can have to gather is essential, but I would imagine that at least one of these characters isn’t Christian…

Additionally, what also soured me to some of these characters was the random side plots that weighed the story down. There’s a whole, completely unnecessary thread of two of the boys in Roaring Pebbles fighting over a girl that gets entirely too much page time and only served to derail the plot. About half of the conflicts that occur throughout Afrotistic felt of this nature—some of them were natural (like the inevitable issue that some of the autistic people have different triggers, which was something I appreciated being included and discussed), but others felt like filler. Here’s the issue: Afrotistic is only about 250 pages (on my Kindle edition), so there could have been so many more opportunities to discuss more aspects of Noa’s friendships, identity, or even her home life. Instead, we got problems that were solved far too quickly and didn’t contribute anything to the plot.

Also: I’m not completely sure how to feel about this, but I had to mention it. At some point, when Noa is surveying the different cliques in the lunchroom, she labels two of them the “woke kids” and the “cool woke kids.” It was…odd, to say the least? I can kind of see it as being a factor of her not feeling autistic/Black enough for those crowds, but I’ve never once heard cliques described as “woke” unless it’s some weird, insecure conservative person. I guess I’m so used to seeing “woke” being lobbed at anything vaguely liberal (or considerate of basic human decency) these days, but Afrotistic was published in 2022, and the same was true then. I’m just not sure how I feel about that.

All in all, a timely novel that deftly highlights the issues that autistic people of color face, but stumbled in terms of its characters and frequent plot digressions. 3.5 stars!

Afrotistic is a standalone novel, but Kala Allen Omeiza is also the author of Autistic and Black: Our Experiences of Growth, Progress, and Empowerment, and The Worst Saturday Ever.

Today’s song:

SO glad I found this song!! Brian Eno never gets old

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: 4/13/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: your yearly dose of “Madeline blubbering about the unknowable beauty of the universe and also Björk (in no particular order.”

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/13/25

“Cosmogony” – Björk

Not to be dramatic or anything, but I am currently writing this through tears. Every time I pull up the live version of this from the Biophilia concert film, I start crying. Damn you, Björk, could you not carve out the softest, tenderest bits of my soul with a melon baller for once?

Maybe I am the soft, snowflake humanities major that Trump wants to extract from higher education, but I find I understand science best when you bring out its inherently human qualities. We went wrong when we perpetuated the stereotype of the sciences, and scientists by extension, as cold and removed from emotion, because to separate the two is to deny the connectivity of nature, of the universe, and of the particles that quite literally make up all of us. (Which is why SciAll is doing incredible work to humanize the field, and even better that my awesome brother is making content for them!! Shameless Todd family plug, now back to your scheduled program.) Sure, I do believe the stereotype whenever I pass by the absolute brutalist hellscape that is my college’s engineering building, but that isn’t representative of all of STEM. I’ve never gotten physics. I’ve never fully understood it, only bits and pieces. But the other day, I read a great book called Uncommon Measure, a memoir about time and music, which likened quantum entanglement—the way that particles just know how others around them will move—to falling in love with her husband while they learned to dance Argentinian tango in college, and trusting her body to remember the steps and the movements of her partner. Do I understand quantum entanglement any more? Slightly, but I’d still fail a course on it. But I’m on my way, because of that emotion. The moment we lose that connection between ourselves and the very makeup of our universe, we forget ourselves. Quite literally, ourselves.

Now that I’ve finished Sonic Symbolism, my Sunday Songs have admittedly become months of Björk worship in a trenchcoat, but getting this nuanced view on her music-making process has seriously invigorated me. I’ve yet to fully listen to Biophilia, but it’s high on my list. The album was conceived along with an app that aimed to teach children about music through concepts of science; for instance, chords and learning which chords work best with each other is demonstrated by a visualization of tectonic plates. And if that’s not enough, David Attenborough, THE MAN HIMSELF, recorded an intro for the app, which was also featured on the Biophilia tour. Though the app is sadly defunct, it remains a critical piece of Björk’s creative legacy, as well as a tool that was specifically shown to benefit neurodivergent children in learning these concepts. In the grand scheme of things, “Cosmogony” was the menu that held the rest of the app together, a screen where you could navigate to different parts of Björk’s simulated universe. (And even if that didn’t exist, the aesthetic language of the album, with Björk’s voluminous wig that’s the color of oxidizing copper.)

That fusion of the arts and sciences, as well as the inherent humanism that Björk brings to her craft, is what makes “Cosmogony” so special; the song details three creation myths from around the world (Miwok Native American, Sanskrit, and Aboriginal Australian), and she adds the Big Bang theory, which she jokingly referred to as “a creation myth that is 100 years old,” but pointed out that “all creation myths at the time of their making were science.” The song begins with a kind of transcendental choir that rises in pitch, mimicking the motion of eyes searching the stars. It’s the only music that has ever captured the feeling I often felt while taking an astronomy class last year. As I stared up at the planetarium, watching as simulations of the known universe expanded outward ad infinitum, I had this bizarre, incomparable cocktail of emotions—fear, wonder, and somehow, comfort. It’s impossible to feel a single emotion at the revelation that our universe is infinitely large and full of places we cannot even begin to reach or imagine, is it? Space is a cold, unwelcome vacuum, but it is fertile with endless possibility. And that’s where Björk punches me in the gut every time, dredging out the wonder, comfort, and ecstasy of being surrounded by billions upon trillions of stars and planets: “Heaven, heaven’s bodies/Whirl around me/Dance eternal.” I’d say somebody hold me, but I am being held. All of us are, by the arms of the universe.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Search for WondLa – Tony DiTerlizzi – I can easily imagine this as Eva Nine sees the Rings of Orbona for the first time, coming to terms with her own clashing creation myths.

“Crooked Teeth” – Death Cab for Cutie

Bring back those stop-motion, collaged indie rock music videos from the 2000’s! We lost something when that trend went away. They’re all so inventive and fun, and they all have that token darkly funny moment before going right back to silly little cutouts of floating astronauts and whatnot. (See also: “Can You Feel It?”)

Song lyric of the week, unofficially: “You’re so cute when you’re slurring your speech/But they’re closing the bar and they want us to leave.” This song is an absolute indie hit, and it deserves that status: a three and a half minute-long pocket of sad white boys, clever lyrics, and lovely harmonies. That’s probably why I found myself occasionally remembering the chorus of “‘Cause you can’t find nothing at all” every few years and forgetting the rest of the song. Shame that I forgot the rest, really, because that’s not even the catchiest bit. Admittedly, I find the “I’m a war between head versus heart” bridge rather corny compared to some of the more poetic bits of this song, but that’s because of how descriptive every line is. Ben Gibbard really knows how to make every line count, from the lyricism down to the precise inflection of each word. The way his voice creeps through the notes makes the expression “turn of phrase” make sense—every sentences seems to twist like vines. All of it becomes “the home in my heart” built with rotten wood that leads into the first chorus; much like the collection of landmarks that Gibbard describes, it’s a blurred, drunken stumble through a mutually destructive relationship that keeps losing its water, no matter how many strips of tape you put over the holes in the kiddie pool. Yet all of it is irresistible, as is the last dregs of romance that have drained out of whatever hot mess Gibbard is chronicling.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Vicious – V.E. Schwab – “‘Cause I built you a home in my heart/With rotten wood, and it decayed from the start/’Cause you can’t find nothing at all/If there was nothing there all along…”

“I Saw the Light” – Todd Rundgren

There’s a sliding scale of what degree of early ’70s that I enjoy. On the one end, you’ve got glam rock: your Bowies, Bolans, Brian (Eno)s, etc. It all depends on that warm guitar tone. By the time you get here, you’ve got the guitar tone, but then you’ve inched into the same breath as Steely Dan, and…okay, that might be where I draw the line. (Admittedly, “Peg” is better than it should be.) That’s about when you get into that yacht-rock kind of cheese that I can’t quite stand. This one Todd Rundgren song, however…safe. Can’t deny how catchy it is, god! Another delightful tidbit of the ’70s I tend to enjoy is the pianos—I’m not sure if it’s the specific kind of piano or just the sound quality, but there’s something so charming about that tinny kind of piano that’s punctuates the background. Each bend Rundgren hits on the guitar strings feels like a sway of the hip, a twist of the leg striding across the dancefloor. Sure, he specifically meant for it to be a hit and not much else (and apparently cranked it out in 20 minutes while addicted to Ritalin), but it works perfectly as such. “I Saw the Light” has a joyful groove that’s been undeniable for 50+ decades, but exists in amber as nothing but 1972: smooth, romantic, and oh so bright in that guitar tone.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Seven Devils – Laura Lam and Elizabeth May – songs with lyrics that are on the…more generic side (sorry, Todd) don’t give me as much rope, so it’s mood I’m going off of for this one, a messy, romantic space opera.

“CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” – Car Seat Headrest

Car Seat Headrest is back, and they’re making obscenely long songs again!! Nature is healing!! (And apparently, these aren’t even the longest? The second to last track is purportedly 19 MINUTES LONG? “Famous Prophets (Stars)” has some competition…) So is Will Toledo, evidently—I’m so glad he and the band are taking it slowly on this tour (which I am SO elated to have tickets for), but I’m glad that he’s gotten to a place with his long COVID that he can make some more angsty masterpieces.

It really does seem like The Scholars will be some of Car Seat Headrest’s boldest work to date. Toledo conceived of this album as a rock opera, inspired by the likes of Tommy and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, centered around the fictional Parnassus University. Each song centers around a student; the excellent, nearly 11-minute long epic of a single, “Gethsemane,” for instance, follows Rosa, a medical student who dabbles in necromancy and discovers that she can absorb the pain of others. Aside from said Gethsemane, Toledo also said that he was inspired by his own journey into Buddhist practices while he dealt with long COVID and his lifelong, conflicting feelings surrounding his spirituality. It’s an incredibly ambitious cocktail of ideas and about as spacious as a university campus, but it seems like the pent-up work of five years of not releasing any new material and the flood of ideas that I’m sure came along with it.

If there’s one thing that Car Seat Headrest has perfected the art of, it’s making album intros. They’re all about giving you that antici……pation, but the payoff is even more rewarding than the almost cinematic buildup. Even on weaker albums such as 2020’s Making a Door Less Open, “Weightlifters” had a kind of thesis about the album’s musical motifs, and on the iconic Teens of Denial, “Fill in the Blank” sets the upbeat, angsty tone with ease. “CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” reminded me immediately of “Vincent” and its echoing intro, but what follows is an explosive display of the band’s collective talent. Toledo, Ethan Ives, Seth Dalby, and Andrew Katz’s synchronicity creates a soundscape deserving of a sprawling rock opera, and Toledo’s poetic lyricism is befitting of Beolco, the playwright character this song is written from the perspective of. Long COVID couldn’t beat the healing salve that is Will Toledo’s voice, which simultaneously retains notes of his youth but has undeniably steadied and matured. “CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” has threads of Teens of Denial all over the place (aforementioned “Vincent” similarities, and the horns reminded me of “Cosmic Hero”), but something about it has an inherently spacious vision beyond the storytelling—this is a whole universe that they’ve created, and I, for one, am elated to discover it. MY BODY IS READY.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Hell Followed With Us – Andrew Joseph White – “When I come down off this cross of mine/A hairsbreadth apart and as far as the sky/Then back on my spine, there was a line that my idols crossed that I could not cross/On the other side is love, and right here is loss…”

“Here In My Heart” – The 6ths

Another addition to artists who cannot stop cooking: Stephin Merritt. Not only does he have some impressive vocal range and an excellent body of work with The Magnetic Fields, he’s a part of several other side projects—one of which, The 6ths, where he barely even sang, but just did arrangements and lyrics, and had a whole host of amazing indie artists sing for him. Dean Wareham (“Falling Out of Love [With You]”), Chris Knox (“When I’m Out of Town”), Mary Timony (“All Dressed Up in Dreams”), and Mark Robinson (“Puerto Rico Way”) are just a handful of the guests on this album, Wasp’s Nests. (However, he did sing himself on the also fantastic “Aging Spinsters.”) All of them are folded into the lovelorn synth tapestry that Merritt has woven, and though the voices vary, all of it is so distinctly him. The love (or love-related) songs he pens are usually of the lost love variety, but “Here In My Heart” is about as pure as they get; even if the love in question is far away, the yearning spills out of the chorus like thousands of butterflies. Every electronic twinkle glows warmly with love, the kind that makes your chest light up like in Fantastic Mr. Fox, but the glow never feels fake—it’s an ecstatic, crush outpouring that never loses its sheen. Anna Domino’s voice, as twinkling and delicate as the synths, blends in as a shimmering blot of light in the constellation of this starry-eyed love song.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Sound of Stars – Alechia Dow – The lovesickness and synth textures fit with the hopeful joy of this novel.

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 (4/8/25) – You Sexy Thing

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ll skip the prologue about how predictable it is that I picked up another queer space opera, and one with a ’70s music reference in the title at that. (SING IT WITH ME!! 🎶I BE-LIEVE IN MIRACLES—🎶) Nonetheless, I kept my expectations low, and I’m glad I did. Hilarious, heartbreaking, and heartwarming all at once, You Sexy Thing is the start of a true joy of a space opera trilogy!

Enjoy this week’s review!

You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo

It’s been decades since Niko Larson and her fellow soldiers were able to break free of the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, where they were voiceless pawns in a never-ending war. Now, they run the Last Chance, a humble restaurant at the edge of TwiceFar Station, serving customers from all over the galaxy and from all walks of life. But when a mysterious, sentient ship destroys their livelihood before giving them a mysterious mission that they can’t refuse, Niko and her fellow chefs and restaurateurs must return to the fray they tried so desperately to escape—all with the heir to the Paxian Empire in tow.

TW/CW: sexual content, violence, blood, torture, kidnapping/imprisonment, war themes, abuse, genocide themes, death

The entire time I was reading this book, I’d click on the Kindle cover and I’d immediately start hearing “You Sexy Thing.” It just kept coming back, like I was trapped in a sitcom gag with a signature musical cue. Probably the intended effect. Not complaining, though. Absolute banger.

What an excellent space opera this was! You Sexy Thing scratched so many of my favorite sci-fi itches, and one of the biggest ones was the aliens and creatures! CREATURES! CREATURES! I’d place You Sexy Thing as bordering on space fantasy, though I won’t go into a whole digression on what counts/doesn’t count as sci-fi or SF; that was mainly because of the ghosts, some magic use, and were-creatures. However, Rambo did an excellent job with all of the alien denizens of this galaxy! There was a fantastic balance of humanoid and more unfamiliar creatures, all of whom were delightful. Skidoo was a personal favorite, as I’m particularly fond of any kind of cephalopod-inspired aliens, but Petalia, even if their name was rather on-the-nose (in line with a lot of the humor of the book), had some fascinating details about their culture and plant-based physiology. Also, there’s a chimp. Gotta have a chimp to round out the crew, amirite? Thankfully, this one doesn’t go the way of Nope, and Gio is a perfectly reasonable individual. There’s also lots of casual queerness abound, which is always a plus.

Another thing I love in space opera is a good motley crew, and You Sexy Thing had a stellar one! Rambo’s choice (apparently a challenge from fellow sci-fi author Ann Leckie, if the epigraph is anything to go by) to have You Sexy Thing in an omniscient, third-person POV was a great solution for covering the thoughts of all of the characters, discarding the need for separate chapters for everyone. All of them had distinct and lovable (mostly) personalities that made them butt heads with some characters and mesh with others, while still retaining a sense of familial bonding. Even outside of the restaurant setting, they retained a hilarious rapport that was a joy to read. Dabry’s musings on cooking were a delight, Atlanta’s trouble fitting in with the crew made for some lovely interactions, and Niko’s continuous struggles to face her past made for some of the novel’s most emotional points. You Sexy Thing balanced levity with emotional weight to great effect, and had a fantastic cast of characters to split the difference.

Amidst all of the humor, You Sexy Thing explores some quite complex, nuanced emotion, which I appreciated. I don’t think Rambo fully explored the implications of everything that had been done to Petalia, and how returning to Niko’s company affected them, but what we got was appropriately complicated, messy, and painful to read—exactly how it should have been, given the circumstances. This story never strays away from the cross-cultural complications of relationships, grief, and more, which added to how fleshed-out and unique all of the characters felt. By the end, all of the betrayals were appropriately punches to the gut, but ones that were cushioned by the found family dynamic that had been built up by the end.

Like the characters, the worldbuilding was an absolute treat! I will say, some of it was rather scattershot—we frequently get references to alien species and places that don’t even show up after they’re mentioned, but since this is a trilogy, I might be able to get past that, assuming that they come up later. I’m mostly accepting it, knowing that a) this is a huge galaxy, and b) that the world will presumably be expanded upon. It only really peeved me when they failed to explain much about what said alien races looked like. Other than that, Rambo’s worldbuilding was fascinating to pick apart! Sometimes, individual concepts are more interesting than the whole, and that aspect was made manifest by many of Rambo’s concepts, from married couples (or friends) being able to meld into a single being to the biotechnology that made You Sexy Thing (the sentient ship) possible. Through it all, I got the sense that Rambo’s galaxy was a distinctly lived-in one, which made my reading experience all the better.

My only real complaint, if any, was Tubal Last. You Sexy Thing had moments of being purposely cheesy, from the in-your-face ’70s music references to the on-the-nose character names; the latter felt like a nice, tongue-in-cheek reference to some of the characteristics of older sci-fi. That quality extended to the villain, who was cartoonishly evil. I don’t necessarily mind a comically evil villain every now and then, but in contrast to the complexity and nuance of many of the characters, Tubal Last felt out of place, just another obstacle (a formidable one, but a very one-note one) for the crew to overcome. He was over-the-top, but not in a way that necessarily served the story, other than some slightly unique motivations.

Overall, You Sexy Thing was a blast from start to finish, with a lively, energetic galaxy and a cast of lovable characters and daring hijinks to fill it with. 4.5 stars!

You Sexy Thing is the first book in Cat Rambo’s Disco Space Opera series, followed by Devil’s Gun and Rumor Has It. They are also the author of Neither Here Nor There, the Tabat Quartet (Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, and Exiles of Tabat), And the Last Trump Shall Sound (with Harry Turtledove and James Morrow), and many other full-length works and short stories. Rambo is also the former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Today’s song:

it’s taken me this long to finally listen to Jimmy’s Show all the way through…preparing for Jimmy’s Show 2? either way, it’s an absolute delight.

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: 4/6/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: I wish I’d gotten this unintentionally all-women lineup (or, all frontwomen, at least) for March, but every month is Women’s Month! (Especially now…reach out to your representatives about the SAVE Act, for the love of god. Protect your right to vote!) Also, the broad spectrum of romance: rollerskating past a cute person’s window on one end, and beating up creepy guys in the club on the other. Duality of woman.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 4/6/25

“Brand New Key” – Melanie

Somebody needs to start a hypothetical support group for carefree, childhood-inspired songs that get slapped with distinctly “adult” interpretations (see: “Lookin’ Out My Back Door,” a delightful song about imagination that everybody chalks up to LSD). Yeah, yeah, you can’t control how your work will be interpreted, but for the love of god, EVERYTHING ROD-SHAPED ISN’T AN INNUENDO. Quit summoning Freud with an ouija board…why can’t we as a culture let go of darkening everything inspired by childhood? Everybody just seems content to label anything childish as naïve, whack it with a frying pan, and justify its essence by saying that there’s a “mature” meaning behind it…can you not digest a little unadulterated happiness without your edgelord pills?

Anyways. As Melanie tells it, the song was inspired by eating McDonald’s after an extensive fast: “no sooner after I finished that last bite of my burger …that song was in my head. The aroma brought back memories of roller skating and learning to ride a bike and the vision of my dad holding the back fender of the tire.” It’s such a weightless song—from the minute the opening riff kicks in, it never walks—it skips between jump-ropes. “Brand New Key” is just so charmingly joyous to me. Melanie boldly announces herself with a smile that never fades as the song retains a timeless bounce that makes every step into a little shimmy, every turn of the shoulders into a carefree sway. Yet even with the folksy instrumentals, the kind that should give this song a one-way ticket into Wes Anderson’s next movie, it’s Melanie’s voice that makes “Brand New Key.” She takes on the persistence of the song’s narrator with a self-assured confidence—she can roller-skate anywhere she pleases, and she’ll do it with gusto. The way she crows the iconic line in the second verse—”For someone who can’t drive, I’ve been all around the world/Some people say I’ve done alright for a girl”—can’t inspire any emotion other than pure, fist-pumping joy. “Brand New Key” isn’t exactly some sort of revolutionary work of feminism (and that might be as much of a stretch as the innuendo), but I can’t help but think of Melanie’s boldness and relentless devotion to her creative vision, so soon after she’d performed at Woodstock at the age of 22 and begun to make a name for herself as an artist. “Brand New Key” has gone down in history more as a novelty song than anything, but it’s stuck for a reason—I can’t help but bob up and down with joy with every successive play.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Heartbreak Bakery – A.R. Capetta – The romance isn’t a one-to-one match, obviously, but the carefree spirit of young love (and bicycle-riding) remains the same.

“Most Wanted Man” – Lucy Dacus

Now that the dust has settled and I’ve listened more to Forever is a Feeling, it’s still a good album, but not the good I can usually expect from Lucy Dacus. After my first listen, I came away with the thought that the singles were better than the album as a whole, but also that she’d almost sold out, that dreaded stage in an artist’s career. It’s not like she wasn’t indie-popular before, but now she’s on the verge of popular popular, dueting with Hozier popular. I don’t believe Dacus, with her penchant for turns of phrase too clever to fully fit any kind of mold, will ever go fully mainstream. But with the relatively toned-down spirit of Forever is a Feeling, I can’t help but think that it was the doing of a major label that made some of these songs…almost tame. Even though the same amount of emotional explosion remains under the surface, for half of the songs, it almost feels curtailed. She’s never allowed an impassioned belt or more than a small guitar solo at the end of a song. I’m not saying that she was, y’know, absolutely screamo or anything, but she knew how to give even the smallest moments the weight of the world. This album should’ve been the perfect opportunity, given that it’s crafted from heartfelt vignettes of falling in love with Julien Baker (SO HAPPY FOR THEM!!! my boys…I wish them all the best!! 🥹). Maybe it’s just personal. It’s always weird to see indie artists get popular. Who knows.

That being said, it’s not like Forever is a Feeling was a bad album by any stretch. Lyrics? Always top-notch. And when it was able to delve into the deepest well of emotion (see: “Lost Time”), it got plenty of moments of true, misty-eyed beauty and affection. “Most Wanted Man” was one of the immediate standouts, and not just because of the tempo. With it’s upbeat, guitar-driven sway, Dacus constructs a tattered, energetic scrapbook styled like a blurry-viewed movie montage of moments with Julien Baker: “Tied in a double knot/Just like our legs all double knotted/In the morning at the Ritz/$700 dollar room, still drinking coffee from the Keurig/We’re soaking up the luxuries on someone else’s dime.” Dacus called it the song on the album that’s most overtly about her relationship with Baker, and it’s full of unbridled joy for what they’ve had, but also for the adventures they’ve yet to have together, repeating a starry-eyed refrain of “I’ll have time to write the book on you.” Besides the healing reference to “Everybody Does” (“Gripping my inner thigh/Like if you don’t, I’m gonna run”…right in the 2020 Madeline) and Baker herself contributing harmonies, it’s a song brimming with hope, of seizing the moment, and yet holding the excitement of spending your life with someone in your heart. Major label or no, they can’t stop Lucy Dacus from penning the most heartfelt songs about relationships, be they romantic or platonic.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Falling in Love Montage – Ciara Smyth – A similarly energetic and tender (and sapphic!) story of love and adventuring.

“Overrated Species Anyhow” – Deerhoof

I know an album intro when I see one…and I heard this single before Deerhoof announced their new album, Noble and Godlike in Ruin. It’s short, anthemic, it feels like a nice thesis…and it’s a good thesis to boot: “Love to all my aliens/Lost, despised, or feared/You are why I wrote these passages.” I feel like that scene in Into the Spiderverse at Peter Parker’s funeral where one of many strangers in a Spider-Man masks tells Miles Morales that “he’s probably not talking about you,” but I will gladly be accepted as one of said aliens. Hey, “Future Teenage Cave Artists” got me through a pretty nasty bout of anxiety, and I cherish it to this day.

Thus far, some of the album seems to be about frontwoman Satomi Matsuzaki’s experience as an immigrant in America alongside all of the hateful rhetoric that is (and has always been) multiplying; Admittedly, I balked at the use of the word “savages” in the way that it’s used here, but I can see it as being a reclamation of a term that has been historically lobbed against immigrants. (Still not ideal, but I can at least see the justification of it.) “Overrated Species Anyhow” feels almost choir-like, meant to be sung as a kind of incantation of sanctuary; amidst the chaotic melding of birdsong, “Via Chicago”-like drumming, and a cascade of rippling instrumentals, the track serves as both an outstretched hand to the othered and an opening of the album’s curtain. I don’t think I’m dedicated enough of a fan to go into Noble and Godlike in Ruin, but this offering is a lovely, delightfully weird one, as Deerhoof always is.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A People’s Future of the United States – edited by Victor LaValle (anthology) – at times, frightening (and sometimes too feasible) visions of the future, but all containing stories of marginalized resistance.

“catch these fists” – Wet Leg

Wet Leg’s self-titled 2022 debut isn’t a particular favorite of mine, but it marked its place right when I graduated high school—it was full of droll, commandingly danceable anthems for that short time in my life. Yet even then, I got the sense that their songs were on the repetitive side. They’re a bit like Weezer, in a way—they have maybe two or three songs, but all of them are great. They know what they’re good at. Now that Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers have announced their next album, moisturizer (are all of their albums going to be synonyms for “wet?” damp, coming in 2028!), it seems as though they’re trodding on the same path. Here’s the thing: it’s a good path. I feel like it’d be too harsh to call them one trick ponies, because they’ve got at least two or three, but those tricks? They’re infectious, catchy, and begging to be played over and over. “catch these fists” may be covering the same ground they’ve covered for three years (unsatisfying romance, drugs, clubbing, shitty men), but they inject it with energy that would make anyone want to get up and have some fisticuffs. The disaffected, rhythmic way that Teasdale intones the lines of “Can you catch a medicine ball?/Can you catch yourself when you fall?” provide a slinking hook for a song with a killer right hook that never loses its potency.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Into the Crooked Place – Alexandra Christo – an action-packed match for the high energy (and fist-fighting) in this song.

“Rise and Shine” – The Cardigans

Whew, we’ve got another whiplash transition here…not necessarily from the tempo, but without a doubt, the lyrics. I guess if we’re going linearly, we’re healing? You gotta beat scummy men hitting on you to a pulp sometimes, but then you’ve got to go reconnect with nature and regain your faith in humanity the next morning. Healing! We’re circling back to Melanie’s unfettered happiness in no time.

Leave it to The Cardigans to bring that pure levity. “Rise & Shine” was the first song that they recorded with Nina Persson as the lead vocalist, which…the fact that they considered anyone else but her is astounding, given how enduring and clear her voice has proven to be, but it seems that it’s the reason they began their upward descent to fame. It later came on their debut album, Emmerdale, and the track feels as free as the album cover’s dog bounding through a field of grass. With its jangly guitars and tambourine percussion, there’s an inherent scent of summer that they’ve bottled inside every note as Persson sings of reconnecting with nature: “I want to be alone for a while/I want to Earth to breath to me/I want the ways to grow loud/I want the sun to bleed down.” Despite the angst aplenty that they’d later become masters at (see: “Step On Me”), this kind of upbeat, optimistic spirit became an undercurrent of their music that keeps me returning time after time. Even when Nina Persson’s in abject misery, they at least make you want to dance, right?

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Teller of Small Fortunes – Julie Leong – “I want to be alone for a while/I want earth to breathe to me/I want the waves to grow loud/I want the sun to bleed down…”

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 (4/1/25) – Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games, #0.5)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Now, for a book I absolutely LOATHED…

…gotcha. Get Fool’d. 🫵

Here we are in April, and I’ve turned a hard left from reviewing cozy (to varying degrees) fantasy for two weeks straight to one of the most brutal novels I’ve read all year. Ladies, gentlemen, and others: Suzanne Collins. Sunrise on the Reaping did exactly what it was supposed to: it pulled no punches, and yet it also had a message that’s critical to how we move through these times.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Sunrise on the Reaping (The Hunger Games. #0.5) – Suzanne Collins

Haymitch Abernathy knows his fate is sealed the minute he’s reaped for the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell where twice as many tributes are chosen to pay the price for losing a bygone rebellion. All Haymitch ever wanted was a quiet life, tucked away in District 12 with his family and Lenore Dove, the girl he loves. As he’s carted off to the Capitol, he knows that he has the chance to end the cruelty that the Capitol has gotten away with for decades. With a handful of unlikely allies, Haymitch plans to end the Hunger Games once and for all. But has he estimated just how far the Capitol will go to secure its grip on Panem—or have they underestimated his tenacity?

TW/CW: graphic violence/blood, murder, gore, descriptions of injury, poisoning, animal attack/death, loss of loved ones, death of children, fire

WARNING: this review contains some spoilers! If you haven’t yet read Sunrise on the Reaping, tread lightly.

Sunrise on the Reaping was precisely as brutal as it should have been. Suzanne Collins did not hold back. I had to sit in silence after finishing it…the only shred of levity I could find was remembering that Philip Seymour Hoffman played Plutarch Heavensbee in the movies and imagining his character from The Big Lebowski in his place. [uncomfortable laughter] “That’s marvelous…”

24 years before The Hunger Games, the Capitol that we were introduced to rules with a similarly iron fist. One of the most chilling aspects of Sunrise on the Reaping was how Collins showed even more of the sinister inner workings of what the Capitol was doing to keep the Districts in line. The manipulation of both Louella and her brainwashed body double was one of the most chilling—I knew both of them were doomed from the start, and it made the reach of the Capitol all the more frightening. But perhaps the most horrifying was the Capitol reaping Beetee’s barely teenage son as punishment. What stands out about Collins’ worldbuilding is how much she focuses on the human cost; aside from the obvious, she’s adept at showing the lack of regard the Capitol has for marginalized lives, and that dehumanization forms the core of what makes the Capitol so oppressive: profiting and dealing in death.

In particular, I loved how Suzanne Collins portrayed a middle-aged President Snow. He’s as chilling as he is in the original trilogy—ruthless, heartless, but above all, laser-focused on having everything under his control, whether it’s the citizens of the Capitol or the many tributes stepping out of line. His brief interaction with Haymitch revealed so much about his character. Sure, the whole reference to the “Snow lands on top” motto from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes did feel like Collins blatantly going wink-wink, nudge-nudge, you can clap now to the reader, but the rest of his character revealed just how far he’ll go to dictate the entirety of his environment. It was honestly so funny how incel-y he was in regards to projecting all of his relationship woes from 40 years ago onto Haymitch’s girlfriend (all while he’s recovering from being poisoned, gotta admire the dedication), but it just goes to show that even in his weakest moments, Snow will always rue the things that slipped through his fingers—and do anything in his power to prevent it from happening again.

This aspect is something that’s fairly present in the first two Hunger Games novels, but I like that the Hunger Games themselves never take up much of the book. Collins knows that if she were to make every book solely about the Hunger Games, they would be feeding into the very same spectacle that she’s commenting on. It’s never about the spectacle—it’s the senseless brutality becoming the spectacle. (Also, it all comes back to the people in the fandom who go “now I want to see every single Hunger Games” and don’t realize…) In the case of Sunrise on the Reaping, it gives the effect of how quickly Haymitch has to process everything (and the fact that he can’t process it), but also that the pressure is constricting him more than it ever has, which heightens so much of the emotion. The main draw of the book, for many people, becomes not the focal point, but the point where Haymitch is put to the test—not the entire plot.

That’s not to say that Sunrise on the Reaping was flawless. As much sympathy as I had for Haymitch, his narrative voice got on my nerves for the first half of the novel. Collins played up that sort of overly earnest, country bumpkin style of speaking, making him more of a caricature than a person for a good third of the novel. I supposed it functioned more to show how easily innocence and ignorance can be destroyed in the face of revelations about how the world works, but it didn’t work for me because Haymitch knew about the cruelty of the Capitol firsthand. On principle, it was a shaky way to build his character. He almost seemed too good, even though he was so willing to break the rules and spit in the face of the Capitol. Again, the contrast between him both post-Quarter Quell and his older self is appropriately drastic, but I think I could’ve done without the setup. Plus, it just got so annoying hearing call everyone “sweetheart” and give candy to smiling children constantly. We get it…salt of the earth, etc., etc. I just couldn’t believe that Haymitch was truly pure. Collins never shied away from Katniss not being as such—why not Haymitch?

I already knew how Sunrise on the Reaping was going to end. I’d remembered the few details that Collins had alluded to and had gotten transferred to a fan wiki. It’s a given going into a Hunger Games novel that you operate on the prospect that everyone’s doomed. It would have been so easy for Collins to let that speak for itself, to not put any effort in and rely solely on the inevitability that the fans were going to be devastated anyway. But Collins, as always, gives such a depth to every character, making every slight the Capitol makes that much crueler. You know that Haymitch’s life is upended after he wins the Hunger Games, but Collins gave him a drive, a life, and stakes beyond what we see in the original trilogy, that makes his losses so much more painful. One of Suzanne Collins’ best qualities as a writer is that she toes the line between giving characters unexpected nuance and sympathy, but never outright excusing their actions. She’s a cartographer of personality, however rocky.

I saw the message of Sunrise on the Reaping coming a mile away, and to be honest, I didn’t even care. I knew how Haymitch’s games ended. From the moment he started plotting to destroy the arena and end the Hunger Games for good, I knew his mission would end in failure. But as with every successive Hunger Games novel that Collins writes, there’s a critical message to be found, and this one rings true in these times more than ever. We know that Haymitch fails, but because the rest of the trilogy exists, we know that his dream takes flight—just not when he wanted it to. Resistance and rebellion, even when they fail at first, are always worth fighting for, no matter how difficult the path towards peace is. No matter how much Haymitch failed, he was critical in exposing the cracks in the Capitol’s system—and he helped bring it down in the end, even though he failed in his first try. No matter how long it takes, resistance is always worth it, even if you don’t get to see its immediate effects.

Overall, a raw, brutal, and deeply emotional installation in the Hunger Games universe. 4.25 stars!

Sunrise on the Reaping is one of two prequels set in the Hunger Games universe, preceded by The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. The main trilogy is comprised of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. Collins is also the author of many other books for children, including the Underland Chronicles, Year of the Jungle, and When Charlie McButton Lost Power.

Today’s song:

Forever is a Feeling was a slight disappointment, to be honest, but this song ROCKS

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: 3/30/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: new music from 2025—both released this year and overheard before a Soccer Mommy show.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/30/25

“Triumph of a Heart” – Björk

I’ve finished the Sonic Symbolism podcast, and all it’s left me with is a rabid desire to do a deep dive of the rest of Björk’s albums. Medúlla is enticing as it’s the next one chronologically (even though I’ve given up on listening to her albums chronologically), but also because of the uniting concept behind it. Inspired by primal, prehistoric imagery of motherhood, family, and storytelling around campfires, Medúlla was constructed almost entirely from the human voice. Aside from some synths and piano, it’s almost all a-capella, but not in the way that you’d think. Each voice becomes percussion, scattered onomatopoeia, and rising tidal forces that lift something primal from your soul. And every possible voice ends up featuring on this album—Tanya Tagaq (throat singing), Rahzel, Dokaka (beatboxing), and Mike Patton (deep backing vocals that Pitchfork described as “demonic”) all feature in the varied vocal tapestry. I ended up being too busy to write about “Pleasure Is All Mine,” but that song, in its simultaneous feminist ode and playful toying with women’s capacity to be selfless, really does succeed in digging into something innate, almost instinctual within me.

In concept, “Triumph of a Heart” is almost as ridiculous as the music video. (Fun fact: Björk’s cat husband in this video spawned the “I should buy a boat” meme from way back when.) Forming the percussion of the song, alongside Dokaka’s melodic beatboxing, is what can only be described as restrained raspberry noises and sounds that are almost akin to somebody who’s only heard a cat once trying to make cat sounds. Yet it all works in such a familiar yet alien synchronicity that comes together in a way that only Björk can make it. The track is an ode to how music can make you feel and the joy of dancing, a pleasure shared since early humans were able to whack sticks together and harmonize around the fire; maybe it’s an obvious choice for this album, but using only bodily instrumentation is the perfect medium to explore the visceral nature of music and dance, the way that it sometimes vibrates your soul: “The nerves are sending shimmering signals/All through my fingers/The veins support/Blood that gushes impulsively towards/The triumph of a heart.” I always see such sentiments of people undervaluing the arts, even as they consume it by the truckload and think nothing of it; it’s not a viable, useful profession, more fodder for AI and mindless listening. It’s so easy for us to forget that art in all its forms, the same as the need for medicine and food, is innate to us, and has been since we were gathered in the shelter of the first fires.

As a bonus: here’s some behind the scenes footage of the recording of “Pleasure Is All Mine”:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Binti – Nnedi Okorafor – this novella also falls into that merging of preserving cultures that have survived for thousands of years and alien technology, and it blends into a bizarre, delightful trilogy.

“Honey Water” – Japanese Breafkast

For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) sadly fell under the She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She curse on this blog, which roughly translates to “I wanted to write about at least 2-3 of the singles, but they all ended up landing on weeks where I didn’t have time to write.” Shame, really, because “Orlando in Love” and “Mega Circuit” were silk-drapingly romantic and creepily artful, respectively. Now that I’ve listened to the whole album, at its best, it embodies those qualities, oscillating from semi-autobiographical, tragic stories to some of the more fictional songwriting that Michelle Zauner drew on for Jubilee. She simultaneously leans into the notion of the “sad girl” while critiquing the fact that women are so often pigeonholed into this description (see the title), embroidering her own dramatic melancholy with orchestral arrangements and references to Greek mythology. Though it wasn’t always successful and the end dragged (see: “Men in Bars,” an faux-earnest, ballad-y duet with…Jeff Bridges? Huh?), For Melancholy Brunettes was, for the most part, an artistic leap that was a good 75%-80% successful in its feats of daring. It acknowledges its place amongst the traditionally emotional role of female musicians, but also acknowledges the light that peers in through the cracks (see: “Here Is Someone”—for maximum enjoyment, transition it with “Frosti” by Björk).

“Honey Water” was one of the standout tracks. I never thought of Japanese Breakfast as someone who could necessarily conjure up eeriness. Sure, she’s written plenty about all manner of unpleasant feelings, but I’ve never gotten dread as one of the most prominently featured ones. Zauner’s signature, breathy whisper takes on the feeling of a carnivorous plant laden with dew, ready to ensnare all manner of insects. Yet she’s not the one doing the ensnaring in this song—the narrative, toeing the line between fiction and reality, as her songs often do, speaks of an unfaithful lover repeatedly leaving her for someone else: “The lure of honey water draws you from my arms so needy/You follow in colonies to sip it from the bank/In rapturous sweet temptation, you wade in past the edge and sink in/Insatiable for a nectar, drinking ’til your heart expires.” The dread that Zauner dredges up is more a kind of stagnation, the sinking feeling of seeing the inevitable unfold around you, and yet somehow feeling powerless to move—or leave. The closing refrain, as the guitars rise in a crashing, insectoid drone, echoes Slaughterhouse-Five’s famous tidbit: “So it goes/I don’t mind”; the narrator convinces herself that all of her partner’s unfaithful transgressions are a fact of life. That tired powerlessness is what makes the dread so palpable, the music swallowing her as she mutters the last repetition of her exhausted mantra.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo – “In rapturous sweet temptation, you wade in past the edge and sink in/Insatiable for a nectar, drinking ’til your heart expires…”

“God Knows” – Tunde Adebimpe

Remember how I was halfway chiding myself for hoping that Thee Black Boltz was just going to be TV on the Radio 2: Electric Boogaloo? Now that “God Knows” is out, I think that might honestly just be what the album is like regardless of expectations. “Magnetic” introduced us to a familiar, nostalgic sound full of energy, “Drop” was the point where Adebimpe seems to diverge, and now we’ve got “God Knows,” which sounds straight off of Nine Types of Light or even Dear Science. It’s giving me some perspective on how much Adebimpe made TV on the Radio—Dave Sitek constructed the scaffolding, but Adebimpe was the heart of it all, without a doubt. Balancing sharp acoustic strumming with synths that ripple and bubble, this track adds to “Drop” in the sense that both songs feel like they’re floating. It fits with the album cover for me—as Adebimpe clings to his geode island in the middle of an undefined void, he’s buoyed through it, like an ocean, propelled by nothing but the endlessly catchy hooks he’s been producing of late. “God Knows” stands out to me as the strongest of the three offerings so far—like “Magnetic,” it’s been sharpened to its tightest point to make indie rock tracks that wouldn’t be out of place 10 or even 20 years ago. Tunde is timeless.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Full Speed to a Crash Landing – Beth Revis – “God knows you’re the worst thing I’ve ever loved/And you’re bad news/But we still got to have our fun…”

“Whole Love” – Wilco

Man, YouTube comments are so funny sometimes. I hope the Latina woman who posted “I love this white song, don’t tell my homegirls I listen to this” is doing okay and still listening to Wilco happily. Wilco really is the great unifier.

Here’s an album that I’ve probably listened to in full, but only remember about half of. The Whole Love soundtracked many a car ride to school or piano lessons and whatnot back in 2011. I even remember popping my dad’s borrowed CD into my old Hello Kitty CD player while I was playing with my Build-A-Bears in my room. That should give you a picture of the kind of hipster child I was, but I digress. The resulting tour was also the first time I saw Wilco—and my very first concert, at Red Rocks at the age of eight. So even if I haven’t mapped it out fully, The Whole Love was integral to my childhood, whether it was watching the music video for “Born Alone” on my dad’s old laptop (I distinctly remember saying that it “made my head spin”) or sitting on my dad’s shoulders on that summer night. Really, it boils down to my dad. Raising me on all that Wilco made me turn out alright, I think.

Back to “Whole Love” in particular. The song already carries a metric ton of nostalgia for me, but it never gets old with any successive playing. As far as The Whole Love goes, it feels like one of the more accessible tracks—it’s classic Wilco, but with the artsy twist that the album presents. There’s a passage in Steven Hyden’s This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ and the Beginning of the 21st Century that talks about the significance of album openers setting the tone for the album as a whole. Hyden points to “Art of Almost” as an example—with all of the Thom Yorke-esque synth weirdness, it signals to the listener that this is gonna be the weird Wilco album. That experimental nature leeches into the most “accessible” sounding tracks—like this one. Even as Jeff Tweedy brings his gentle, acoustic sway into fruition, the background can only be described as fluttering—they jitter and judder like the freshly-dried wings of just-hatched butterflies, creating tiny fractals in the background. Yet even if you stripped that weirdness away, “Whole Love” would still be a classic—whether it’s craft or my nostalgia talking, there’s something so innately comforting about the layered harmonies, folded on top of one another like layers of fine fabric.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Heart of the World (The Isles of the Gods, #2) – Amie Kaufman – “And I know that I won’t be/The easiest to set free/And I know that I won’t be the last/Cold captain tied to the mast…”

“Get Away” – Yuck

This song played before Soccer Mommy came on when I saw her a few weeks back, and for a split second, I confused it for some Apples in Stereo song that I somehow hadn’t heard in my childhood. Turns out, there’s probably no Apples in Stereo song that I missed when I was a kid, hence why I didn’t recognize it. (Cut me some slack, it was loud in there…) Yuck doesn’t have the same electronically-oriented whimsy as the Apples in Stereo, but they seemed to branch off of the indie sound of the early 2010’s, with their synth-like guitars, ’90s distortion, and the nasally vocals of Daniel Blumberg. Those guitars were what made me nearly mistake them for the Apples in Stereo, but they’re clearly more students of, say, Sonic Youth or Dinosaur Jr. But they had that sun-soaked, 2010’s indie aesthetic down to a science; even without the yellow filter on their music video, “Get Away” just oozes the sensation of a dream of being on a road with no speed limits while the sun beats down through the windshield. Even as Blumberg laments that he can’t get away, wrestling with negative thoughts, the track speeds along with a carefree freedom, kicking up gravel as it forges its own path. Certainly fits right in with Soccer Mommy’s sound too—she’s got an eye for good indie, that’s for sure….

…and so does the Academy, apparently? You’re telling me that this guy just won an Oscar for his original score for The Brutalist? That’s a connection I didn’t expect to make in this post…good for you, Daniel Blumberg!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester – Maya MacGregor – “Summer sun says get out more/I need you, I want you/But I can’t get this feeling off my mind/I want you, I need you…”

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 (3/25/25) – Water Moon

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Even with me being slightly less online than I’ve been in the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of buzz about Water Moon. Enough that it warranted a hardcover copy that was a whole $31 at Barnes & Noble…not even a special edition or anything, just a regular copy. Nevertheless, I wanted to give it a less expensive try, so I got it on hold at the library. Though it didn’t live up to both the $31 or the Studio Ghibli comparisons it warranted, Water Moon was a heartfelt, if a little confused, about the connectivity of people and the choices that lead us to the places we end up.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Water Moon – Samantha Sotto Yambao

Hana Ishikawa is set to receive a very unique inheritance. Her father has given her control over his old shop in Tokyo; tourists and passersby will see a ramen restaurant, but once you look inside, you find that its wares are something completely different: a pawnshop where you can exchange your life’s regrets and unpleasant choices. But on her first day on the job, Hana finds the shop destroyed. Looking for answers, she instead finds Keishin, an American tourist searching for answers of his own. Their search leads them into a strange realm of magic and wonder that may hold the keys to the problems they’re facing…and more.

TW/CW: loss of loved ones, grief, abandonment, mentions of abortion/pregnancy issues (brief), blood/violence, descriptions of injury

Water Moon was a good stab at magical realism; it had some beautiful elements that had me enraptured, but not for long enough. Its fundamental issue is that it wanted to do too much but didn’t have the space to do it. What we have here, messy as it was, at least read well and presented some moments of lovely, whimsical magical realism.

While this novel had some issues throughout with thematic cohesiveness, I do think that the central one (or the one that felt like it was supposed to be central, at least), was a beautiful one—connectivity through the choices we make. Hana’s life is dictated by regret, but she learns, through jumping through fantastical worlds, that it’s the unexpected things in life that bring us together that make life worth living. I especially loved the connection to the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Detector, something that Keishin has returned to Japan to study—capturing the secrets of this elusive, subatomic particle that can only be observed (if you’re lucky) in an observatory filled with distilled water underground. I’m a sucker for when writers are able to articulate that emotion with science, especially with something as misunderstood as physics; Water Moon did a lovely job of using that as part of the larger metaphor about how lucky we are to experience the unexpected, and how that can bring us together. I just wished Yambao had done more with it, but what we had, I loved.

I also loved the worldbuilding in Water Moon! I don’t think the childlike wonder that Yambao was going for was properly executed all the way, but I love the inherent whimsy that’s integral to holding the worldbuilding together. You travel to these parallel, unseeable worlds found in puddles on the ground, and in those worlds, you find everything from villages dedicated to hanging the stars at night and origami and paper planes with a life of their own. Even with the rather sinister undercurrent that runs through it, the glimpses of the fantasy worlds were almost dreamlike. They had a distinct quality of feeling like the kinds of fantasies you imagined when you were a kid (especially the puddle travel), which enhanced the feel of the world overall.

However, that whimsy only came off in varying degrees. That was due to the writing, which often came off rather rote. Yambao presented the reader with a myriad of fantastical, objectively wondrous elements in this parallel world that Hana and Keishin venture into, only to describe it in the flattest terms. For a magical realism novel, the writing felt almost utilitarian, designed to describe a setting or a phenomenon with the absolute minimum amount of description for the reader to get an idea of what it looked like. Sure, Water Moon didn’t need to be excessively flowery or purple in its prose, but when you have a setting as whimsical and magical as this, more description is necessary.

The same applies to the feelings of the characters—they hardly seemed to react to their settings, only serving to be chess pieces that were dragged around at will when the plot called for it. Keishin at least had something of a personality, but other than him, most of the characters, including Hana, were defined only by what had happened to them. They were defined only by their backstories, and that dictated everything that they did throughout the story—not their motivations or their personalities. All of this, combined with Yambao’s relatively flat writing, made their romance lackluster. Not only did it feel like the classic “oh, our main characters are a boy and a girl, therefore they have to fall in love,” it was just so rushed and un-earned—we didn’t get nearly enough development (or page time) from either of them to merit a full-blown romance. Even though they’d jumped through magical puddles together and visited whimsical worlds, I found myself barely caring for either of them, or their romance.

Back to the subject of themes…I wholly believe that a book shouldn’t be constrained by talking only about one theme. In fact, most every book does that anyway—having a book centered around a single theme without even a handful of sub-themes or topics is practically impossible. Like I (and Yambao) said, everything is connected. Water Moon, however, had a problem with articulating it. Beyond the bit about choices and connectivity, Water Moon wanted to say so much about so many things—motherhood, grief, regret, parent-child relationships—and yet it didn’t know what to say about any of them. A theme was introduced with the same emotional weight as the central theme, it got 50 pages of page time, and then it barely resolved itself. Water Moon had almost no sense of direction, leaving me with a book that didn’t resolve itself in a satisfying or logical way. Ultimately, this felt like a case of too many cooks in the kitchen—it was an ambitious attempt to tackle every theme and give it the same weight, but it ended up in a plot (and characters) that ran around confused for almost all 374 pages and underbaked statements on what it wanted to say.

Overall, an ambitious and dreamlike novel with a world that was a treat to explore, but offered up flat characters and had no sense of what it wanted to do with itself. 3.5 stars!

Water Moon is a standalone, but Samantha Sotto Yambao is also the author of Before Ever After, Love and Gravity, A Dream of Trees, and The Beginning of Always (under the name Samantha Sotto).

Today’s song:

so hauntingly beautiful :,)

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: 3/23/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

Since I haven’t been able to post in a few weeks, here are the Sunday Songs graphics from that time:

3/9/25:

3/16/25 (or, NEW CAR SEAT HEADREST IN MAY, WE ARE SO BACK):

This week: you thought this would be a quick post after I haven’t been able to write regularly for two weeks? WOE, TEN MINUTE SONG BE UPON YE!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/23/25

“Love” – Hana Vu

One of the best surprises a concert can have in store is a good opener. There are infinite jokes about bad openers, half of which…well, might be dogging on perfectly fine artists trying to get their foot in the door, and half of them are true. I really do try to at least go into openers with an open (no pun intended) mind, because everybody has to start somewhere, no matter how big of an artist they’re opening for. But sometimes it’s just up to your taste. Even with some cringy performances, you can at least tell that they’re trying.

I saw Soccer Mommy about two weeks ago (stellar performance!!!! as always!! and the crowd had basic human decency this time, unlike the parasitic frat bros that populated her crowd last time) with Hana Vu as the opener. I kept my expectations low. I expected to just nod along and twiddle my thumbs, but I think I may have found an excellent artist! She came off quite shy, mumbling to the audience and asking us what we had for dinner, but once she started performing, it was clear that Soccer Mommy had a worthy match to her sound. However, if I had to compare Vu to anyone, it would be to Lucy Dacus—they have a similar brand of indie rock, both bearing warm, rich vocals and guitar-driven angst with no shortage of heart. Nothing can come close to “Night Shift,” but Vu clearly studied how that song goes supernova at the end. The closer to her most recent album, Romanticism, “Love,” like Vu’s performance before Soccer Mommy, starts out unassumingly, but quickly becomes a dramatic landslide aided with thundering drumbeats, strings, and Hana Vu bellowing as though into a cavern. The lyrics, as sparse as they are, come sung clutching a bleeding heart in both hands, staining everything within arm’s reach. It truly lives up to the drama of the album cover, with Vu draped in robes and with a sword pressed to her neck, modeled after Artemisia Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes.” Either way, Hana Vu has earned a tally in favor of the good opening bands I’ve seen—and a place in my more regular rotation of artists. A big thank you to Soccer Mommy for giving a platform to Vu’s talent, and thank you to Vu for the fantastic opening act!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

To a Darker Shore – Leanne Schwartz – “I just want you to stay/You know I hate giving up/And oh, Well I guess it’s just me/Please don’t leave me alone/You know I can’t let you be…”

“Bad Timing” – Jim O’Rourke

Once my dad sent me this song, it was immediately relegated to my quiet instrumental study playlist. I shouldn’t say “relegated,” really. It’s a great song to peacefully study along with, but it keeps you on your toes. Ten minutes long and dense doesn’t make it sound appealing, but “Bad Timing” sounds like how those slow motion videos of flowers unfurling after the frost melts from their buds look. “Bad Timing” also proves my long song theory right with flying colors—the best ones have enough changes to keep you interested for ten minutes. This track in particular feels like two songs in one. The first is a homely, acoustic ditty, which peacefully bows out at the 2:50 mark, giving way to a chorus of plucked strings and, of all instruments that should sound shimmery, an accordion would be my last guess. Yet Jim O’Rourke pulls it off, making it shudder and glimmer along with the synths. You’re lured into a soft, ambient sense of security, but like rot climbing up the roots of a plant, O’Rourke tears away at the music, fiber by fiber, until the remnants are ablaze in distortion and ascending mayhem by the time you reach the eight and a half minute mark. It’s clear to me the magic O’Rourke made with producing almost all of Wilco’s albums—he has such a talent for taking a simple melody, stretching it out and contorting it as easily as a chef kneads dough. He put something entirely unassuming into the oven, and something wholly unexpected came out the other side once the experimental yeast rose.

On another note: I can’t for the life of me find who made the album art for Bad Timing, but it’s just so charming to me.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Annihilation – Jeff Vandermeer – everything becomes slowly, gradually unrecognizable and strange, just like the progression of “Bad Timing”

“Ends Meet” – Panda Bear

Brian Wilson is alive and well, but what I’ve listened to of Sinister Grift feels like a glimpse into an alternate universe where Brian Wilson got temporally airlifted from the ’60s into the 2020s and had to find his way around. That, and if he’d been given nothing but a knapsack full of various synths and electronic knickknacks to carry with him on his time-out-of-time journey. “Ends Meet” is the definition of psychedelic, constantly fading in and out of focus like ripples over sunlit water. Noah Lennox’s voice also feels piped in from beneath the shallows of a reef—released this February as it was, everything I’ve heard of Panda has been carefully crafted to be specifically summery and aquatic, at least in sound (see: “Comfy in Nautica,” “Ferry Lady”*).

The existential lyricism feels at odds with the music at first glance: Lennox is confronting what we all have to confront at some point in our lives: we’re all gonna die, so what else is there to do? His answer is as simple and as difficult as any: appreciate everything in it, bad and good: “And when it is my time/Dig it all.” It’s a lesson I’ve been chipping away at for the better part of last year, what with my difficulty in staying present and not projecting myself into possible futures (not the time traveling Brian Wilson ones, unfortunately), but the way that Panda Bear takes it musically seems different than most. Sonically, “Ends Meets” feels so daydreamy and almost dissociative—its head isn’t in the clouds, it practically is the clouds. Even the face on the album cover of Sinister Grift looks like their mind is somewhere else entirely. But that in and of itself is putting that sentiment of being un-anchored into music and into words. It’s a jarring pairing in concept, tackling this subject matter with such an acid-tinged, vacation-like musical landscape, but to me, it’s the feeling of letting go of that burden, of knowing that all you can do in life is appreciate every facet of it.

*the “Ferry Lady” music video is about as trippy as you’d expect, so if you’re sensitive to flashing images or eye strain, you’ve been warned.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Library of the Unwritten – A.J. Hackwith – “They got a spot to bury you/It’s not news, you’re tremblin’ for what?/Just keep it in the groovе (Don’t let up)/But keep the doorways shut…”

“La Vie en Rose” (Édith Piaf cover) – Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra

I was never much of a Disney kid, but Wall-E, one of the first movies I saw in theaters as a kid, will always unlock a particularly special place in my heart. Star Wars was my true introduction to sci-fi, but the more I think about it, Wall-E was right up there in conditioning me to fall headfirst into the genre. Even now, in my twenties and watching Wall-E for a grade to analyze the gender dynamics for a class on Disney and gender…it broke me. I knew it would. Sure, Mark Fisher cites it by name in Capitalist Realism when he talks about how Hollywood has subsumed anti-capitalist resistance and yada yada yada, but…god, how could even the most shriveled soul not be moved by an almost newborn race of humankind returning to the same earth, babies treading over barren ground as the giddy captain gleefully lists off all the plants that can be grown in it? And you’re already crying? And then they hit you with “Down to Earth?” Diabolical.

Part of my class’s discussion on the gender dynamics of Wall-E, beyond how we’re socialized to see Wall-E and Eve as boy and girl even though they’re…intelligent machines with no gender to speak of, was how the viewer is socialized to show their relationship as romantic (and traditionally heterosexual) from the markedly older, “classic” media surrounding them. Notable songs and clips from Hello, Dolly! do the heavy lifting there, but in the barest sense, Louis Armstrong’s cover of “La Vie En Rose,” one of the more ubiquitously recognized love songs of this century, which plays when Wall-E first becomes romantically interested in Eve, adds to this effect. And while I see the argument, as women and gender studies/queer theory-pilled as I am, I really don’t think Wall-E is nearly as guilty as a whole cadre of other Disney movies who have improperly shaped particularly women and young girls’ views on how gender and romance should be. For me, “La Vie En Rose” feels as pure as Wall-E and Eve, in all of their innocent, nonsexual romance. Even as a little kid, only knowing Louis Armstrong from “What A Wonderful World” (and thinking that Grover from Sesame Street was behind the vocals), something about those piano flourishes unfurled a kind of petal inside of me. It’s one of the first examples I can name of a melody really scratching an itch in my brain. I’m next to illiterate when it comes to jazz, but Armstrong was clearly one of those rare people who could give his trumpet such an individual voice—by the end of the song, you could call it just as much of a vocalist as he is. Paired with the cinematography of Wall-E’s tire treads tracing neat lines in the trash-laden dirt, something about it felt so neat, so meant to be, a puzzle piece shifting into place. Both of them are clean, and yet not sanitized—they’re sweet, earnest, pure. A part of childhood me is warmed every time I hear this song, obviously, but even outside of that context, the soothing spell of this rendition is undeniable. As is Wall-E.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz – Louis Armstrong’s take on “La Vie En Rose” is obvious coffee/tea shop music, but combined with my Wall-E association, why not return to this cozy, tender tea shop in a distant future?

“Here Comes Your Man” – Pixies

The music video for “Here Comes Your Man” has to be one of the more uncomfortable music video experiences I can think of, not because of any particular content, but more because you get the overwhelming feeling that nobody wants to be there. Every time they pan to Frank Black or Kim Deal (or Joey Santiago, honestly), they look like they’re trying to telepathically kill the cameramen, Professor X style. They don’t want to be there, the camera crew doesn’t want to be there, and they don’t want you there either…oh, my bad, sorry for the intrusion. I’ll see myself out. For good reason, though—they were averse to making music videos, and when their label pressured them to do so, they famously decided to stick it to the man and gape their mouths open like fish while the lyrics were playing. Given…well, everything I’ve heard about Frank Black, it could easily just be them being petty, but for an underground band who were achieving success they didn’t seem to want, it’s understandable.

I always feel a kind of odd shame when I like That One Song/Album That Got Popular with a certain band that the band openly hates with a passion. If I’d had the time to write a post last week, I would’ve said the same thing for Julian Cope and “Someone Like Me”—My Nation Underground is one of his poppier albums, and one that he wasn’t satisfied with. (See also: “Me Myself & I,” a song I love, but that De La Soul inserts “we hate this song” into live performances of the lyrics…yeah, you get the picture.) For Pixies, they weren’t satisfied with this pop song to the point where they almost never performed it live. But…it’s so good. Sure, it’s simpler and more accessible than some of their work, but they knew how to make one of the most iconic alternative pop songs. Most alternative rock fans would probably be able to recognize that bassline immediately, all thanks to the timeless talent of Kim Deal. There’s layers to the genius of it—the harmonies of Deal and Black, the vague, surrealist lyrics about homeless people boarding a train before an earthquake, the faint comfort and hope in spite of that. The chorus of “here comes your man” was a last minute addition, but it’s always given a kind of solace for me, ever since I was a kid, before I understood the lyrics of the verse. Even with the bleak nature of the verse, it’s always implied a kind of salvation or relief to me. Bottom line: sometimes, even if That Song got popular, it’s obviously popular for a reason, but how talented a band’s craft is can often shine through in the charts.

Sometimes. We don’t talk about “Creep.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come – Jen St. Jude – a similar kind of disaster-oriented scenario to the song, of people scrambling to safety in the wake of a planet-destroying asteroid.

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 (3/18/25) – The Teller of Small Fortunes

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

You know it. You know I’m all for cozy literature. I wasn’t particularly in a moment where I needed cozy fantasy, but these days, I love to space them into my regular reading rotation to keep things lighter, if need be. I’m usually more for sci-fi than fantasy, but I love a good fantasy every once in a while. The Teller of Small Fortunes wasn’t the best cozy fantasy I’ve read, but like a mug of tea, it was great for a momentary hug of warmth and love.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Teller of Small Fortunes – Julie Leong

Tao is an immigrant from Shinara, making a living far to the west in Eshtera. She makes a living off of fortune-telling, but hers are not like the grand tales that people expect from those with Shinn heritage. But Tao’s fortunes have a catch: they are small fortunes, minor events that seemingly have no consequence, but will add up towards a life of crucial choices. She cannot stay for long in one place, lest these fortunes pile up and her customers start to expect more complex predictions. But when she crosses paths with an ex-mercenary and a thief-turned-poet on the road, Tao has to keep a promise to the fortune she gave them: they’re looking for a missing girl, and Tao knows that she’ll be reunited with them. What’s unknown, however, is how it’ll happen…

TW/CW (from Julie Leong): political conflict, death of a parent, parental neglect, racism, grief, alcohol

While The Teller of Small Fortunes wasn’t the best cozy fantasy I’ve ever read, if you’re looking for something sweet to tide you over, look no further! In the mood for found family, cats, spells, and wonky pastries? I’ve got just the book for you.

Given the crowds that I hang around with, it might surprise you that I’ve never actually played DnD. I’ve always been adjacent to people who are into it and frequently play it, but I’ve never played myself. By osmosis, I know enough about it to discern that anyone who loves DnD will absolutely eat up The Teller of Small Fortunes! Somebody with more DnD knowledge could probably sort each character into a class, but I’m illiterate in that department; yet even still, I can tell that it came about in the way that many DnD campaigns seem to: out of love and out of friendship. Leong’s cozy fantasy has the perfect balance of wholesomeness, levity, and more serious themes, and overall, it’s an ode to the friends we find in unexpected places. The contrasting personalities of Tao, Mash, Silt, and Kina made for a delightful found family with goals that often got in the way of each other, but twisted to form a journey across a fantastical land that taught them lessons about identity, friendship, and individuality. It’s just so sweet. Admittedly, it did border on a bit cloying at times (even for me, both with my cozy fiction proclivities and my merciless sweet tooth), but overall, cozy fantasy fans will be more than satisfied. Plus, there’s a cat. Automatic win in my book.

Tao’s character arc and the themes around it were the heart of The Teller of Small Fortunes. This novel focuses heavily on her immigrant identity, but it explored something that I haven’t often seen with these narratives. In order to make a living outside of her home country, Tao has to perform a stereotype—in her case, being a seer. She relies on this preconceived notion of her people all being able to see the future, and knows that she’ll be able to make money off of it, yet she tries so hard to make it define her. On the other side of the coin, there’s the Guild of Mages, who physically want to use her as a pawn, fitting her into their similarly superficial stereotype of what a magic-user should be. Yes, The Teller of Small Fortunes is very much a “be yourself” narrative (I will always hate Disney for making people trivialize this kind of message), but it’s one that’s complicated by the nuance of the aspects of Tao’s identity. For her, being herself is a lifelong fight, held up by several systemic forces of oppression. Her journey is a mental one just as much as it is physical, and it required the same labor, with a satisfying conclusion: the conscious effort by her to not let other people box her in.

However, the writing sometimes got on my nerves. For me, cozy fantasy can sometimes fall into the trap of being almost condescending in its writing style; it veers to strongly into the “and what did we learn today, kids?” kind of storytelling, even if it’s often aimed at adults. There is a marked difference between having a low-stakes plot and dumbing down the language for your audience. The Teller of Small Fortunes didn’t completely fall into making the language overly digestible, but every plot point and side quest (of which there are many) tended to have a very clear, obviously stated lesson that accompanied the ending. Even if said plot points were well-executed—which they often were, especially the scene with the phoenix egg—their impact was often lessened by the regurgitating of what the scene was meant to mean for the characters and the message, as if we couldn’t figure it out. I honestly didn’t mind that these plot points, especially the ending, were wrapped up in notably kind, easier ways—that’s almost a staple of cozy fiction, at this point—but we didn’t have to get their message shoved in our faces on a neon sign. Additionally, as a character, Kina also erred on this side of saccharine—she was sweet in the way that some cozy fiction characters are, but like the pastries she made, it got a little too sweet in a grating way.

I also found the worldbuilding to be quite generic. The Teller of Small Fortunes was one of those fantasy novels that took existing countries, copied and pasted them into the narrative, and added magic and mythical creatures; Shinara was clearly an analogue for China, which, while it was great for the themes of anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia, didn’t make for worldbuilding that was interesting or novel in any way. The same can be said for most of the other places that Tao and the gang pass through—most of them fell under the “vaguely European, I will not elaborate” curse that plagues high fantasy, and the only things that distinguished them, if any, were some of the exports/trades that they had. I will say that I loved the system of the Guild of Mages, and they served as great commentary for tokenization and a distant but tangible source of corruption in the world, but they didn’t have enough of a presence for them to have an effect on the world for me. It all felt very lackluster to me in contrast to the care that was put into the characters. I also would’ve liked more clarification on the regional magic. It’s implied through some of Tao’s background that magic is often associated with/endemic to particular regions (hence the stereotypes of Shinn people being seers/fortune tellers and whatnot), but we don’t get a clarification of whether or not the rule also applies to the surrounding regions.

Overall, a cozy fantasy that had lovely, poignant characters and themes, but was less fortunate in the worldbuilding department. 3.5 stars!

The Teller of Small Fortunes is a standalone and Julie Leong’s debut. Her next novel, The Keeper of Magical Things, is a companion novel set in the same universe as The Teller of Small Fortunes, and is slated for release in October 2025.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Feminist Books for Women’s History Month 🚺 (2025 Edition)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., March is Women’s History Month! Every year, I find myself repeating the same horrors about the attacks on women’s rights in the past five years. This year is no different, save for the fact that with Trump’s presidency, so many men have felt emboldened to let their misogyny run rampant—and our society seems to encourage it, time after time. Every year, we fight to make sure that misogyny, sexism, and rape culture become impermissible again. Though it seems like an uphill climb with no discernible light at the end of the tunnel, there will always be a constant: we will keep fighting for all women. For women of color, for immigrant women, for queer and trans women (especially trans women, because feminism wouldn’t be possible without them), for disabled women, for survivors. They keep pushing against them, so we’ll keep fighting—and keep reading. The good news is that literature is rife with heroines fighting against the system, and as long as these stories are told and spread, someone will be inspired to fight. So as with all the other year, I’ve compiled even more books of women fighting against oppression from a variety of perspectives, age ranges, and genres.

NOTE: once again, I’ve switched these posts to books for several age ranges, too lazy to change the header, etc. etc.

For my previous lists, click below: 

2021

2022

2023

2024

Let’s begin, shall we?

🚺THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH🚺

SCIENCE FICTION:

FANTASY:

REALISTIC FICTION:

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are your favorite feminist books? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

How Women Made Music brought me here…

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