Tag: Here Beside the Rising Tide

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 1/25/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: Here it comes again; a fantastic voyage to Palo Alto to answer this essential question: where’s my phone? It’s been undone!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 1/25/26

“Where’s My Phone?” – Mitski

It’s finally come to that time of year when I start accumulating albums that I’m looking forward to. Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, which is set to release on February 27, is topping the list at the moment for sure! Mitski is back for her first album in two and a half years, and as usual, she’s set to put a pulse on the neuroses of the world; Nothing’s About to Happen to Me seems to be a concept album about a recluse who never leaves her cluttered house. With the aesthetics of cats and old wallpaper, this album has such a clear image—and an intriguing one. Mitski channels some of her heavier guitar work on “Where’s My Phone?”; it’s an exciting sonic callback, like she’s been dusting off the old Bury Me at Makeout Creek sounds (!!!). Adopting a falsely cheery tone, Mitski sings of this character desperately repressing every possible source of negativity, yearning to be “clear glass with nothing going on.” The sentiment of “I keep thinking surely somebody will save me/At every turn I learn that no one will” is pure Mitski all the way down, but it’s refreshing to see Mitski going headfirst into a new character; her introspection, fictional or nonfictional, is where her art shines. Plus, that music video, in which Mitski’s multigenerational home gets assailed by dozens of strangers, is nothing short of bonkers. Definitely somebody’s vivid anxiety dream, for sure.

For some reason, my mind got stuck on the classic censored beep sound on the “I would fuck the hole all night long” line. Sure, we are in the age of musicians proactively self-censoring, but of all musicians, Mitski seems like the last one to do that, especially with how she’s clawed to keep her individuality—and sanity—intact in the music industry. She’s not a Taylor Swift type, and she hasn’t shied away from profanity before. There’s no clean version of the song, and the music video has it too—and yet the official lyrics don’t censor it. So what’s the deal? Was it some sort of artistic touch for the album’s central character’s supposed shame and guilt? I still haven’t come to a conclusion myself, but I swear that it’s intentional. Whatever the case, “Where’s My Phone” buzzes with neurosis, crunching at the edges, an ember of anxiety.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I’m Thinking of Ending Things – Iain Reid – “I keep thinking surely somebody will save me/At every turn I learn that no one will/I just want my mind to be a clear glass/Clear glass with nothing instead…”

“Fantastic Voyage” – David Bowie

As calm of a song “Fantastic Voyage” is, it’s a certainly eerie start to Lodger. I finally got around to listening to the album in its entirety not long ago, while mourning 10 years since Bowie’s passing in 2016. Listening to Lodger not long after Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy put me in an irreparable chokehold makes me realize the sheer impact of Eno on Bowie—his weirdness was all there, but after decades of being mainstream, it was Eno who resurrected the less palatable parts of weirdness. I’m sure it was less unexpected at the conclusion of the Berlin Trilogy, but expecting another “Starman” and getting…I dunno, “African Night Flight” must’ve been some unparalleled whiplash. And he’d keep the act going throughout his entire career. In a way, Lodger is a microcosm of what his career would later be. There’s no shortage of tricks up his sleeve, from the strange, often eerie left turns to the sneakier tricks; for one, “Fantastic Voyage” and “Boys Keep Swinging” have an almost identical chord progression, but their atmospheres are so radically different that I didn’t even notice. It’s a trickster kind of album, obstinate in its mission to not be boxed in.

After falling back to Earth, the Berlin Trilogy got much more worldly, and Lodger was its peak. The entire album reeks with the recollection that the world is rife with the unknown, be it in places unseen or the machinations of politics. “Fantastic Voyage” is the thesis of that song; it reads like a scrawled diary before the apocalypse, and it very well could have been, what with the threat of nuclear annihilation and the Cold War on Bowie’s mind. He pits the casual dehumanization of entire peoples against the plea for the dignity of all individuals. He looks skyward, pondering the missiles that could rain down on the population and end everything in an instant. But in the midst of all this turmoil, decades after 1979, the final verse rings truer than ever: “They wipe out an entire race and I’ve got to write it down/But I’m still getting educated/But I’ve got to write it down/And it won’t be forgotten.”

Oof. Certainly feels like a slap in the face, given that ICE has been snatching children off the streets and shoots unarmed civilians in Minneapolis, and I’m just holed up in my apartment trying to get my thesis done. Yet Bowie’s words feel like a guidebook. I’ve got to write it down—I interpret that both in the sense that we have to commit the crimes of these monsters to paper, lest the government conveniently paints them in a more pleasant light (as they already are), but also that in spite of everything, we have to keep on with our creativity. Sometimes, all we can do is write. Of course, that doesn’t make political action, however small, null and void, but sometimes it’s all you can do but journal everything around you to stay sane. All that matters, both for Bowie and for all of us, is to keep the pen moving—that keeps our minds sharp, it creates a record of the soul.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? – Temi Oh – “Remember it’s true/Dignity is valuable/But our lives are valuable too/We’re learning to live with somebody’s depression/And I don’t want to live with somebody’s depression/We’ll get by, I suppose…”

“Palo Alto” – Radiohead

In a move that’s probably stunned nobody, I’ve decided to become the insufferable neighbor and take up collecting vinyl; my parents were nice enough to gift me with a record player, as well as my two favorite albums: David Bowie’s Hunky Dory and Radiohead’s OK Computer. I can’t thank them enough. My neighbors, on the other hand, are probably rueing the day that they had to hear “Fitter Happier” through the walls without warning. Your honor, I plead “whoopsie daisies.”

OK Computer—specifically, the 2017 remaster with all of the b-sides, OKNOTOK—all but swallowed me whole in my freshman year of high school, and the version of me that got chewed up and spit out was irreparably, permanently changed. Whether it was for the best or the worst is up to interpretation, but either way, it’s given me a love of Radiohead that hasn’t waned to this day, more than seven years after I first listened to the album. However, at that age, I was still in the woeful process of immediately deleting whatever songs that didn’t hook me on the first few listens from my library. The destruction left in the wake was irreparable—and it also made me completely forget that this absolute gem existed. I can’t even put my finger on why it wasn’t a favorite at the time; the only reasonable explanation is that OK Computer is just so jam-packed full of songs that shattered my brain that brain-shattering became the standard. I was harsh back then.

Yet on my new record player, “Palo Alto” came out of left field. In the mindset of Thom Yorke, I can sort of see why this one got the axe back in the day—musically, it’s less adventurous than some of the other tracks. It’s very much of the same, more straightforward rock/Britpop crop of The Bends, despite the avalanche of fuzz and decorative beep-boops. Thematically, it’s on par with the anxiety of OK Computer, with the tiresome monotony of corporate life: “In a city of the future/It is difficult to concentrate/Meet the boss, meet the wife/Everybody’s happy, everyone is made for life.” Even if it’s not as compositionally inventive as some of the a-sides, even Radiohead’s more straightforward songs are a cut above the rest, and “Palo Alto” is proof. With the sudden, grinding assault of Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien’s guitars against Thom Yorke’s exasperated delivery of regurgitated small talk, it encapsulates the exhaustion of being trapped in an endless cycle of work buttressed only with surface-level interactions.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Embassytown – China Miéville – “In a city of the future/It is difficult to find a space/I’m too busy to see you/You’re too busy to wait…”

“Here It Comes Again” – Cate Le Bon

I regret to inform you that I’ve been listening to way more Cate Le Bon again, but I can’t help it that it faintly fits the vibe of my honors thesis. Michelangelo Dying, Pompeii, and Reward all got revisited last week, and you will be hearing about it. This is, once again, a threat.

Among the many impressive things about Cate Le Bon is the myriad ways that she makes her music sound innately aquatic. I talked about how watery all of Reward feels when I first listened to it back in July, with “Miami” and its sounds of aquarium gravel and bubbles. Unlike a lot of her songs, “Here It Comes Again” feels more like water rhythmically; with an almost waltz-like rhythm, it feels like the motion of a plastic toy boat being carried out to sea. The melody continually repeats and lives by eating itself, a gently cyclical waltz across a flooded ballroom covered in algae. That precise quality of the melody is what enhances the lyrics. It’s implied in the title (and the chorus), but “Here It Comes Again” drowns in monotony, its sonic eyelids growing heavier with each repetition: “Man alive/This solitude/Is wrinkles in the dirt.” Very few artists make solitude and dreariness into such musical feasts like Cate Le Bon does—if it’s loneliness, she’s spun it into something as appealing as a bowl of candies with brightly-colored wrappers.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “Man alive/This solitude/Is wrinkles in the dirt/I borrowed love from carnivals/Set it in a frame/Here it comes again…”

“Been Undone” – Peter Gabriel

HE’S BACK! PETER GABRIEL IS BACK TO SAVE 2026!

Once again culminating in an album coming out this December, o\i is being released in singles corresponding with each full moon of 2026. Three days into 2026, it gave me some hope—and a bittersweet full-circle moment for me. I spent the spring semester of my freshman year of college listening to i/o‘s singles, and I’ll be spending the spring semester of my senior year listening to its inverse. The songs comprise of both castoffs from the i/o sessions and from further back in his career; according to this video, the chord progression for “Been Undone” has been on the back burner for several decades. As the starting gun for the album, it’s an expression of some of what I love best about Gabriel: his boundless creativity and his grounded humility. “Been Undone” is all about learning moments—the ones that cause us pain or overwhelm us, but ultimately teach us something valuable: “By all the forms that you get from the Mandelbrot set/I’ve been undone/By the recursive slaves in the home of the brave/I’ve been undone.” I’m assuming the latter is in reference to the deeply broken U.S. prison system, but back to back with a mathematical concept that results in dizzying, fascinating patterns, it proves the song’s point: both great wonder and great pain can be the origin of learning. Musically, I thought it was going to be a more standard new-era Gabriel song, and it continues so for nearly 6 minutes; but at 5:59, he takes a left turn back into “The Tower That Ate People” territory, turning a pleasantly synthy tune into his personal brand of almost-industrial, proving that even at 74, he has no shortage of tricks up his sleeve.

Also, the bit where Gabriel was asked about the Bright/Dark-side mixes and if he allows the producers to play with the structure cracked me up—probably the clearest vocalization of “no <3” I’ve ever seen HAHA

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Life Hacks for a Little Alien – Alice Franklin – “Though I want to observe, it keeps touching a nerve/And I’ve been undone/By the past that you trace, by a moment of grace/I have been undone…”

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 Books

The Bookish Mutant’s 5-Star Reads of 2025

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

2025 is a year that defies any kind of platitudes for me, but it was a year full of upheaval—good and bad. I’m nearly finished with college, I moved into an apartment, I had my golden birthday…all with the looming specter of fascism overhead. Too many people are concernedly fine with that last bit.

This year, I wanted to make a concerted effort to read more nonfiction. As of now, according to my Storygraph, my ratio of fiction to nonfiction is 88% to 12%, which…yeah, there’s still a pretty obvious bias. But compared to last year, where only 6% of what I read was nonfiction, that’s a significant jump up! 6% more than last year! Yet even still, most of my 5-star reads ended up being nonfiction this year, something that I did not see coming. Granted, not every nonfiction book I read was amazing, but there were some real heavy-hitters this year. Spanning from memoirs to essays on everything from grief, art, and identity, I feel like this nonfiction exemplifies my aim this year: to learn more, but to resist the kind of person that the government wants me to be, and that’s someone who is ignorant. I don’t want to thank the current administration for anything, but I will give them this: their insistence on dumbing down the population has only made me want to learn more.

Last year, I talked about how my 5-star reads seem to shrink a little every year; I still maintain that it’s probably for the best, since I’m more selective now than I was before. (Also, it’s bound to be less since I read less and more slowly these days. I’m not blowing through 300 books a year like I was when I was 10 years ago.) And yet I noticed this year that sometimes, I was almost afraid to rate books 5 stars. I found myself second-guessing constantly: did it really move me that much? Was it that good to deserve full marks? Sure, I’ve retrospectively changed ratings of books here and there—it’s bound to happen as we age—but I just need to remember to go with my heart. And what spoke to my heart this year was an oddball bunch—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and science fiction featuring cats. All of it moved me in some strange way, giving me the liberatory knowledge to move forward and the strength to persist. So here’s to these amazing novels that moved me the most this year.

NOTE: Normally, I don’t include re-reads on my 5-star reads of the year, but in this case I’ll make an exception, since for one of them, I retrospectively changed my rating to 5 stars. There’s nothing like a book that’s even better the second time around.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S 5-STAR READS OF 2025⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

*I’ve bumped this up to the full 5 stars from 4.75 in retrospect. Deserved.

HONORABLE MENTIONS (4.5 STARS)

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

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 10/19/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: the chances of being pursued by Brian Eno wielding chopsticks are low…but never zero.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 10/14/25

“Lay My Love” – Brian Eno & John Cale

While digging a bit about a song that I’m not even mentioning until next week, I stumbled upon something entirely different. All of those Pitchfork Best Songs of [insert decade] lists (this was from the ’90s one) are very subjective, but sometimes I appreciate looking at them simply by virtue of finding out about something new. Last week, it happened to be a collaboration between Brian Eno and John Cale from 1990, Wrong Way Up, and “Lay My Love” in particular. I was excited by the prospect of Brian Eno already, but man…I have been sucked in. I’ve listened to this one an unhealthy amount of time. It just swallows you whole in the best way possible!

By the ’80s, Brian Eno had built a decade’s worth of entirely ambient music, and there seemed to be no return for him to the more conventional (if you can call it that) rock of his earlier career, abandoning his own vocals almost entirely: in 1989, he told an interviewer that “I’m sure I could, if someone held a gun to my head, crank out a record of songs, but at this point in time I know it wouldn’t be any good.” And given the intensely argument-fraught recording of Wrong Way Up (Cale alleges that Eno once came at him wielding chopsticks, but Eno has insisted that Cale fabricated this), there’s a good chance that in another timeline, this album may not have seen the light of day after all. And yet there they were in 1990: Eno and Cale, frequent collaborators since the 1970’s, making an album consisting of just that.

You’d think that after abandoning singing for so long, Eno would appear rusty. In fact, he’s the exact opposite. “Lay My Love” feels like the distillation of the best qualities of his off-kilter vocals. Even though he’s known for his more removed, uptight vocal quality, this track presents him as warmer than he’s ever come across. It’s a song that makes you believe every word: as he sings “I am the yearning,” you can hear the pleading in his vocals, layered upon themselves ad infinitum. Cale’s rousing violins add an upbeat swing amongst the dizzyingly layered instrumentals. It’s an all-consuming slurry of glimmering sediment and flotsam, all warmed by the sun’s rays, equal parts hymn and experimental electronic music. Eno peppers in some of his most delightfully surreal, offbeat lyrics (“I am the termite of temptation”) with ones that make sense in some unarticulated part of your soul (“I am the wheel/I am the turning”). Above all, you really do feel as though this love is being laid around you like a blanket. It feels like the kind of song to soundtrack a quiet montage in a film of a house being built, or moss growing on a log: gradual, and yet hopeful in its certainty. You know that the love is coming around to you, and when it does, it will be as joyous as every note bursting from this track.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built – Becky Chambers – this seems precisely the kind of song that would soundtrack Sibling Dex and Mosscap’s quiet adventures through the woods.

“New Generation” – The London Suede

As far as the Britpop Big Four goes, The London Suede (known as just Suede in the UK) is the last frontier for me to explore; I’ve heard some of their songs sporadically and loved them (see: “Metal Mickey”), but reading The Last Party: Britpop, Blair, and the Demise of English Rock sparked some more interest in them. Add that to Neko Case’s episode of What’s in My Bag? and I was instantly hooked on “New Generation.” Along with “Lay My Love,” this song’s up there with the songs that I’ve been listening to an unhealthy amount of times. Who am I to deny my Britpop girlie urges?

I really should be a huge fan of The London Suede, given how influenced they were by David Bowie, but then again, not everybody influenced by Bowie is automatically good, of course. Brett Anderson and company seemed to worship the ground he walked on, which resulted in their melodramatic style and soaring vocals. Dog Man Star, which I’ve heard is an excellent album, was said to be inspired by a lot of Bowie’s early ’70s material, which makes perfect sense—”New Generation” feels like fanfiction set in the Hunger City of Diamond Dogs, and I fully mean that as a compliment. If Anderson’s vocals and just-so placed swoop didn’t tip you off, “New Generation” is high on the drama, but that’s part of why it works so well—it’s a strangely dystopian song that’s fit for draping yourself dramatically across the bed, full of distance and yearning. Anderson’s really doing some vocal somersaults here—he said himself that it’s one of the most difficult songs for him to sing—and amidst sepia-toned lyrics of disaffection and substance abuse, his vocals are outstretched arms beckoning for someone to swoop in and extricate him from it all.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Shamshine Blind – Paz Pardo – “‘Cause like all the boys in all the cities/I take the poison, take the pity/But she and I would soon discover/We take the pills to find each other…”

“Wreck” – Neko Case

Today on incredibly specific comparisons: “Wreck” by Neko Case sounds almost exactly like this meme to me:

Maybe I do need to listen to more Neko Case after all. I’m a fan of the New Pornographers, but I really haven’t dived into any of her solo work, save for the misfire that was her cover of “Madonna of the Wasps.” You win some, you lose some. But this song, off of her new album Neon Grey Midnight Green (that’s got to be one of the better album titles I’ve heard in a while, for sure), easily falls into the win category.

For a beat, the a cappella intro lulls you into a false sense of security before dropping you headfirst into a churning, breathless whirlpool of head-over-heels romance. I can’t deny a love song that feels like you’re gleefully sprinting through a verdant field at full speed—there’s a bit of Hounds of Love Kate Bush in there somewhere in the unabashed drama that Case peddles: “I’m a meteor shattering around you/And I’m sorry/I’ve become a solar system/Since I found you/I’m an eruption/A wreck of possibilities/A volatility of stars/My clothes can’t hold together.” (Another shoutout is due to “Do I look like the sun to you?/Do I blaze freckles onto your face?”) And right after this, she breathlessly cries “And I know I can’t burn this bright forever!”—right about there, I imagine her smile splitting with reckless glee, a princess dress ballooning into endless layers of silk and tulle, a cry of nothing but sheer joy. It’s an easily addictive ode to absolutely drowning in yearning, and desperately wanting the echo to have an answer.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Stars Too Fondly – Emily Hamilton – “Do I look like the sun to you?/Do I blaze freckles onto your face/I bet I, bet I, bet I do/I’m a meteor shattering around you/And I’m sorry…”

“Alien Being” – The Magnetic Fields

There’s something truly beautiful about the fact that this song only has 10 likes on YouTube and a single comment that reads “being gay is awesome and you gotta try it!!!” Amen, brother.

The House of Tomorrow EP was released very early on in The Magnetic Fields’ career, and from 3/5 songs that I’ve listened to from it (this, “Either You Don’t Love Me Or I Don’t Love You” and “Love Goes Home to Paris in the Spring”), it’s clear that they’d all honed their talents very early. I suppose it helped that Stephin Merritt was in several bands before this, but it’s still very indicative of what a masterful songwriter he’s come to be. It’s also clear from the start that he’d started dissecting unhappy relationships very early on. The lyrics of “Alien Being” aren’t quite as laden with metaphor as they usually are, but they’re monotonous and repetitive—which feels like precisely the point. Almost all of them end with “nothing at all” (“You talk a lot about nothing at all/”Watch TV shows about nothing at all”), adding to the layered, grainy drone of the synths in the background. It’s a perfect encapsulation of being around someone who makes you feel like you’re talking to a wall—no feelings, no opinions, no independent thoughts, no nothing. Good thing Merritt has a lot of those things.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Here Beside the Rising Tide – Emily Jane – “You have no feelings/I think you are an alien being/You won’t let me in/I think you are an alien being…”

“Time in a Bottle” (Jim Croce cover) – Lucy Dacus

The X-Men fan in me and the Lucy Dacus fan in me were both screaming when I found out that this was a thing…I don’t even have any sentimental feelings towards the original, but I just saw the title and got activated like a sleeper agent. Say what you want about the later Fox X-Men movies, but there’s one thing that they did best, and that was make immaculate slo-mo Quicksilver sequences with great needle drops.

I maintain that Forever is a Feeling bordered on being a disappointment, but I’m softening to some of it—especially now that we’ve gotten an expanded edition: Forever is a Feeling: The Archives. It’s mainly demos and live versions, but it had the poignant track “Losing” (should’ve been in the album, that’s my two cents) and this Jim Croce cover. Dacus’ tender, delicate fingerpicking style was practically made for this cover, as was the overall aesthetic of the album, combining acoustic guitar with gently swelling strings. I just can’t get enough of how she treats the guitar as an instrument—the way she plays on “Time in a Bottle” makes it feel like it’s not simply an instrument but a waltz partner. Her rich voice is on full display with this cover, making every note ring out with the yearning I’ve come to love her for. It’s tender in its sparing instrumentation, but her voice fills out all the empty spaces, creating a cover steeped in love and longing, just like the best parts of Forever is a Feeling.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

When the Tides Held the Moon – Venessa Vida Kelley – the tender feeling of this cover would fit right in with this heartfelt, moonlit romance.

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 Monthly Wrap-Ups

July/August 2025 Wrap-Up 🧁

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Once again, I dropped off without warning, so apologies for that. But I just started school and moved into a new apartment, so I haven’t had much time to squeeze in some blogging. (Never mind the fact that I also have a short story due tomorrow and it’s only about 3 weeks into the semester. Whee!) This post has been written in advance, so that’s why you’re seeing it here. Chances are, I’ll probably be radio silent for a little while longer as I get my stuff fully together. But for now, here’s a recap of the latter half of my summer!

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

I’m one of those people who, even in the face of an expanse of free time (summer), easily gets restless and anxious. The solution was there all along…employment. I helped out with some online summer classes, which was a wonderful way to give some structure to my summer and provide something to break up the routine. And when the class ended, I’m proud of myself for committing to not slipping back into my anxiety before school started. When I look back at the person I was a year ago…well, I want to give her a hug, first off, but I’m so proud of the progress I’ve made since then. Anxiety really had taken ahold of me, and little by little, with the support of my wonderful family and friends (thank yous are due) and the work I’ve put in, I’ve been learning to take the reins back. There’s no feeling quite like seeing measurable progress in yourself. It’s worth it to try, is all I’m saying.

My obligatory temperature check on American politics might be pointless at this point, as the thermometer reached its hottest point long ago and the glass has all but shattered. I’d prefer not to dwell on it much. As a birthday treat, I stayed off the news for the whole week, and I’m continuing the streak. Some days the spirals get me, but I’m fighting like hell to make sure that they don’t take my sanity away and make me vulnerable to complete, utter helplessness. All I can say is for everyone to take care of yourselves. I love you. My heart goes out to everyone, but especially those in Washington D.C., Minneapolis, and Chicago.

And oh my god…I guess when I’m doing these 2-month wrap-ups, I forget that so much can happen in 2 months! Crazy, right? Superman? A massive ray of light in a dreary landscape of gritty superhero movies. Hope is punk rock. Saving squirrels is punk rock. (If anything, see it just to see Nicholas Hoult seething after Superman saves some kids.) Fantastic Four: First Steps? The first MCU movie I’ve enjoyed—genuinely enjoyed—in years. The world needed all that Silver Age goofiness (and Cousin Thing). I had the immense privilege of seeing Wilco twice, and both nights were spectacular! And Car Seat Headrest…I’ve already rambled enough about it. I crode. (See my accounts below scattered amongst the various July Sunday Songs posts.) I dyed my hair another crazy color. I finished knitting a whole scarf yesterday. I played guitar, I drew, I read, I wrote…I’m trying everything to keep the art in my life, even if only a smidge every day.

And I took another trip around the sun. I feel so grateful to be closing another chapter and starting a new one. I don’t want to jinx it, but I have a feeling that my senior year of college (how the HELL did that happen?? 😭) will be a good one. I’ll try to approach it in the same way that I’ve approached decorating my new place: putting in the work to making a space that I love. If anything, I ended August celebrating my birthday, laughing and eating cake, surrounded by people who I cherish. I have to remind myself, always, that even if I don’t see it, that I’m surrounded by love.

JULY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 16 books in July! Though there were a handful of misses, I read a ton of fantastic books for Disability Pride Month. The last book I read this month (On Earth As It Is on Television) unexpectedly blew me out of the water.

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Words in My Hands

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Two Lies of Faven Sythe

4 – 4.75 stars:

Open Throat

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: On Earth As It Is on Television – 4.75 stars

On Earth As It Is on Television

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

AUGUST READING WRAP-UP:

I read 14 books in August! Thankfully, I only read two books that I really didn’t care for, and there were tons of wins throughout the month: monsters in space, a surprisingly emotional story about sea monsters and Pokémon-obsessed children, and the great Brian Eno.

2 – 2.75 stars:

Salvación

3 – 3.75 stars:

Of Monsters and Mainframes

4 – 4.75 stars:

Here Beside the Rising Tide

5 stars:

What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory – 5 stars

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

Today’s song:

CANNOT stop listening to this!!

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/5/25) – On Earth As It Is on Television

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

On Earth As It Is on Television has been on my TBR for at least a few years, and I’ve nearly bought it at least twice at my local Barnes & Noble before settling on it last week. It seemed quirky and interesting, but this novel ended up blowing me away with how inventive, heartfelt, and downright funny it was. The best 5-star reads come out of nowhere, and On Earth As It Is on Television is one of them.

Enjoy this week’s review!

On Earth As It Is on Television – Emily Jane

Aliens have finally come to Earth. Without warning, dozens of spaceships appear over Earth, causing a worldwide panic. Days later, they leave without a word. As the world falls into chaos, the lives of three people intersect as the world struggles to reckon with this occurrence. Blaine struggles to wrangle his TV-addicted children, now convinced that they need to skin people to find the aliens within, and go along with the mercurial plans of his wife, Anne. Catatonic for 30 years, Oliver suddenly regains consciousness, only to be whisked away on a strange journey by a stray cat. Heather, always the outsider among her stepfamily, ponders if the aliens could finally mark the start in the next chapter of her mundane life. All of their journeys converge as the world reckons with their place in the universe—and what could be next for the human race.

TW/CW: car accident, death, imprisonment, suicidal ideation, substance abuse

I did not expect a book with such a massive volume of millennial cat meme-isms to nearly make me cry multiple times. One minute they’re going on about Mr. Meow-Mitts and “himb peets” or something, and 20 pages later I’m a puddle on the floor. What a book.

There’s not a ton I can compare to in terms of On Earth As It Is on Television, but if anything, it’s quite like No One Is Talking About This, a book that also deals with the chaos of 21st century life; there’s a lot of meme-speak, there’s a lot of mindless media consumption, and there’s a whole lot of absurdity. A lot of the humor takes cues from the oversaturation of memes in the 2010’s (cats, bacon, etc.), but it’s a lot funnier than that entails—it’s more about the ridiculousness of that microcosm than it is about the actual humor; for me, it fed into the whole side of the story that was about the ridiculousness of modern life, as we are oversaturated with…well, everything. Plastic, fatty foods, cat memes. (If you have minimal tolerance for phrases like “heckin chonker” and “floofy boi,” this might not be the book for you. It’s a lot, but stay with it, trust me.) Surprisingly, this ends up being very poignant by the end of the novel, but it was both an astute observation on our 21st century state of being in a perpetual deluge of mindless information and content. Jane cranks the absurdity up to its absolute maximum without it feeling overwhelming—it’s totally goofy at times, but it’s great satire as well.

Both of the sci-fi books that I’ve rated in the 4.75-5 star range this year have involved cats in some way. Coincidence? I think not. (Shoutout to The Last Gifts of the Universe and Pumpkin the cat.) The way that On Earth As It Is on Television uses cats was one of the funnier parts of the novel, setting aside the pervasion of cat meme-speak. As well as causing worldwide panic, the alien ships have an unexplained effect on the world’s cat population—they all come back telepathic, and the results are hilarious. It’s clear that Jane is a cat lover, and it came through in every page. It added another wonderful layer of silliness to an already absurd novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And honestly, it seemed completely plausible for cats to be the ones to pick up on alien frequencies, out of all the creatures on Earth.

Usually for a 5-star novel, I get super attached to at least a few characters. On Earth As It Is on Television might honestly be an exception, but that’s not a slight against it in the least. I didn’t like all of the characters—in fact, I doubt it was the point for them to be likable—but they all felt real. Blaine didn’t have a distinct personality for the beginnings of the novel, but you come to realize that he’s been so swallowed up by trying to juggle everyone else that it’s become his personality. Avril and Jas are the most insufferable children you could ever dream up, but they feel like the terrible kids you’re stuck sitting next to at the DMV or on the plane. Heather came off dramatic and whiny more often than not, but I could easily see how much her life felt out of her control. All of this is to say that though they were not all likable in the traditional sense, they felt real, and that was what felt refreshing. For a novel that tracked the trajectories of ordinary people, they felt especially authentic. It’s a mass reckoning with the absurdity of life, and Jane makes every detour worth it.

If anything, it was the characters’ journeys that were the most compelling part of the novel. All of the interconnected characters throughout On Earth As It Is on Television were thrown into circumstances outside of their control, both physical and mental, and nowhere that any of them went ended up being predictable. The concrete trajectories ranged from the ordinary (Heather feeling forgotten amongst her stepfamily) to the outright bizarre (a catatonic man regaining consciousness after 20 years and going on the world’s weirdest road trip with a telepathic cat), but all of them presented such rich character development. They crisscrossed all over the country, at times laugh-out-loud funny and other times more grounded and solemn. Wacky as it was, Jane used them all to wring out so much emotional development from a worldwide crisis that affects everyone differently; grappling with the fallout of feeling important in the universe, but then being forgotten just as quickly.

I’m a sucker for fun alien designs, and I didn’t expect On Earth As It Is on Television to deliver as much as it did. The Malorts aren’t peak creature design, but with their three-handed meerkat-like appearances and affinities for plastic crap, they hammered home the themes of the novel excellently. I wasn’t looking for any kind of realism in this novel, which is why I’m so glad that Jane went so bonkers with the design and culture of the Malorts, from their dietary preferences to their fascination with cats. They were a perfect vehicle for the absurdity that this novel emphasizes, and they provided as many laughs as the humans. There was a moment where there was so much plastic involved in the novel that I thought that the wry commentary on consumerism was going to fall flat, but the Malorts ended up turning it into a solution for climate change in-universe: why not give the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to a bunch of aliens who really like plastic for some reason? It was totally wonderful and goofy, but it segued nicely into the novel’s themes of finding joy in unlikely and mundane places and things.

More on that…any book that makes observations of shiny, plastic souvenirs and children repeating meme-isms into something genuinely poignant and moving deserves some kind of praise. But by the end, I loved what it had to say about the nature of life, however absurd it may be: everything is messy and out of your control, but that’s okay. Life is worth living for all of the strange detours and tiny miracles that you can find in every day life—cats, children singing, good food, silly television, and unexpected forks in the road. No matter our place in the universe or what the government does, we can always look to the ordinary to find solace. And beyond that, we can look to each other—our family, our friends, and strangers—to anchor us in the face of upheaval. On Earth As It Is on Television is a novel about many things (cats, TV, road trips, aliens), but above all, it’s about the small miracles that make life worth living—and what better way to end such a strange, beautiful novel? When we are inundated with mindless consumption, what better resistance is there than to notice life’s small, organic miracles? Finding and reading this novel felt exactly how it was intended to be read—on a whim, and being unexpectedly moved by it in so many places.

All in all, a clever, quirky, and unexpectedly moving novel about the biggest and smallest things in our human—and alien—experiences. 4.75 stars, rounded up to 5!

On Earth As It Is on Television is a standalone, but Emily Jane is also the author of Here Beside the Rising Tide and the forthcoming American Werewolves.

Today’s song:

BIOPHILIA ‼️

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