Tag: June

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/21/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and Happy Father’s Day! At least half of the music that gets into these posts is from my dad, and sharing music with him is one of my favorite things, so thank you 🩵

This week: does anybody remember that Instagram account that was just toilets with threatening auras? Introducing my million-dollar idea, “Brian Eno songs with threatening auras,” which totally isn’t niche and would gain so much traction.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/21/26

“Primitive Painters” – Felt

This one was a way-homer for me. I think it took me at least until a few months ago to really appreciate this song. When I was a kid, I remember my dad playing this in the car, and I think it just had that fatal combination of having droning vocals (Lawrence’s voice still isn’t particularly my cup of tea) and being over six minutes long. Perfect recipe for me zoning out and daydreaming about being in some fantasy world until it ended. Strangely, even when I’d just graduated from high school and my Cocteau Twins awakening had freshly happened, “Primitive Painters” still didn’t click for me.

Again, still not 100% on board with Lawrence—his voice has a very droning quality, and apparently he and Felt took a lot of influence from Television and Tom Verlaine, somebody else whose voice I also can’t bring myself to like. Everything about “Primitive Painters” is objectively so gorgeous that it’s easy to forgive. That guitar tone in the intro is so crystalline that it sounds less like a guitar and more of what I imagine how things would sound inside of a cracked geode. The dreamlike lyrics, according to Lawrence, spoke to “wanting to be in a select group…imagine groups of really cool kids hanging out in galleries, not pubs. That was my sort of conception,” which I never would’ve gathered; his visions of fire-breathing dragons and ships on empty seas would’ve lead me elsewhere. But it makes the defiant chorus of “you should see my trail of disgrace” even more defiant, becoming a confident flagpole planted in the dirt declaring allegiance to your own individuality. That brings us to what I think is the best part of the track—Elizabeth Fraser makes everything better, and her enchanting voice elevates “Primitive Painters” skyward.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Unexploded Remnants – Elaine Gallagher – “I just wish my life could be strange as a conspiracy/I hold out hope but there’s no way of being what I want to be/The dragons blow fire, angels fly, spirits wither in the air/I’m just me I can’t deny, I’m neither here, there nor anywhere…”

“Driving Me Backwards” – Brian Eno

The other day, I was talking to my brother, who had finally listened to Here Come the Warm Jets on a plane ride. He didn’t like it as much as Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy, which baffled me, until I remembered that he was listening to songs like this. This song could feasibly make me go apeshit if I was 30,000 feet in the air.

Terrible way to sell “Driving Me Backwards,” I know. I used to skip around it whenever I first listened to Here Come the Warm Jets too. But it came on shuffle recently, and it was flat-out hypnotic. From such a simple skeleton—Brian Eno built this song on “only three chords, each different from the other by only one note”—blooms what might be his most densely-packed and foreboding tracks. It really does feel downright menacing, what with said three chords played like a dirge on an out-of-tune piano. Robert Fripp’s guitar zips like blips of radar, but on the steady rhythm of the repetitive piano, it feels like you’re being marched to the edge of a cliff. None of the lyrics on this album have a ton of structure, and yet combined with the atmosphere of the song, I get this image of the most dreaded possible scenario of meeting the parents: in my head, it’s this ’50s-style nuclear family (“Meet my relations/All of them grinning like facepacks”) and the girlfriend they’re giving you permission to date traps them too (“Now I’ve found a sweetheart/Treats me good, just like an armchair.”) That repetition, something Eno used to all sorts of effects later on in his career, makes “Driving Me Backwards” feel like you’re being pinned to the wall, but agonizingly slowly—whoever’s doing it is making every second of anticipation sink it.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Saltcrop – Yume Kitasei – “I try to think about nothing/Difficult, I’m most temperamental/I gave up my good living…”

“Television” – IDLES

I still adore IDLES, and I feel like only something drastic will change it. But “Television” makes me sort of see where people are coming from with the criticism, because it’s basically the punk equivalent of this. And you know what? I’m completely on board. I think it’s so wonderful that IDLES has made a name off of having an aggressive, angry sound and image for the band, but making it into a Trojan horse for some of the most genuine and uplifting music out there. Self-love is very punk, after all, if you consider that, like Joe Talbot details in this song, that it’s tied to capitalism—companies want to make a profit off of you feeling inadequate and not looking like whichever models are in at the moment, and to reject that consumerism is very punk. It’s all worth it just to hear Talbot yell “LOVE YOURSELF!” in a tone usually reserved for wrestling announcers.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver – “If someone talked to you/The way you do to you/I’d put their teeth through/Love yourself!”

“Lonely But Exciting Road” – FKA Twigs

I love a closing track that’s so clearly a Closing Track. Sure, a lot of the effort in it feels like it was put into being capital-A Anthemic, but for the most part, it works exactly as it should. Though I’m really not familiar with FKA Twigs and her work, she’s often lumped in with a lot of the weird women musicians that I admire—namely Björk, which makes sense, given that they’re both making boundary-pushing music that trends towards electronic. And nobody could be as weird as Björk, but like her, FKA Twigs is pushing through the embrace of exploring the adventure of being an individual and a trailblazer: “It might be heaven that’s coming my way/It’s gonna be a lonely but exciting road/And I’ll be finding myself on the way/It’s gonna be a lonеly but exciting road.” It’s such a beautiful sentiment, and the soaring, wordless section after the chorus reminded me of Kate Bush, another woman who paved the same path—it’s definitely got some “Cloudbusting” DNA in there. But for anyone, it’s such a hopeful sentiment, one that I’ve been trying to embody in the past few years, knowing that the path I’m taking with my life is unconventional, but wholly right for me. It’s so exciting that you forget about the lonely sometimes.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Deep – Rivers Solomon – “So you make it up/In the hope that you’ll be something more than before/Be more than my mother was, no/Be more than her mother and her mother was/’Cause they say/’We gotta give to our children what we never was…'”

“Ex-Con” – Smog

At the worst of times, socializing feels like wearing a human suit; I’m hyper-aware of what I should say, what’s normal to say and what’s unacceptable, and the sheer effort of all that deflates me by the end of the day. (Being neurodivergent isn’t what it’s cracked up to be by people on TikTok, kids. I feel like neurotypicals are treating neurodivergence the way people threw around “anxiety” and “depression” in the 2010’s. Free me from this prison.) Bill Callahan seems to understand: “Whenever I get dressed up/I feel like an ex-con trying to make good.” “Ex-Con” is an upbeat track that belies a somber undercurrent of alienation beneath it—the paradox of feeling most at home alone in your room, but feeling the most out of place in the company of other people. The repeated final line about feeling “like a robot by the river/Looking for a drink” jumped out at me from the first listen, but it might be one of Callahan’s cleverest lyrics; to me, it speaks to the desire to be a normal, functioning, conformed person, but knowing that it would probably eat you up from the inside out. The water would probably short-circuit this robot if it were to drink it. The drink of water is just out of reach. “Ex-Con” is so poignant in that way—it’s such a gentle song, but it lays bare how the worst of isolation feels.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) – Becky Chambers – “Alone in my room/I feel such a warmth for the community/Oh, but out on the streets/Out on the streets/I feel like a robot by the river/Looking for a drink…”

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

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (6/16/26) – Idolfire

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Halfway through 2026 now…😵‍💫

If you told me about 3 years ago that I was this excited for a new Grace Curtis book, I wouldn’t have believed you. Full disclosure: I didn’t like Frontier, but the premise of Floating Hotel was so endearing to me that I took a chance on it…and loved it. And here I am now. (Special shoutout to Kat @ The Lily Cafe, who is the reason that I know that this book exists. Thanks, Kat!) I had a feeling I was going to enjoy Idolfire, but as we’re officially halfway through the year…this might be one of my favorite books that I’ve read this year!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Idolfire – Grace Curtis

After illness tears her family apart, Kirby of Wall’s End sets off on the road to Nivela, a famed kingdom that has fallen from grace, but retains the promise of magic beyond its gates. Across the world, Aleya Ana-Ulai is searching for Nivela too, eager to prove herself after being abandoned by her family. When these two women from disparate regions meet on the road, neither knows that their togetherness is key to their survival. But the road to Nivela is long and treacherous, and it seems to hold everything but the answers they need within it. Aleya and Kirby must decide if the promise of Nivela is worth it—and if they’ll be able to survive at all.

TW/CW: violence, blood, war themes, loss of loved ones, child death, infertility

First off—this isn’t a slight on the book, but if you’re going in (like I did) expecting science fantasy, Idolfire is not that. This is straight up fantasy. I’m convinced that the “science fantasy” thing was tacked on for marketing reasons after Curtis wrote two sci-fi novels. Just be forewarned about that…and the fact that this book came dangerously close to destroying me. This might be one of the best books I’ve read all year.

Grace Curtis’s prose keeps getting better and better with each novel she writes. It’s prose that gave me genuine, heartwarming joy to read. She just has this way of making everything, from the setting to the subtle glances between characters, so wholly human; it goes beyond feeling lived-in and real and becomes something with a real heartbeat. Where Curtis succeeds is in shedding light on the unsaid; slight turns of phrase became quietly heartwarming or heartbreaking with a single word. Her renderings of the varied landscapes that Aleya and Kirby travel through are so rich and full of life. Every line of dialogue is razor-sharp, both in their humor and their power to devastate. If you want proof of Curtis’s improvement as a writer, Idolfire is the perfect evidence.

One of the strongest aspects of Idolfire was how it balanced humor and more sobering, serious themes. Curtis has really honed her talent for humor—there were so many moments throughout that were laugh-out-loud funny. Aleya and Kirby had such excellent chemistry (more on that later), but their separate senses of humor pinged off of each other exceptionally well, making for a fantastical road trip that never had a dull moment. And yet, Curtis gave the same amount of care to depict the darker themes of the novel alongside the lighter ones. Curtis’s depiction of war was one that has stayed with me; her descriptions of it have no interest in glorifying its purpose or its participants. Even for a novel billed with swordfighting, her sparse, devastating language in describing the horrors of war were so impactful in a genre where there’s often a degree of romantic language ascribed to something so horrendous. From the effect it has on the minds of individual soldiers to the scars that it wrought across the lands of Idolfire, Curtis explored every facet of living during wartime. Yet Curtis had the same level of care in the lighthearted and dark aspects of Idolfire—for a novel like this, it was a very difficult balance to strike, but Curtis absolutely clinched it, making for a novel that was, above all, human.

I didn’t think that Curtis’s character writing could get much better after Floating Hotel, but I was proven wrong. Although I loved the slice-of-life roving between multiple characters, I think that narrowing her focus down to two central characters did a great service to their development. Aleya and Kirby were some of the most memorable characters that Curtis has ever written. A less talented writer would’ve slapped a hasty grumpy-sunshine dynamic on them and left it at that, but they both had such richly layered personalities. Both of them had trauma so deeply embedded in their psyches, but Curtis did an excellent job of showing us how it manifested in both of them and shaped their personalities. I loved how Aleya’s more reserved, stoic nature played off of Kirby’s more mischievous personality, but the deeper you get, the more you realize that both of these traits serve as shields for both of them. They had such immediate, lovable chemistry, and the progression from begrudging companions on the road to lovers was impeccably paced, and every step of that progression felt so natural—and instantly lovable to root for. Without spoiling anything, things do turn out bittersweet for them, but I think the way that Curtis ended their story was poignant and fitting for both of them.

I also adored the road trip plot of Idolfire, and it kept me guessing constantly. Curtis’s talent for character writing also applied to the menagerie of weirdos that Aleya and Kirby met along the road to Nivela. Even the smallest glimpses we got of the denizens of Idolfire‘s expansive fantasy world were so fleshed-out, and they added so much life to the already fantastic worldbuilding. Balance is something that Curtis clearly has been honing, because like the balance between levity and darkness, there was a great balance of more action-packed moments—such as Aleya’s many swordfights—and downtime with Aleya and Kirby. The pacing was neat as a pin, and even the downtime between the more climactic parts of the novel were measured out to near-perfection. Idolfire really was a balancing act in so many ways, but Curtis toed the lines she set with enviable ease.

And if there’s anything that you can expect Curtis to do well with, it’s sharp commentary on empires and imperialism. Floating Hotel excelled at that as a point in the background, and Idolfire honed in on it even more. I think what Idolfire brings to the conversation is how ideas shape the image of an empire. Fully acknowledging that Curtis is British and I’m just projecting my experience onto this book, but I couldn’t help but think about Nivela—and Aleya and Kirby’s goals—in terms of the permanently out of reach “American dream,” and how an empire can build up an idea of itself while hiding a crumbling foundation beneath it. The further they go on their journey, the more they see the destructive aftermath of an idea twisted into something that excuses genocide and imperialism. I also liked how it tied into the magic system, with belief being what makes certain magic work/not work, and how that translated into the belief in Nivela, which has been faltering to the point of destruction. (Without getting into spoilery territory, there’s some really fascinating stuff about the very literal, human cost that this has in the world of Idolfire.) In the end, I think it was a beautiful meditation on the power of ideas, and how they can be twisted into something so terrible that it swallows the world, but how we can use that same power to create a more equitable world worth living in.

Ultimately, with ratings like these, there’s always that slight oomph that pushes it into 5 star territory. I think there’s still a few small nitpicks that made 5 stars not justifiable, but it sure was close. Overall, Idolfire was a deeply moving and human road trip fantasy, a meditation on the nature of the ideas and idols we hold up in our minds. 4.75 stars!

Idolfire is a standalone, but it has a companion novel, Heaven’s Graveyard, set 2,000 years later in the same universe. Grace Curtis is also the author of Frontier and Floating Hotel.

Today’s song:

I’m sorry, Let’s Dance (1983), I was unfamiliar with your game

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: 6/14/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: in a concerning reversion to the summer of 2024, I’m excessively yapping about Cate Le Bon and Cocteau Twins in the same post again.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/14/26

“Pitch the Baby” – Cocteau Twins

Buckle up, folks, it’s Cocteau Twins summer…again.

Heaven or Las Vegas never gets old. Four years later, and I still haven’t recovered from the moment that I heard “Cherry-coloured Funk” in art class in high school. There was no turning back. But I did cave and grab it on vinyl, and it was about time I experienced the album again. Once more, there’s not a bad song on the album, but surprises surface with every listen. Lush is the best word that comes to mind with this album; over the course of their discography, Elizabeth Fraser and co. had been defining their niche of atmospheric, worlds-within-songs shrouded in mist and mystery. Blue Bell Knoll was the first step in making each song feel like a world, but Heaven or Las Vegas, to me, is where those worlds began blooming with lifeforms. Every distinguishable word that comes out of Fraser’s gibberish fog feels like you’re being let in on a secret. Each listen makes you feel a part of their world, like they’ve given you a ticket to their far-flung, alien planet.

“Pitch the Baby” is one of those songs where the glimpses of the comprehensible words feel like this. Despite what all the memes associated with this song, nobody’s going full fastball special on a baby, not to worry. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite; though 99% of the lyrics are predictably murky, much of it appears to be addressed to Fraser’s then newborn baby: “I only want to love you/I’m so happy to get to care for you.” In spite of the turmoil leading up to this album’s release, Fraser claimed that her daughter being born gave her a sense of clarity, and that many of the tracks were “reputedly recorded…while holding Lucy-Belle in her arms.” Here, the circularity of “Pitch the Baby” feels like a cradle: it has this looping, dream-pop structure, but it’s always given me the feeling of something being shielded. It boasts some of Simon Raymonde’s funkiest, most iconic basslines, and the rapid bloop-bloop-bloop of the synths form Saturn rings around the track. It’s tantalizingly easy to lose yourself in, but in the end, the contained world it brings to life feels less like a song and more like a selfless act of love.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Under the Earth, Over the Sky – Emily McCosh – “I only want to love you/I’m so happy to get to care for you…”

“Remembering Me” – Cate Le Bon

I keep gushing about Pompeii over and over again, but somehow I’ve barely touched on the aesthetics of the album! It’s so distinct and very Cate Le Bon—I love all of the imagery of statues and the emphasis on static poses (evoking the sort of frozen visions of past selves that becomes one of the album’s main themes), but the neon, avant-garde makeup and costumes too. I forgot how much I loved the music video for “Remembering Me,” which stands on its own well, but…if those opening shots aren’t a tribute to David Bowie’s “Life On Mars?” music video, then I don’t know what is. (If you need more evidence to support this, I suggest Reward‘s touching closing track, “Meet the Man.”)

I’m kind of baffled to this day that the second half of Pompeii didn’t hit me as much as the first, because “Remembering Me” hasn’t gotten out of my head since. I think on the first listen, it felt like it leaned too much into the ’80s pastiche. I think I was, once again, too wrapped up in “Dirt on the Bed” and such to really absorb this song. Now, it stands out to me as one of the more emotional tracks. Behind the catchy, weirdo synth-pop curtain is a story about stories—more specifically, the ones we tell ourselves. The more I listen, the more it feels like the scene in Barbie where Margot Robbie blurts out “Do you guys ever think about dying?” in the middle of a glitzy, sparkling party. Le Bon called it “a neurotic diary entry that questions notions of legacy and warped sentimentalism in the desperate need to self-mythologise“; for Le Bon, who had to face all of this while returning to her childhood home during the pandemic, it became a tug-of-war between the self that she was and the self that she wanted to be perceived as: “In the remake of my life/I moved in straight lines/My hair was beautiful.” The verses confidently strut, catwalk-like, as the pedestaled, false version of herself—stronger, more confident, more beautiful—before the chorus tears everything down. You can’t get any more candid about this than “Facedown in heirlooms.” Whew.

The rest of “Remembering Me” is full of just as many sucker punch lyrics: “I wore the heat like/A hundred birthday cakes/Under one sun/I didn’t need anyone/On my own luck/I arrived just to seat the choir/And bowled them over.” It’s the kind of vulnerability that gets more impactful with each listen—I’ve certainly gotten into those places where I’ve been so determined to be confident and self-reliant that I worked myself into a corner, and only asked for help when things had bubbled up and exploded in my face. Like it or not, we’re all caught between that image of ourselves and our real self. But hell, if Cate Le Bon wrestled this too, then maybe there’s hope for us too.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Calculating Stars – Mary Robinette Kowal – “I wore the heat like/A hundred birthday cakes/Under one sun/I didn’t need anyone/On my own luck…”

“Kingdom of Love” – The Soft Boys

“You’ve been laying eggs under my skin/Now they’re hatching out under my chin/Now there’s tiny insects showing through/And all them tiny insects look like you!”

I was nearly going to word this part somewhere along the lines of “there’s enough good Robyn Hitchcock lyrics to fill a book,” but then I remembered that there is such a book (It’s called Somewhere Apart, if you’re interested. I highly recommend it), and “Kingdom of Love” was included in it. Dammit.

I listened to an episode of Life of the Record about Underwater Moonlight last week, so for all the die-hard Hitchcock-heads out there, here’s almost an hour and a half of Robyn Hitchcock detailing the story behind the album in great—and often hilarious—detail. He often talks about the album as the product of him being a rather confused young man in the music industry, but if I could come up with anything as good as the lyrics I pasted above, I’d be set for life. Hitchcock words a lot of the love-adjacent songs on this album as being akin to demonic possession, which…I’m sure there’s a lot to unpack there, but we got some great songs about it. And you know what? I’ve been listening to this song over and over for weeks as I’ve been trying to play it on guitar, and if that’s not demonic possession, I don’t know what is. (That riff at the end of the chorus is burned at the back of my brain. Still a work in progress.) “Kingdom of Love” evokes the frenzied urgency of punk and pairs it with lyrics that recall a ’50s B-movie about alien invasion, all in service of this twisted, grotesque vision of falling head over heels. Hitchcock’s yowled declaration of “all I want to do is be your creature!” at the end of the bridge cements what makes Underwater Moonlight so wonderful: a distillation of the brash punk sound of the late ’70s, but with a weirdo slant that was all Hitchcock and co.

..AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Someone You Can Build a Nest In – John Wiswell – “You’ve been laying eggs under my skin/Now they’re hatching out under my chin/Now there’s tiny insects showing through/And all them tiny insects look like you!”


“Words” – Missing Persons

Unfortunately, you’ve all come to me in a very ’80s time in my life. I think I’ve come full circle back to where I was in elementary school, when most of my music taste consisted of Duran Duran, Erasure, and Madonna, owing to my mom. I never stopped liking all of those bands, but I think I just happened to be at the epicenter of Gen Z being oversaturated with highly-curated ’80s nostalgia…the impact (derogatory) of Stranger Things. But new wave is just that good though. At its best, new wave was such a sharply bold genre, with its sleek sound but alternative spirit. For a song like “Words,” a repeated exorcism of frustrations of repeatedly going unheard, it’s the perfect medium—how can you go unheard when you’ve got a voice like Dale Bozzio? Her theatrical vocal presence makes this entire song, belting, squeaking, and murmuring through the various stages of her anger. It’s all a perfect specimen of new wave, and no amount of time that passes will make it any less wonderfully catchy.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Am the Ghost In Your House – Mar Romasco-Moore –
“I might as well go up and talk to a wall/’Cause all the words are having no effect at all/It’s a funny thing, am I all alone?”

“The Wedding Song” – David Bowie

I…

…okay, I get dangerously emotional every time I think about how much David Bowie and Iman loved each other. And still do. Shit, I need a minute, I’m on my period…just trust me on this one.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Bowie’s Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie’s Life – John O’Connell – you’ve been fooled, this is just a book recommendation that’s just even more book recommendations…either way, there’s some greats in here, and a peek behind the curtain of one of the most literary-minded rockstars in history.

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 (6/9/26) – Queen of Faces

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve seen a lot of buzz about Queen of Faces in the past few months, and it seemed intriguing. Plus, you know I’m always up for queer rep in my fantasy! So of course, I had to pick Queen of Faces up. (Unrelated, but I’ve had “Queen of Eyes” by The Soft Boys stuck in my head solely because of reading this book. New title for the sequel just dropped?) I’m glad to say that though it wasn’t perfect, Queen of Faces was a promising debut fantasy novel!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Queen of Faces – Petra Lord

Anabelle Gage is trapped in a body that isn’t hers—cheap, male, and rapidly deteriorating. Her only way to swap into a new, magical body is to be accepted into Paragon Academy, the most prestigious school in all of the Eight Oceans. After failing her entrance exams, Anabelle is certain that she’s doomed to die in the body she’s trapped in. One run-in with the law later, and she’s faced with Nicholas Carriwitch, Paragon’s renowned headmaster, who gives her a choice: be his right-hand mercenary, or die for her transgressions. Now entangled in a world of magic, crime, and mystery, Anabelle must decide if her choice was worth it—and how to get out of the body that she hates.

TW/CW: descriptions of injury, blood, suicide, violence, racism (fictional ethnicities/nationalities), war themes, dysphoria

In this day and age, it truly makes my heart sing to see queer voices flourishing in YA and middle grade voices flourish. I just had this lingering feeling that this is going to make so many trans teens so, so happy. This novel is so thematically strong; Ana’s journey was full of twists and turns, but it was so easy to sympathize with her and her continual struggle to find herself—not just in a new chassis (the magical bodies that can be swapped in this universe), but in terms of her identity. Lord includes a lot of motifs about transformation; there’s a recurring bit about caterpillars, butterflies, and metamorphosis that was, granted, a bit heavy-handed at the worst of times, but for a YA audience, was a lovely and poignant metaphor for both transness and general coming-of-age. Her journey is a perfect one for a YA audience, trans or not—her feelings of insecurity and unsureness about her identity and purpose are sure to deeply resonate with so many people.

Queen of Faces is billed as dark academia, but I’m not sure if it completely fits the label. We get some of that classic magical school format paired with the dark underbelly that Ana discovers, but most of the plot focuses on Ana’s time as a mercenary, and not necessarily Paragon Academy itself. That being said, it’s not necessarily an issue with the book—more just an issue with the marketing. Paragon Academy started to feel like an afterthought towards the end, and there were definitely some loose ends that could’ve been tied up with that plot. However, Ana’s mercenary plot was what drove the novel, and it was the most compelling part of the story for me. Lord has a knack for writing action sequences, and her tense atmosphere was flawlessly maintained for the whole novel. I loved how Ana and Wes played off of each other during this plot, and all of the friends-turned-foes (and vice versa) had excellent chemistry; Ana and Wes are shaping up to be the kind of enemies-to-lovers YA couple that I would’ve loved in high school. (However, the weird pseudo-love triangle going on was, yes, pretty YA, but it was so rushed and unfinished that I couldn’t even excuse it being YA. It was just…odd.) Beyond that, I loved how all of this coalesced into Ana’s character development, and her discovery of the truth of her mysterious job—and her superiors—was such a vital component to her eventually self-realization.

The worldbuilding in Queen of Faces was a mixed bag, but most of it was solid. Lord’s magic system was imaginative and well thought-out. I loved Lord’s visualizations of the branches forming, and I loved all of the consequences of how magic affected Caimor and the rest of the world. I also think the history of Caimor and the Eight Oceans was explained nicely, and without any unwieldy info-dumps. The system of the chassises and body-swapping was well-done as well, and served as a cogent commentary on class inequality. However, some of the other aspects of the worldbuilding were slightly shaky. I had a vague sense of the technology level—I assumed closer to the 1920’s given the presence of cars and radios, but not much more advanced than that, but I didn’t get a good sense of it. Lord also regularly inserted the fact that Ana loves romance manga, which felt jarring and out of place in this otherwise fantastical setting. I had the same issue with the fact that there’s something called the “Babel Curse,” which would imply the existence of Christianity/the Bible in this otherwise completely fantasy universe. Small issues, sure, but they took me out of the narrative with how much they were mentioned. But for a debut novel’s stab at worldbuilding, it’s a good start.

Queen of Faces unfortunately suffered from some pacing issues. The first third or so was paced reasonably well, and I had a good sense for how the events of the novel had progressed. However, once Anabelle gets to Paragon Academy, there’s time-skipping all over the place; my irrational hatred for random timeskips is just that—irrational—but Lord often didn’t let the reader know that these timeskips had even happened until the last relevant minute. I fully thought that only days had passed by, and boom…it’s been a month? The pacing was just so uneven that it was difficult to get my footing in places, which took me out of the main narrative, especially in the first half of the novel. Given the fact that we’ve mostly left Paragon Academy behind by the second half of the novel, it didn’t help that the pacing also left so many loose threads unresolved. Things evened out towards the end, but it never fully recovered from the topsy-turvy pacing at the beginning.

All in all, a daring and mysterious debut full of dark magic, shifting alliances, and conspiracies. 3.75 stars!

Queen of Faces is Petra Lord’s debut novel and the first book in the Queen of Faces series; its followup, King of Masks, is slated for release in 2027.

Today’s song:

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/7/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: happy pride from Damon Albarn, Queen Latifah, and Meg Duffy. Honorable mention to Brian Eno, whose outfits in the early ’70s slayed so hard that he deserves to be an honorary member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/7/26

“Battle” – Blur

In addition to healing my 12-year-old self, I have begun healing my 18-year-old self…by getting a painfully spendy copy of 13 from my local record store. These damn European imports!! Hey, I had a bit of extra money from graduation…I swear to god that vinyl had been speaking to me like the Green Goblin mask every time I went inside. It had to happen eventually.

Of course, I knew it was going to be worth every penny—13 is still in my top 10 albums of all time. This was the first time I’ve listened to it all the way through in years (I played it to death in my senior year of high school), and it’s one of those records that I wish I could erase my memory of and re-experience listening to it for the first time. I seriously can’t imagine how much of a shock to the system it must’ve been to Blur fans in 1999; Even after their self-titled album—a bitter plunge into grunge after their burnout from Britpop fame—13 was truly nothing like what they’d previously done. One of the reasons it sticks out so much to me is how uninhibited they all feel. The harmony of Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James, and Dave Rowntree continued to be as neat as a pin, but all four of them were bent on going into the most daring, experimental territory that the band had ever reached. By all accounts, all of them were…pretty miserable, unfortunately—a lot of 13 deals with the breakup between Albarn and his longtime girlfriend, Justine Frischmann, and tensions with Graham Coxon would lead him to leave the band a year later. Some of the stylistic deviations feel like middle fingers, like the jarring transition from the plaintive, heart-pouring “Tender” to the jagged howling of “Bugman.” You can’t tell me that wasn’t deliberate trolling on the band’s part. Yet even if it came from a burned out place, the experimental rebellion on this album left an undeniably positive mark on Blur’s legacy as a band.

“Battle” remains one of the more surprising tracks on the album. Clocking in at nearly eight minutes long, it’s the longest song on the album, but only by a single second—”Tender,” my favorite song from the album (and maybe of all time), is 7:41 long, while “Battle” squeezes past at 7:42. Like many of the unexpected twists and turns on the album, those tracks couldn’t be more different. The lyrics are pretty spare—the focus is on the sprawling, very sci-fi soundscape that unfolds over this song’s long runtime. What begins with a riff of dainty, spacey synth notes unfolds into an echoing, forming-and-reforming galaxy of sound. It really feels like you’ve been jettisoned into space at breakneck speed, watching the stars speed past. The deep rumble of Coxon’s guitar churns as Albarn’s voice, tweaked into oblivion with all manner of effects, seems to dissipate in real time. It seriously boggles my mind that this hasn’t been used in a big-budget sci-fi movie to soundtrack a tense dogfight in space. It’s eons away from the much more grounded, British social commentary that was their claim to fame in the mid-’90s, but that’s what makes it last to me. 13 was Blur breaking open the confines that the music industry had imposed on them, and “Battle” feels like all of that pent-up energy spiraling outwards into the potential that had always been incubating within them.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ancestral Night – Elizabeth Bear – the perfect soundtrack for an adventure aboard a mysterious spaceship that encounters its fair share of borderline eldritch beings.

“Born Under a Bad Sign” – Richard Hawley

I might as well admit now that I’ve been leeching off my brother and his girlfriend, who have been going through the 1,001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die list. That’s also how I got “Crosseyed and Painless” last month, although that was bound to happen eventually. Coles Corner, on the other hand, might’ve passed me by completely, even with my Britpop proclivities (he was a founding member of Longpigs and was a touring and session for Pulp for a time).

I only got a handful of songs from Coles Corner from my brother (he said some of them “got too Sinatra,” which makes perfect sense, honestly), but they’re all packages of British rock tracks that seem plucked from yesteryear. “The Ocean” was almost my pick this week, with its staggering, cinematic build, but I just keep returning to “Born Under a Bad Sign.” It’s a small wonder that this hasn’t been in a Wes Anderson movie, and not just because of their mutual connections with Jarvis Cocker—this seems like the exact kind of ’60s-inflected, slow ballad that would soundtrack Léa Seydoux wistfully smoking out the window, or something. The comfort that comes from “Born Under a Bad Sign” isn’t necessarily from the nostalgic air of it all. It just has this innate, warm texture, created by Hawley’s smooth vocals, that evokes being carefree and sprawled out in bed, fresh cups of rich coffee and day fading into night as you shut your eyes.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Cybernetic Tea Shop – Meredith Katz – “Now you’re laying in the afterglow/And there’s something that she wants to know/Are you going be the one to say/You belong to me…”

“U.N.I.T.Y.” – Queen Latifah

Look, I’m not saying that this generation doesn’t have its fair share of fantastic, feminist artists—rappers in particular—but I maintain that some of these gen alpha/gen z boys and men have gotten too bold…they need to have the fear of Queen Latifah telling them “WHO YOU CALLIN’ A BITCH?” put in them, is all I’m saying.

God. So good. It’s so easy to see why “U.N.I.T.Y.” has become such an enduring classic for a myriad of reasons—its significance in a very male-dominated hip hop scene, it’s genuinely feminist message (no hollow girlboss anthems here), and the fact that it’s just so smooth and catchy. And I think the reason that it resonates to this day is because it calls attention to all of the ways that misogyny has infected society. It reminds me in structure of Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” in that it presents its initial issue, and in subsequent verses declares: “oh, you thought I was done? Nope, sit back down, we’re deconstructing misogynoir from the top down.” From offhand catcalling to domestic violence, “U.N.I.T.Y.” pulls the curtain on just how deep misogyny runs in society.

And it also resonates because nothing that Queen Latifah talks about here has gone away. Just as it was in 1993, women—especially women of color—are subject to the worst of society’s misogynist tendencies. The domestic violence remains. The objectification, name-calling, and slurs remain. Neoliberal feminism would have you believe that since women (occasionally women of color) can become CEOs and whatnot that misogyny has been solved. One look at the world at large would tell you the exact opposite. A queer, Black woman publicly calling out this in the 1990’s was a vital wake-up call, and it remains so to this day, 33 years later, in an age of widespread misogyny. There hasn’t been a time since “U.N.I.T.Y.” was released where it hasn’t been relevant. Plus, it’s just catchy. I’m warming up to saxophone samples here. Every element of this song is incredible.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

She Who Knows – Nnedi Okorafor – a story of strength, resilience, and one girl’s journey across the desert.

“Spinning Away” – Brian Eno and John Cale

You thought you could let your guard down again? Boom, get Eno’d, fuckers.

Like 13, Wrong Way Up has also been speaking to me like the Green Goblin mask whenever I go to my local record store, but not necessarily for the same reason. It’s way more reasonably priced, but I don’t want to buy it until I’ve actually listened to the album, y’know? But it’s Eno! And John Cale! “Spinning Away” keeps pushing me towards listening to it, and it’s convinced me that maybe warm weather is the perfect time to listen to it. Despite Eno and Cale purportedly wanting to kill each other while recording this album, both songs I’ve heard from Wrong Way Up (the other being “Lay My Love”) are nothing short of harmonious and enchanting. “Spinning Away” is also mostly Eno at the wheel; like “Lay My Love,” it has a circular, cyclical kind of groove that feeds into itself. The song seems to describe the process of making art—here, it’s an artist painting the sky, and it even references perhaps the most iconic painting of the sky of all time, Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” The opening has to be some of Eno’s most evocative lyricism, and for him, that’s really saying something:

“Up on a hill/As the day dissolves/With my pencil turning moments into line/High above/In the violet sky/A silent silver plane/It draws a golden chain…”

How can you not picture such a vivid scene after hearing that? And every successive line creates such a vibrant image. I always picture those time-lapses of galaxies colliding once this song really kicks in. It’s so transportive. Describing stars as a “million-insect storm” might be one of my favorite ways space has been described in song. It’s an almost dreamlike narrative of both the painting and the landscape morphing (spinning away, even) as they scramble to capture the image. There’s an air of impermanence about “Spinning Away,” but the way Eno and Cale paint it feels nothing short of euphoric, with Eno’s wonderstruck vocals and Cale’s soaring strings. To me, it feels like a take on impermanence as a positive experience—it’s important to capture these fleeting moments in life, and it’s a privilege to see the world changing before you, even in the most minute sense.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Last Gifts of the Universe – Riley August – “One by one/All the stars appear/As the great winds of the planet spiral in/Spinning away/Like the night sky at Arles/In the million insect storm/The constellations form…”

“Aquamarine” – Hand Habits

I discovered this song unexpectedly after watching Fruit Bats’ episode of What’s In My Bag? recently. It immediately cemented itself into one of my hypothetical playlists that only exists in my mind…that being “songs that seem engineered in a lab to be featured in Netflix’s Heartstopper.” It’s that very specific, indie-pop, reverbed synth sound that makes that connection work for me. Those synths! “Aquamarine” skitters along with all manner of them, creating a controlled frenzy that darts all over the place. Brief guitar interludes make you feel jolted back to reality after waking up from a vivid dream before Duffy plunges you headfirst back into the sleepless, electronic dreamworld—fitting for a song with lyrics unsure of their direction in the wake of emotional devastation. It’s such a lush track, bottling the feeling of breaking into a run and never looking back.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester – Maya MacGregor – “Why can’t you talk about it?/I got used to being on the other side of truth/Now I never ask for details/Who the hell needs details?/When everything is burning/You light a fire on the grave…”

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 Books for Pride Month (2026 Edition)🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Thursday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., June is Pride Month! You know the drill. I hate how bittersweet these posts are, and the bitter keeps growing. I see the beauty of this month and our queer community, but I can’t help but shrivel from the reminders that there have been repeated attempts to take queer books off the shelves across the country, and that the trans community here in the states has been under attack more than ever. My heart truly, truly hurts for all of us. I hurt. Of course, here I am, being cisgender in my cushy blue state with an openly gay governor, but nonetheless, I hurt whenever any other member of the queer community is hurt.

I’ve been an out and proud bisexual for almost eight years. Not long, in the grand scheme of things, but these years have taught me so much about queer people and the LGBTQ+ community. If there’s anything that I see in us, it’s our tenacity. No matter the slew of hateful legislation and rhetoric, we always come back stronger than ever. If there’s anything that the queer community doesn’t do, it’s back down in the face of a threat. In spite of the never-ending threats from outside and inside (the infighting never stops, y’all need to be normal about each other, please), we are like dandelions pushing through the cracks in the pavement: we never surrender, and we continue to bloom in the face of adversity.

But here’s the thing. I don’t like having to be this resilient. I don’t think any of us do. But if there’s anything to take solace in, it’s that our community is so strong and diverse that there will always be someone fighting. Yes, we all have to do what we must, but it’s important to remember that simply surviving, just being, is resistance in the face of the government wanting the public to believe that we aren’t worthy of the same rights as everybody else and that our stories are not fit for public consumption. You don’t have to be out and proud. All you have to do is be.

So here’s my annual pride month recommendations list of queer books from a variety of genres and backgrounds. I’ve compiled all kinds of books from various sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as backgrounds (queer people of color, disabled queer people, queer immigrants, etc.). Hopefully there’s something for everyone. (As always, if I’ve mistakenly identified anything on this list, please let me know! I’m only human.)

Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to support the LGBTQ+ community (especially the trans community, who are under attack more than ever) in whatever way you can. If you want to show your support them monetarily, here are some great organizations to donate to:

This is a non-exhaustive list, and I encourage you to seek out organizations in your area! There are so many wonderful people across the country (and the world) doing great work for the LGBTQ+ community.

A refresher on my key:

MC: Main character

LI: Love interest

SC: Side character(s)

For my posts from previous years, click below: 

Let’s begin, shall we? 

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR PRIDE MONTH (2025 EDITION)🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC/HISTORICAL FICTION:

*it’s worth noting that the main character of this novella is a mountain lion, but I feel like it still counts.

**the cover for The Golden Boy’s Guide to Bipolar has not yet been updated to reflect Sonido Reyes’s name change.

ANTHOLOGIES (VARIOUS GENRES):

NONFICTION:

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:

That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in ARC Reviews, Book Review Tuesday

ARC Review: Mother & Slaughter

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Whew, this header’s been gathering some serious dust. I don’t do ARCs regularly anymore, but basically consider this my regular Book Review Tuesday installment…just with some more intrigue, since this book is less than a month away from release!

As I said before, I’ve gotten too busy to regularly review ARCs in the past few years, but this is an exception. The author of this upcoming novel (Liz Shipton) came across my blog and personally reached out to ask if I could review their ARC, so I said yes! Sadly, it pains me to say that this satirical fantasy was kind a miss.

Enjoy this week’s ARC review!

Mother & Slaughter – Liz Shipton

150 years ago, all of Draconia’s women were stripped of their magic. Now, their only options once they turn eighteen are to become mothers or gladiators. Eleanor Skinner was content to choose the latter, and has spent her days fighting her way to the top. At 35, she’s Draconia’s oldest gladiator, and proud to claim the title. But when she becomes pregnant after a one-night stand, her options are slim. Rumors have swirled about Draconia’s only magic-practicing woman left, who might be able to give her the abortion she’ll need. But Draconia is full of patriarchal monsters, and Eleanor will have to claw her way to freedom.

TW/CW: misogyny, violence, gore, blood, abortion themes, sexual content, racism, transphobia, xenophobia/anti-immigrant rhetoric, homophobia, ableism (internalized/external), animal death

Thank you to Liz Shipton for sending me this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Giving an ARC a low rating is always tough. It’s especially tough since Liz Shipton was nice enough to reach out to me personally and give me this ARC, which I really appreciate. But with every ARC, I promise an honest review, and an honest review is what this is. I really wanted to like Mother & Slaughter, but it tripped over itself too many times to be truly successful.

If you’re going into Mother & Slaughter thinking that it’ll be subtle satire…it’s not. And honestly? That’s okay. There’s a place for both kinds of political allegory in this literary ecosystem. Mother & Slaughter is a revenge fantasy about tearing down the Trump administration, which I am 100% behind. Unfortunately, while I’m 100% behind Shipton’s politics, the delivery was not my cup of tea. This book basically feels like if we lived in a better, kinder universe where Quentin Tarantino was somehow woke. (For what it’s worth, I think Mother & Slaughter is the perfect book for anybody who was brutally grossed out by The Bride’s speech about “motherhood” at the end of Kill Bill: Volume 2. If Kill Bill: Volume 2 has no haters, then I am no longer here.) It’s a very bloody and irreverent novel, and it definitely tested my squeamishness for gore. The chemistry and banter between the characters was good, but it just wasn’t my kind of humor. There’s no shortage of swearing—we’re talking at least 5 f-bombs per page here, so that’s what you’re getting into. My issues with this aspect in particular are purely personal and not about the craft—it was written decently enough, but it just wasn’t the book for me in this regard.

Mother & Slaughter tackles almost everything you could think of that’s wrong with the Trump administration; misogyny and womanhood take center stage, but there’s also lots of discussions of homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, racism, and the persecution of scientists and scholars. I think the depictions of misogyny and the struggles women have under this administration were well done and well-realized through Eleanor’s character. There was some nice disability inclusion with Eleanor and Roz, who both had sustained permanent injuries from being gladiators. I also liked how respectfully Sam (who is a trans woman) was handled as a character; Eleanor and Roz butt heads about how to treat her, but ultimately, they both come to respect her as her true self—and as a victim of the same patriarchal system that they’ve been fighting against. There’s some timely discussions about immigration and anti-immigrant rhetoric which was solidly done. Shipton also attempts to tackle racism through the character of Roz; I will say, although her character gained more depth later, my biggest complaint is that for the first half of the book, Roz felt like she was only there to teach Eleanor that racism existed. This was remedied later, but it’s still worth mentioning as a writing flaw. Additionally, I’m not sure if the racism commentary was done well, as we never really get any context for how racism is systemic in Draconia (as misogyny/transphobia/etc. are), and there’s only some offhanded comments about how women of color are oversexualized and discriminated against without factoring it into how the government oppresses people of color in Draconia.

Politics take center stage in Mother & Slaughter, which is as it should be. I’m not asking for this novel to be some masterfully-crafted, intricate world, because first and foremost, it’s a political satire. That being said, I think it would’ve been much more effective if there was more effort put into the worldbuilding. It’s basically your run-of-the-mill, vaguely medieval European fantasy setting, but with more anachronistic language and dialogue. (I kind of expected the anachronisms given that this book’s tagline is “Slay, girl,” but it’s worth noting.) Yet aside from the government’s strict control of women and immigrants, I really couldn’t tell you how the government works. In order for this kind of satire to work, there needs to be at least some scaffolding of the world in order for us to understand our own politics through the lens of a fantasy world. The real fun of satire in genre fiction is to warp our own reality into a fictional one, and in this case, it just felt like a cheap copy-and-paste of current U.S. politics onto a hastily thought-out fantasy world. Fiction holds a mirror to parts of our world, but it’s really not much fun if the mirror is indistinguishable from the real world itself.

This issue is exacerbated in the ending, in which we finally meet Draconia’s Trump stand-in, who is…blatantly just Trump poorly photoshopped into a fantasy world. Like I said, the real fun of ridiculing horrible demagogues like him is by warping them to fit a fantasy setting. Once again, I recognize that this book wasn’t meant to be subtle, but a lack of subtlety shouldn’t mean a lack of creativity. Reknaw says “yuge,” he calls the main characters “nasty women,” and he even mentions a “big, beautiful bill.” As much as I loathe the man, it just felt so lazy and cheap to have no effort whatsoever put into this Trump parody. This is an exceedingly niche reference here, but remember Hellboy: Blood and Iron? They have their stand-in, comically evil oligarch character (Oliver Trombolt) whose name is just multiple real-life oligarchs (Trump being one of them) mashed up, but at least he didn’t look like a clone of Trump (or any of his other inspirations)! the bar’s real low. Even the artwork looks exactly like him. It…gets to a point. Well-intentioned satire, once again, but it just felt so unoriginal when there’s a myriad of ways to critique this administration and the scumbags within it.

Overall, a satirical fantasy with good intentions but a bloody mess of an execution. 2 stars.

Release date: July 1st, 2026

Mother & Slaughter is a standalone, and will be released on July 1st, 2026. Liz Shipton is also the author of Dot Slash Magic, the Thalassic series (Salt, Sand, Soul, Paz, and Passage), and several other books for teens and adults.

Today’s song:

yes, I know this song has one of the most threatening auras of any Brian Eno track, but I just CANNOT STOP LISTENING TO IT god I love this album

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

May/June 2025 Wrap-Up 🧶

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Insert panicking about how 2025 is already halfway gone, yada yada yada. It’s always jarring to get to that point after you’ve spent the first half of it relatively unaware, but honestly? Given the truly magnificent shitshow 2025 has been…good riddance.

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

My school got out jarringly early, which was nice, but part of me is still reckoning with the fact that “summer” has now expanded to fit all but the first week of May in it. I shouldn’t complain. It’s given me a lot of extra time to read and do all of the things that I lamented not being able to do while I was in school. I picked back up with guitar lessons, started improving my knitting, listened to several amazing albums (while knitting), and honed down my drawing. It’s all I can do to keep the anxiety/boredom-depression that starts threatening to consume everything once I get too into a routine, but I’ve got a part-time job, so I’m throwing as much as I can at my brain to keep it occupied.

And Jesus, it’s hard to keep it occupied. Nothing’s changed since my last wrap-up, and my constant state of teetering over the edge of snapping thanks to the news is ever-present, especially this month (FUCK TRUMP AND GET ICE OFF OUR STREETS). There’s nothing like being on vacation and appreciating the splendor that Colorado’s public lands provide us with and then seeing that a bunch of senators wanted to sell off millions of acres of that “undeveloped land”. At least they’re not quite as on that anymore, though I urge everyone to keep the pressure on them, because there are far too many issues that they’re either exacerbating or ignoring. But especially during Pride Month, I have to remind myself that taking care of myself and giving back to my community is an act of resistance, especially as a queer, neurodivergent person, because a) the government doesn’t want us to exist (because why else would THEY SHUT DOWN THE LGBTQ+ SUICIDE HOTLINE? Inexcusable, comically mustache-twirling, depraved evil right there), and b) they want us to be over-individualistic so that we ignore what connects all of us.

But it hasn’t been all freaking out, I promise. I went on a lovely road trip to Crested Butte with my family, and I spent a week up in the mountains looking at so many wonderful wildflowers. Getting back to both my family and my hobbies has made me more centered—the foundation is still wobbly (because of…everything), but I can always count on them to keep me grounded and keep me in the present. I found solace in my community during Pride Month, though I didn’t end up going to any of the local parades because of either plans or the heat. (Denver, I love you, but I’m not standing out in 90+ degree heat. I’m here and I’m queer, but I’m also really pale and don’t want to get excessively sweaty or sunburned.) My existence is an act of resistance, and as much as I can, I will use it for good.

If anything, it’s at least good to have a summer where I actually have movies to look forward to (definitely Superman, and I’m on the fence about Fantastic Four, but I’ll see it, if only for Cousin Thing). Y’all…The Phoenician Scheme. It’s so beautiful, dude. Wes Anderson is physically incapable of making a bad movie. Go see it. GO SEE IT.

Also, I managed to knit my first functional thing in mid-June…here’s this bag I finished up before my vacation!

My magnum opus. Obviously. I’m now keeping a paused knitting project in it, so I hope it’s not one of those “gingerbread man living in a gingerbread house completely oblivious to the fact that he lives in a house of his own flesh” situation. I try not to think about it.

MAY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books this month! In an absolute whiplash of ratings, I had two DNFs and two 5-star reads this month, but between them, there were some great reads. Surprisingly, the nonfiction books (both of which had red covers, coincidentally) were the stars this month!

1 – 1.75 stars:

Ninefox Gambit

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Death I Gave Him

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Resisters

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Ashfire King

5 stars:

Crying in H Mart

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times – 5 stars

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

JUNE READING WRAP-UP:

I read 16 books this month! Even with my part-time job, summer has given me more time to read, which is always welcome. Although there were some misses in the mix, I had a great bunch of (mostly) queer reads for pride month, both from familiar and new authors!

1 – 1.75 stars:

And They Lived…

2 – 2.75 stars:

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Library of Broken Worlds

4 – 4.75 stars:

Monk and Robot

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Life Hacks for a Little Alien – 4.5 stars

Life Hacks for a Little Alien

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

Today’s song:

That’s it for this month in blogging! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/29/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: Becky Chambers double-dipping, offloading my gripes about the train wreck that was season 4 of Hacks, and…oh, whoops, I think this post was supposed to be about music. My bad.

Enjoy this week’s review!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/29/25

“Incomprehensible” – Big Thief

“They’re back!” I say, having not even listened to a full Big Thief album. This kind of thing sure does happen a lot, huh?

Regardless of whether or not I’ll listen to Double Infinity when it comes out this September or after I’ve finally gotten around to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, “Incomprehensible” is a treasure in the here and now. The production is an absolute treat. It’s a far cry from some of their older, more folkier material, but never once does it feel removed from their emotional core. It glistens like dew, icy and starry yet tender and inviting, encircling, even. Guitars glitter and bubble next to the papery percussion. Adrianne Lenker’s voice drifts gently in their fabricated ether, but never once does it distract from the true star of the show: the lyrics, man, these lyrics! Lenker has truly honed her talent for poetic lyricism, and her beautiful messaging and penchant for lush turns of phrase are on full display here. Here’s a snippet:

“In two days, it’s my birthday/And I’ll be 33/That doesn’t really matter next to eternity/But I like a double number, and I like an odd one too/And everything I see from now on will be something new.”

What’s the music equivalent of that “absolute cinema” meme of Martin Scorsese? This deserves it, I think, if not just for that verse. “Incomprehensible” is a heartfelt ode to being free—not just driving down an endless road, as North American highways are wont to make you feel, but being free from societal pressures. I might be ascribing my love to it because it came to me at a time like this, where I am putting all of my energy in being free of expectations and embracing being as weird as possible, but in any other time, “Incomprehensible” would be a pleasure. Intertwined with imagery of nature—rolling clouds, birds, lupine flowers, and the glittering scales of fish—this freedom to just be is fully realized as a natural state: flowers grow and clouds form without any pressure that we have man-made, save for natural ones necessarily for survival. They don’t have the expectations on women to make them dread aging or conform to a certain look, to mourn every hair as it turns gray. The further we are from nature, the closer we get to these false ideals that we’ve fabricated for ourselves. I could go on about the myriad ways about how we could learn from nature, but the lesson in “Incomprehensible” is one of many: if we pay attention more to nature, we realize that all of these societal pressures are just that, constructs; to be more natural is to live free of expectations of what should be and to simply be.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Monk and Robot – Becky Chambers – “And as silver as the rainbow scales that shimmer purple blue/How can beauty that is living be anything but true?”

“Yamar” – Dry Bread

I’m not like other girls…I didn’t even know the main reason that most people know this song is because Phish frequently covers it. Oof. I did discover it, as I tend to discover random, obscure ’60s and ’70s songs, through Hacks.

Can we talk about Hacks, by the way? Specifically, how gloriously they fucked up what was one of the longest consistent runs of a good comedy show? They had such a wonderful thing going—the sharp humor, the chemistry between Hannah Einbender and Jean Smart, and the excellent bisexual representation. Season 4 really just threw every single one of those things out the window. I’m still so mad. They were so sensitive and respectful about depicting bisexuality and biphobia, then boom…they proceed to throw the laziest possible stereotype about bisexuality at Ava. She goes from having heartfelt conversations about her identity with Deborah to being thrown into a threesome for reasons that neither furthered the plot nor said anything new about her as a character. At least the resolution was that the other two in the threesome were a chill polyamorous couple who didn’t want to be used for sex, which I appreciated (what with there being hardly any respectful depictions of polyamory anywhere), BUT WHY THE HELL WAS THAT NECESSARY? WHY DID THEY HAVE TO THROW IN THE “I’m in a threesome…supa bi!” LINE??? WHAT POSSESSED THE SHOWRUNNERS TO DO A COMPLETE 1-80 FROM THOUGHTFUL, AUTHENTIC DEPICTIONS OF BISEXUALITY TO WHATEVER STEREOTYPES THEY COULD HIT FIRST ON A DARTBOARD????

Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. Moving on…

As much as I love Hacks, they tend to have an issue with their needle-drops. In most cases, it’s a 30 second snippet from the song in question, and it’s usually shown over an aerial shot of whatever city they’re driving into—usually Las Vegas or Los Angeles. A few times is fine, but…yeah, it’s a little old. Given the absolute gold that was both the scene and the needle drop of “I Won’t Tell” in season 3, I knew they were at least capable of something more. In the case of “Yamar,” it’s in between the two; played at the intro of season 4, episode 6, it’s a small snippet that plays over a shot of Ava wrangling a comically large bundle of birthday balloons.

Though the editing was smooth, “Yamar” was all but hacked (no pun intended) to pieces—they only have about three lines from the verse before they get to the chorus. Which is really a disservice, because this is such a relentlessly catchy gem from the ’70s! My music taste is…well, yeah, it’s very much on the Western side. So I’m always glad when I find a piece of non-Western music that absolutely grabs me. I think the common denominator is the ’70s, regardless of the region it’s from. Even though the lyrics belie a somber reminiscence of looking for the unspoken point of leaving childhood behind and getting older, “Yamar” has an unfailing gallop that signals nothing but joy. That grainy, ’70s production strangely does everything in this song a service, giving the pianos a warm sheen and softening the rapid percussion, like the sun-bleaching of an old photo. It’s hard for me to feel anything but joy from this song, and maybe that could somehow be the point: dancing in defiance of having to grow older.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Ocean’s Godori – Elaine U. Cho – Reconciling with childhood and a skewed sense of identity, but all with a dose of hope and joy.

“Somebody New” – Tunde Adebimpe

It’s once again Tunde Time here on the Bookish Mutant.

I haven’t necessarily come back to a lot of Thee Black Boltz, even though I retain that it’s a great album. Somewhat regrettably, it’s the singles that I’ve mainly been returning to, but at least they were well-picked singles, I suppose? I’d say that “Ate the Moon” and “The Most” were great surprises, but singles like this, “Magnetic,” and “God Knows” are the reigning highlights. Yet “Somebody New” still surprises me in how much I actually like it—even for Tunde Adebimpe. Autotune and a more directly pop direction aren’t directions that typically work for indie rockers like him, but it works. The autotune doesn’t make his voice shinier or more polished—it just distorts it, adding another layer of synth to the synth-pop that this song is soaked in. There’s plenty of ’80s throwback in the sound, from the video production to the synths, but never does it feel like a song meant to vomit up nostalgia—it’s just another in the long line of foolproof methods that Adebimpe has employed that make a song instantly danceable. Along with the delightful music video, in which Adebimpe has a Lego Batman moment with a Yo Gabba Gabba creature, “Somebody New” is one of the best examples of when somebody outside of the pop sphere takes a stab at a pop song—and knocks it out of the park.

BONUS: Here’s his recent performance on the Tonight Show:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Stars Too Fondly – Emily Hamilton – “I just wanna be somebody new/Is there nothing in the world that we can say about this/Heavenly vibration coming through?/How can we feed this love?”

“Psycho Speak” – Palehound

It’s been about two and a half years since the Palehound Panic that shook the world this blog (alive and well) and my beat-up headphones (rest in peace). Although El Kempner isn’t dominating my Apple Music replay anymore, they’re always a delight to come back to, no matter the era. “Psycho Speak” returned unexpectedly, a cut from their debut EP, Bent Nail. Scrappy encapsulates so much of this barely three-minute-long song: the more indie production of their early days, the verging on out-of-breath delivery of the lyrics, and the cymbal-dominated percussion. Like the EP’s title and album cover, “Psycho Speak” evokes worn-down houses and dirty sidewalks, baseball bats dragged through the dirt. Kempner wasn’t quite at the level of precision that they have on their later songs, but “Psycho Speak” is a song that begs to be a little rough around the edges, fragmented like the end of the song: the final lyric of “I went downstairs and curled up with the cat” feels like a sentence fragment, leaving something unsaid. In fact, this track is built entirely off of things unsaid, in this tale of dating a rich man who leaves intermittently and for long periods, but who takes comfort in the company of his pets. Or maybe it’s that simple of a tale—the tiniest peephole into a story.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Resisters – Gish Jen – the atmosphere of this novel, though much bleaker, has a very similar scrappy attitude and feel to it, especially where the younger characters are concerned.

“You Are A Tourist” – Death Cab for Cutie

The buzz around “You Are A Tourist” probably eclipses the song itself; its music video, a Meow Wolf-esque spectacle of kaleidoscopic lights, dancers outfitted in feathers, and geometric backdrops, was the first scripted music video in history to be shot in a single take. Given the impeccably elaborate choreography of it all, it’s honestly astounding. But even before I knew anything about the video or the fact that this song was one of their more popular ones, “You Are A Tourist” captivated me. The melody and arrangement feel so cyclical for me—from the loop at the beginning to the way that the instruments seem to circle each other, as though they were layered in concentric train tracks. And though it’s adjacent to the “I’m in my ’20s and angsty and need to get out of this town” format, as always, Ben Gibbard’s lyricism are what separates it from the rest. Of course, the “And if you feel just like a tourist/In the city you were born” instantly grabs me, but it feels less like a statement of purpose and more of a guidebook for those looking to start over and strike out on their own, a soothing, steady hand on your shoulder in the face of turbulent emotions, a kind of prayer against stagnation.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3) – Becky Chambers – “And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born/Then it’s time to go and define your destination/There’s so many different places to call home…”

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 (6/24/25) – Life Hacks for a Little Alien

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! I’m back from my road trip with a fantastic book for you.

I try to stick to mostly queer books for June, but I read extra queerly all year…think of this as pregaming for Disability Pride Month. (Both apply to me, I get a pass, right? Hell, it’s my blog and I’ll do what I like.) Nevertheless, I bought Life Hacks for a Little Alien while on vacation (shoutout to Townie Books in Crested Butte). I’d heard great reviews of it, particularly that it encapsulated neurodivergent childhood beautifully, so of course I had to read it. What I found was a heartstring-pulling and tender depiction of neurodivergent childhood.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Life Hacks for a Little Alien – Alice Franklin

In England, a young girl grows up not knowing that she’s neurodivergent, but certain that she’s different from the other children. She doesn’t talk or think the way they do, and her parents are having trouble keeping up with her. She never shows any interest in much anything, but when insomnia prompts her to watch TV at night, she discovers a documentary on the Voynich Manuscript. Soon, the mysterious manuscript heightens her curiosity and invigorates her life. The only thing that would make it better is to find the Manuscript itself—and she’s determined to get it in her hands and decipher its impossible code.

TW/CW: ableism, vomit, bullying, institutionalization/mental illness themes

I have once again been ensnared by a book with metaphors about aliens relating to neurodivergent. It will happen again.

I’ll absolutely be reading more by Alice Franklin after this, because her writing style captivated me from the start! The first comparison that sprang to mind, strangely, was of Wes Anderson. It feels odd to jump from literature to film, but stay with me. The narrator’s voice is very matter-of-fact and particular, which are qualities than can be ascribed to both very self-assured children and comically self-assured Wes Anderson characters. The linguistic footnotes and reading lists at the end of each chapter were also reminiscent of the wry judgements of Anderson’s omniscient narrators. All of this is to say that Life Hacks for a Little Alien boasted such a charming voice. Second person POV is a notoriously difficult POV to write from; Franklin chose it for the book because she found it personally easier to write and thought that it would help the reader have empathy for the protagonist. I think it would’ve been easy to have empathy for the narrator no matter what, but the use of the second person gave Life Hacks for a Little Alien such a unique flavor. As the narrator tried to pick apart the structures of how a young English girl is supposed to act, she was methodical, but in a way that was always witty, snarky, or charming. Yet that voice, when faced with the harsher realities of neurodivergent life, never faltered in its emotional connection. I was invested in the narrator’s story from the start, and from then on, Franklin kept me hooked!

Although I’m not autistic, I am neurodivergent (I have sensory processing disorder, which has some similarities to autism), and there are so many aspects of Life Hacks for a Little Alien that resonated with me. Even if I weren’t so interested in sci-fi, the latent, never-ending feeling that you’re from another planet never fades, and the latent alienation that exists in everyday life was depicted with such authenticity and heart. Beyond that, what was depicted most accurately to me was the lingering sense of “I’m doing what the other kids are doing, so why am I wrong/why are they laughing at me/what about what I did makes it wrong?” Neurotypical society is so full of idiosyncrasies, and being neurodivergent makes you realize that from an uncomfortably young age. The narrator’s struggles with picking it apart were delivered with such sensitivity and accuracy, and I loved that her special interest in linguistics and the Voynich Manuscript was not just something that made her fall in love with learning again, but also became a survival mechanism for her to navigate a complicated world.

Beyond that, the use of the Voynich Manuscript and linguistics as a metaphor for the narrator’s experience was easily the most poignant part of a very poignant novel. Many neurodivergent people of various diagnoses often express the feeling that they were never given the same “script” as neurotypical people, a feeling I’ve often shared; if anything, we were basically given a kind of indecipherable Voynich Manuscript that the author understands perfectly, but nobody else does. The narrator’s theory by the end of the novel is that it functions as a way to help aliens navigate Earth, but what is unspoken is that she sees it as such too—she feels like the alien that has been given an indecipherable code with strange pictures in order to understand a completely foreign world. You can see how that hit me in the gut instantly…and it goes even further. English linguistics are full of similar idiosyncrasies as the neurotypical world, and you’re expected to go along with them all the same, even though they frequent contradict all manner of rules. The narrator’s interest in linguistics becomes her way of understanding—or failing to understand—the world. It’s such a beautiful, multilayered metaphor, and it struck such a resonant chord within me.

I have almost no criticisms of Life Hacks for a Little Alien, and I might’ve given it 4.75 or 5 stars if not for this one aspect. My only real problem with Life Hacks for a Little Alien is that it just…ended. Although the epilogue wrapped things up in a more satisfactory and clean manner, the real ending just…ended. For such a meticulous book, it was jarring to end in such an abrupt place. Even though we got some sort of resolution, Life Hacks for a Little Alien seemed to just plunk itself down and end unceremoniously. I’m fine with some books having neatly wrapped-up endings, but this novel seemed to need some semblance of one. I fully expected another chapter afterwards. However, I can sort of see how it might function—this isn’t necessarily the end of the narrator’s story, and her life was far from over by this point. Yet it felt like the end of this arc and the beginning of a new chapter in her life, which seems to necessitate some more closure.

All in all, a deeply poignant and beautiful meditation on neurodivergent girlhood and navigating alien worlds. 4.5 stars!

Life Hacks for a Little Alien is a standalone and Alice Franklin’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

there we go, here’s something for pride!

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