This past week, September 16-23, has been Bisexual Visibility Week, and today, September 23rd, is Bisexual Visibility Day! See me. I’m right here. Well, in your screen. Along with my Latine Heritage Month post, this is another one that I’ve neglected to do some years since it comes at a slightly dicey time in the school year, but I probably shouldn’tbe neglecting, since it, y’know, directly correlates to my identity. Oops. A little embarrassing, but once again, no time like the present.
Every year. Every year, I swear to god. I’m much less online than I used to be, but from what I see snatches of, every other year, some discourse comes back about whether or not bisexuals are actually “queer enough” or if straight-passing bisexuals are allowed at pride, or something equally meaningless. (Also, I feel like everyone debating the latter should remember that Brenda Howard, a bisexual woman, was a key figure in creating Pride events and rallies as we know them here in the States.) Just seeing flashes of whatever’s going down on TikTok makes me lose a year off my life. But it brings up a point that I’ve often thought about when it comes to the queer community: the infighting needs to stop. Please. There’s no sense in playing the oppression olympics amongst ourselves, especially when the threats against the LGBTQ+ community at large are so much more pressing. Also, please stop being weird about bisexual people. This is coming from somebody who’s had the privilege of not experiencing any direct biphobia, thankfully, but has heard it in real life directed at friends and loved ones, as well as seeing it run rampant on the internet. All of this petty fighting is a distraction from what’s really happening: not long after they removed the word transgender from the Stonewall National Monument website, they removed the word bisexual from the “history and culture” section. As of now, they’ve since reinstated it (though the absence of trans people remains glaring…love to all my trans siblings, in light of, well, everything), but it sends a clear message: they’re bent on cutting our community up until they can conveniently erase it from American history. And we will not be erased.
To all of my fellow bisexuals: you are bisexual enough. No matter your relationship status, attraction, or partner, you will always be bisexual. Nobody can dictate your identity but you. Not the internet, not the people in your life—nobody. There is no one central bisexual experience, but every individual experience under the sun is valid, so long as you want to claim it. You’re the captain of this ship, and you are bisexual enough. And you are loved. I don’t know about you, but I’ve loved being bisexual in the nearly seven years (Jesus, has it been that long?)
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by bisexual authors? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
MICHELANGELO DYING IS UPON US, LET’S GOOOOO
That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Here in the U.S., June is Pride Month! I usually start off these posts with something about how the world is slowly getting kinder to queer people, but that, as always, the shadows of homophobia and transphobia loom large. Well…Christ, it sure is looming larger than ever. Misinformed voters have decided that they’re perfectly content to return us to an administration that has already required passports to revert to the carrier’s assigned gender at birth and has been emboldened to toy with the idea of repealing the right to same-sex marriage. Of course, here I am sitting on my comfy couch in my comfy blue state of Colorado that thankfully has a) a gay governor (shoutout to Jared Polis), and b) enshrined the right to same-sex marriage in the constitution, but that doesn’t mean that my heart doesn’t constantly ache. All of us in the queer community are deeply interconnected. What hurts one of us hurts all of us.
Book banning across the country has disproportionately targeted queer books, deeming the presence of such subjects in children’s, middle grade, and YA literature as pornography and grooming. And god forbid that a drag queen commits the incredibly sexual and predatory act of…[checks notes] reading picture books to kids at libraries. Republicans have their priorities twisted. That’s old, old news by now. Books and libraries were never meant to be war zones, but fascists have made it their mission, then and now, to declare the right to information and new ideas as the most dangerous threat to their power. This goes for books both queer and non-queer. But the power of queer books can’t be overstated. Even I, who grew up in an incredibly supportive, accepting environment (biggest thank you imaginable to my wonderful family for being that way), was enlightened and comforted when, in the short period when I was closeted, I found bisexual characters in books that reflected my story and my feelings. Queer literature is revelatory, and it saves lives. For queer people, it gives them the comfort that they aren’t alone. For others, it gives them a glimpse into perspectives that they might not have otherwise considered, and compels them to empathize with people who are different than them.
So this pride month, and all year round (as always), when you think of what you can do to support the LGBTQ+ community, consider picking up a book. Support queer authors. Buy from queer-owned bookstores, because they tend to be pretty cool places. Support your local library (because they need it now more than ever)—checking out queer books shows them that they’re in demand, and that encourages librarians to keep on shelving them. For us book bloggers and other social media-oriented folks: keep on reviewing and shouting out books. And for all of us: no president, no government, and no legislation can take away your queerness. No one has that power but you. Your queerness is revolutionary and beautiful. Keep on being queer.
So here is my annual list of great LGBTQ+ reads from all sorts of genres, backgrounds, and identities. If I’ve mistakenly identified something about a book’s representation, please let me know! I’ve mixed YA and Adult books here, and I’ve also added a nonfiction section for the first time, as I’ve done with my other recommendation lists.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite queer books that you’ve read recently? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
lindsey…please tell me this is a sign that you’re cooking something…
That’s it for this year’s pride recommendations! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Monday, bibliophiles! I’m not fully back on schedule yet (still in the process of cleaning up my dorm), but I figured I would put out this post for the occasion.
Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Among the many histories that America has been attempting to erase is that of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, even though they are a critical part of our country’s history. We’re so quick to dismiss the discrimination of Chinese immigrant laborers in the late 1800’s, the Japanese internment camps, and the bigotry faced by South Asian Americans, whether or not they were Muslim, as part of the rampant Islamophobia post-9/11. This history may not be in the spotlight as far as discrimination targets, but just because it’s getting less press doesn’t mean it’s there. Just look at Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who received requests from her publisher to remove specific mentions of racism from the author’s note of her picture book, Love in the Library, which takes place in the Japanese internment camps. (Good on her for not taking the licensing deal. Another reason to love Tokuda-Hall, who appears on this list!) Erasing the horrors of discrimination and racism from our shelves only serves to raise an uneducated, uncritical generation—the opposite of what we need right now.
Looking back on my previous lists, I noticed something. I’ve neglected the PI in AAPI, and that’s a mistake on my part. Books by Pacific Islanders rarely seem to get the spotlight, even during AAPI Heritage month, but that still doesn’t excuse me overlooking that part of the acronym—and the world. This is the first year that I actually do have a few great recommendations from Pacific Islander authors, but please let me know if you have any more recommendations! I’m on the lookout.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of the books on this list, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by AAPI authors?
Today’s song:
That’s it for this list! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This week: were it not for me yapping about Horsegirl earlier this week, this post would be unfathomably long…sorry. Stick around for my rambling hitting concerning levels the minute I have more free time.
Since A Ghost Is Born got its anniversary reissue a few weeks back, I took the time to listen to the album in its entirety for the first time…surprising, I know! That being said, I’d basically listened to all but two tracks on the album, but I hadn’t gotten to listen to it all the way through in the right order. After a childhood being fed Wilco by my dad about as much as I was fed milk as a baby (both were nourishing and necessary for my development), only two tracks remained: “Wishful Thinking” and this track. It’s songs like “Less Than You Think” that make me remember how much of a poet Jeff Tweedy is. I don’t say that about every singer; in the abstract, music is poetry set to song, but it doesn’t often feel that way. In this case, it’s understandable that the poetry of “Less Than You Think” gets lost in the other masterpieces in Wilco’s catalogue. But it’s not just a case of an underrated track—there’s a reason this one gets lost in the fray so often. For three minutes, it’s any normal Wilco song—one of their sadder ballads, but standard Wilco fare…
…and then you realize that there’s 12 minutes left.
That 12 minutes is entirely composed of a shrill, grating stretch of electronic droning and background noise from the studio. To say that it’s excruciating to listen to, especially with the volume up after listening to the actual song part, is almost an understatement. It’s unpleasant in every sense of the word. Yet that’s precisely the point. Not to be the “🤓☝️ erm ackshually, this nigh-unlistenable 12 minutes of noise has a deep meaning that’s essential to the understanding of the song,” but…it does. It’s unlistenable because it’s meant to be unlistenable—Tweedy and the rest of the band used this song to recreate the experience of having chronic migraines, a condition Tweedy has had all his life, but was exacerbated by his painkiller addiction: “I don’t know why anyone would need to have that expressed to them musically. But it was all I had.” Tweedy put “Less Than You Think” out anyway, knowing that it’d be “the track everyone will hate,” saying that “I know ninety-nine percent of our fans won’t like that song, they’ll say its a ridiculous indulgence. Even I don’t want to listen to it every time I play through the album. But the times I do calm myself down and pay attention to it, I think it’s valuable and moving and cathartic. I wouldn’t have put it on the record if I didn’t think it was great.” And he’s right. Being so experimental with this catharsis brings us so much closer to the experience than words ever could, as much as a master wordsmith as Tweedy is. Catharsis for a pain as profound as this doesn’t have to be listenable or tolerable to be worth putting out into the world—it’s catharsis, after all. Sure, I’ve skipped it every time I’ve listened to it since, but once again…that’s the point. We’re meant to sympathize with Tweedy’s pain, but even he admits that it’s not exactly easy listening. (Some absolutely diabolical individual in the YouTube comments called it “the best song to tee up on the bar jukebox right before you leave…” Satan, is that you?)
But that glorious, incandescent three minutes before you get the worst headache you’ve ever experienced? Deeply moving, in an entirely different way. They got me. They got me good with the sad bastard music. The piano is played with such a heaviness that you can only imagine it being played with lead weights strapped to each finger. Delicate taps of the dulcimer climb up an invisible ladder, each strike coinciding with Tweedy’s repetition of “Lightly tapping/a high-pitched drum.” And for a song that Tweedy knew would be an instant skip for most of his listener, he packed it with some of A Ghost is Born‘s most downright poetic lyrics:
“As your spine starts to shine You shiver at your soul A fist so clear and climbing Punches a hole in the sky So you can see For yourself If you don’t believe me There’s so much less To this than you think…”
Yeah, I pulled a Lisa Hannigan again. I’m tempted to just copy and paste all of the lyrics. Punches a hole in the sky? More like punches a hole in my soul, ow. Though the lyrics toy with the chaos of the universe and the clarity of realizing that maybe everything hasn’tbeen choreographed by a higher power, I can’t help but connect it with Tweedy’s migraines—all the talk of shivering and “Your mind’s a machine” sounds an awful lot how I imagine living with both migraines and addiction must feel: a cycle of dullness and excruciating pain, exposing how much of the brain has been devoted to going through the motions. As for the solemn resignation to atheism, it connects to that experience—it seems pain that immeasurable makes you either seek out or entirely swear off of religion without a happy medium. With or without words, Tweedy conjures a pain he had to exorcise from his person, yet is able to resonate if you’re willing to dig through the earth to find it. Sometimes you have to make art from agony in order to make the burden lighter, whether or not you give it to the world. In any case, Jeff Tweedy makes the pain worth weathering.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling – Lucy Frank – told in sparse verse, these two characters go through a similar pain as they work through chronic pain diagnoses in the same hospital.
Today, on: Madeline listens to Björk’s discography wildly out of order…we’ve come to Debut. It’s another one of those albums that I’d listened to about half of already, but it was just track after track of honed energy and happiness…seriously, this album couldn’t have come at a better time in my life. I think listening to Post about this time last year and Debut now feel aligned with my life in some way. A lot of Björk’s experience at the time was drawn from moving from Iceland to the UK in her late twenties, and being adventurous, putting out her feelers, and embracing the newness of it all, taking everything in (see: “Enjoy”). In some ways, I feel a connection to that kind of exploration. Now that I’ve shed most of the apprehension of freshman year (though definitely not all), I feel like I’m slowly beginning to grow into a new place, a new home, a new environment. I know I’m a little dramatic about that…I’m going to a college that’s less than an hour away from my hometown, so I can’t quite compare. But there came a time when I realized I was living in a whole new place, and I’d barely scratched the surface of everything in it. After the initial crisis, I’ve begun dragging my friends to whatever new place that I can find. Baby steps, but I’m slowly cataloguing new restaurants that I’ve tried. New routes to class. New coffee places on campus, now that Starbucks jumped on the DEI-stripping bandwagon. I’m not throwing myself headfirst into a new city, immersing myself in the early ’90s rave nightlife like Björk did, but I can’t help but connect to that apprehension, that excitement of really knowing you’re somewhere new, physically and emotionally. I’d do well to take it to heart the more I grow up.
“Big Time Sensuality” embodies Björk’s absorption of ’90s house music while in London, and even though it’s far from the weirdest part of her catalogue, you can’t take the weird out of Björk. Even amidst the house beats behind her, you can’t erase the skyrocketing highs and growls that, even for her firs solo effort, were already staples of her vocal style. Despite what the title would have you believe, there’s nothing necessarily sexual about it, yet it retains the ecstasy you’d think it would have. This ecstasy, however, comes from a common theme on Debut: reaching out and taking risks to soak the fullest out of life: “I don’t know my future after this weekend/And I don’t want to.” Its heart is imbued with the rush of friendship, throwing your passion into your music, and independence in a few environment: Björk told David Hemingway that the song’s inspiration came from “[Creating] pretty deep, full-on love relationships with friends…I can be a coward a lot of the time and there comes a moment when I write a song when I get quite brave.” “Big Time Sensuality” throws itself face first into uncharted waters, all with a dimple-stretching grin. Björk’s already diverse vocal range embodies the chorus of “It takes courage to enjoy it/The hardcore and the gentle.” And the music video, directed by Stéphane Sednaoui, embodies that daring joy, with Björk dancing on the back of a truck bed driving through New York City, baring her grin for all to see.
All the cool people like Wire. I’m not saying that to assert that I’m [snaps fingers] hip (that alone proves that I’m really not). It’s more that if you rattle off any creative, clever band from the past three to four decades, they all name Wire as an influence–Sonic Youth, R.E.M., and Soundgarden are just a handful of people touched by their music, and you can hear their genealogy in grunge, hardcore punk, and even Britpop. (Heavy on the Britpop. See Elastica’s “Line Up,” one of several songs that Wire took Elastica to court over claims of plagiarism.) Want proof? How about Wire playing with Jon Spencer and St. Vincent back in 2015? See what I mean? They’re the great uniters. All the cool people like Wire.
For all intents and purposes, Wire left their more punk sound behind with Pink Flag (see “12XU”), trading it for a minimalist, synth-dominated sound on Chairs Missing. To my ear, it sounds like the musical equivalent of brutalism; to the touch, every texture is rough as concrete, but every edge is sanded down to absolute straightness. Graham Lewis’ thick bass dominates the sound, rippled through with guitars, handclaps, and a wall of synth so dense that it becomes more percussion than the actual drums. I can’t help but hear some leftover punk not in the sound, but in the lyrics. Houseflies don’t sound particularly punk at first glance (nor does Graham Lewis’ apparent thing for writing about winged insects on this album)—they’re more for being stepped on by a pair of massive docs than the subject of a song. But yet, this simple animal becomes so deeply punk: “I am the fly in the ointment/I can spread more disease than the fleas/Which nibble away at your window display.” At its core, punk is has always been about disruption, whether that’s in the abrasive quality of the music or grating against the establishment. A fly is a fundamental nuisance, a tiny speck of a creature that, as the song says, spreads disease so easily, ripping up the threads in the fabric of something pristine and perfect. No matter how many swings you take at them with a flyswatter, they always come out, reproducing rapidly…just like disease, and just like resistance. Even with the dry intonation of the lyrics, it reads to me as a deeply proud song, a finger crossed behind the back and a smirk on the face as the time bomb counts down its last second. It’s a promise, and it’s a declaration of purpose: disturbance.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Countess – Suzan Palumbo – “But there’s an air-pellet hole/I can crawl through to you/I am the fly in the ointment/I can spread more disease than the fleas/Which nibble away at your window display…”
How does it feel? How does it feel for those of you with the right names to share a name with a Cocteau Twins track? For all of the Loreleis, Amelias, Beatrixes, Ivos, Carolyns, etc…do you realize how lucky you are?
Out of all of the Cocteau Twins songs I’ve heard, “Amelia” is one that embodies their general qualities the most, taken almost to an extreme. Regardless of whether or not I could hear the lyrics even if they weren’t nonsensical, they’re sunken so deep into the production that they become a kind of fog-like mist. The unmoored, bass-less flow of the track reminds me of something off of Victorialand, a record where bassist Simon Raymonde was notably missing. Liz Fraser’s vocals are as textural as ever, uttering a whole menagerie throat-fluttering bird calls amidst a barrage of gated reverb that descends upon you like the patter of heavy rain on a windshield. Next to some of their other tracks, it feels slightly less cohesive—the intensity of the gated reverb, reverb’d into high heaven as it is, doesn’t completely mesh with the airiness of the vocals or the other instrumentation. Somehow, it’s almost comforting—the Cocteau Twins stand out to me as a band who truly found their niche and stuck to it, digging in their heels to make that niche as unique and them as possible in the most artistic and adventurous way. Weirdly, it comforts me that it took them time to get their rhythm down, and even then, their earlier steps still blow me away. “Amelia” certainly does—the sheer variety of vocal styles that Fraser layers over one another is proof that even on a record that the band famously hated, their nascent talent couldn’t help but shine in its own way.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Meru – S.B. Divya – I can only imagine that the experience of being a god-like Alloy and floating in space sounds something like the Cocteau Twins.
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy New Year’s Eve! 2024 was…well. It sure was a year, wasn’t it? Things happened! Too many things. Man.
I’ll keep it short, because I’ve said something along the lines of the same thing for several months now. I like doing these wrap-ups, but they’re certainly time-intensive, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with the monthly schedule going into 2025. However, my brain does like sorting things into silly little lists with bullet points and whatnot, so I thought I would throw this together for the end of the year. Even though I was working so much, I did get to a lot of fun reads, and I didn’t want to leave them out! As I said in my 5-star Reads post, it’s been a rocky and anxious year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t populated with good reads—and moments in general—throughout. So, for the last time in 2024, here’s a wrap-up of everything from August to December.
Enjoy this massive wrap-up!
WRAP-UP: EVERYTHING I’VE READ SINCE AUGUST
AUGUST
I read 17 booksin August! I don’t think anything for the rest of the year will measure up to having two 5-star reads back to back, but either way, this ended up being a lovely month for reading. Also, before everybody comes after me for DNFing Remarkably Bright Creatures…you can’t blame me after this line was said by a supposedly 30-year-old character: “bicep day was lit at the gym today.” How do you do, fellow kids?
I read 15 books in September! I was so caught up in my reading schedule being disturbed (somewhat) by school starting that I didn’t even realize that I didn’t have any 1 or 2-star reads! Miraculous. Either way, between my work, I was able to squeeze in some great reads for both Bisexual Visibility Week and Latinx Heritage Month.
I read 15 books in October! Spooky season, busy as it was, another great month for books—new Crumrin Chronicles, new books from Amie Kaufman and Eliot Schrefer…oh, and I finally read Hamlet after all these years. I’ve seen so many adaptations that I just found myself going “HE DID IT!!! HE SAID THE LINE!!! HE SAID THE LINE!!” whenever I saw a passage I recognized.
I read 14 books in November! I shouldn’t have to explain why I decided to read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet on Election Day. Jesus fucking christ. Also, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but either I’ve grown out of Rachel Caine, or I just read her better books in high school…maybe I should’ve read Ink and Bone when my taste was less discerning.
I read 13 books in December, and rounded out my Goodreads challenge with 199 books read this year! I’d say that’s pretty impressive. December proved to have a solid bunch this month (to say nothing of the pretentious, 212 pages of nothing that was Orbital).
In lieu of my usual songs/albums that I’ve been listening to lately, enjoy some selections from my Apple Music Replay. It appears I’ve lost my hypothetical Welsh street cred (no longer in the top 100 listeners for Super Furry Animals…it’s been an honor), but it’s been replaced by being in the top 500 for XTC? I did listen to “This is Pop?” and “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” an unhealthy amount…
In addition, here are my Sunday Songs for each month:
it’s finally cold enough to allow myself to listen to Victorialand! Great album to close out 2024 with.
Now, how to wrap up a wrap-up…all I can say is that I love you. My blog may not have the numbers of views and likes that it used to (even though the follower count has gone up…620 of y’all, oh my god, thank you!), but I treasure the small community that I’ve got here. I write these things mostly to write out into the world what I want to see and ramble about the things I love, but I’m grateful that, through it all, you’ve all stayed to stick it out and listen. I’ve always done it for myself and not in the service of getting more likes or views, so I’m glad that someone’s listening anyway.
I hope you all find love, solace, hope, or whatever it is you need in this coming year. In the grand scheme of things, I’m frightened (and hoping that my Canadian cousins have a room to spare up north, hahahahaha [SCREAMING]), but on the smaller scale, with the things I can control, I’m glad to be turning over a new leaf. It’ll be difficult, but I’ve built up the tools to go forward in a healthier, compassionate, and more loving way. Whoever you are, I hope 2025 brings what you need, big or small. As always: spread love, not fear or hate. Look at the stars. Keep on reading, watching, listening, and engaging with what you love. And most importantly, be kind—to others, and to yourself.
The Bookish Mutant 