Tag: Machinehood

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/1/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: apologies for the whiplash lineup, but if your shuffle hasn’t whooped you with Julien Baker and Caroline Polachek back to back, have you even lived?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/1/24

“2468” – Horsegirl

2024 was such a powerhouse year of fantastic albums that I’ve found myself wondering how 2025 could possibly measure up. Of course, the future’s unwritten, to quote Phoebe Bridgers, but if the upcoming solo Tunde Adebimpe album and this are anything to go by, it’s gonna be another fantastic year of music. Or at least a fantastic February, now that we have new Horsegirl on the horizon! Their second album, Phonetics On & On (if there was ever a more Horsegirl album title) comes out on Valentine’s Day next year, so I’m officially spoken for, thank you very much. It’s produced by none other than Cate Le Bon (!!!), and no matter how utterly pretentious I sound for getting excited about Horsegirl being produced by Cate Le Bon, oh my gooooooood (nobody got that), I remain excited after finally listening to some of Le Bon’s weirder solo albums and knowing the magic she worked with Wilco on Cousin back in 2023.

Horsegirl have always been an artsy bunch, taking inspiration from everyone from Brian Eno to Built to Spill, but “2468” reminds me of their picks from their episode of What’s In My Bag?—specifically their last one, The Feelies’ Crazy Rhythms. Penelope Lowenstein described a moment on that episode where she was supposed to be doing homework in Spanish class and was listening to The Feelies instead and felt like “the coolest person in the world.” I’ve always respected The Feelies, but they just make me anxious. Props to them for having their music so sanded down that there’s no wrinkles whatsoever, but it feels like the point after you’ve enjoyed your coffee and the caffeine jitters start to set in, but you have to stay put in your seat. They feel itchy, weirdly. Like something’s trapped in the music and is clawing to get out, but The Feelies just won’t let it. Good for them, man, but the nervous energy transfers very easily. “2468” is proof that Horsegirl’s uptight needle is quivering in the direction of The Feelies, but for all of their toy-solider precision, I don’t think they could ever be that itchily nervous. All of the lyrics are spoken deadpan, in some sort of no-man’s-land between nursery rhymes and marching orders, complete with a little “da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da” in case it gets too strict. With the band decked out in their best Wes Anderson fits, they shuffle and paddy-cake around as their well-oiled machine skips along. They may be taking after their uptight forefathers, but they’ve left themselves plenty of leeway to jump around—and those artsy leaps are what make me the most excited for what the future holds for Horsegirl.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Early Riser – Jasper Fforde – delightfully odd in both concept and writing.

“When the Sun Hits” – Slowdive

Dread it…run from it…shoegaze always arrives on this blog.

I guess I was too mired in Spiritualized (and a sprinkling of Beach House) to get into Slowdive sooner, but it was always at the back of my mind, even when I’d never listened to it yet. I’d seen them floating around in the same musical circles that I listened to, not to mention my awesome honors English teacher from high school wearing a Slowdive shirt out of nowhere for band shirt day during spirit week. (My high school’s English department happened to be very shoegazey. I bumped into that same teacher at a Spiritualized concert in my senior year.) I should’ve hitched a ride on the bandwagon after Soccer Mommy covered “Dagger” last year, but here we are. Look, I know “When The Sun Hits” is their most popular song, and I’m a poser, yada yada yada, but LORD, this is beautiful.

For me, what separates shoegaze is its ability to create an atmosphere. J. Spaceman is the undisputed king (in my mind) in that regard, with his ability to create cosmically lived-in music that sounds all at once intimately personal and wide enough to swallow the world whole. “When The Sun Hits” stirs up that same feeling; the production is nothing short of cavernous, capturing the dappled reflections of water on the walls of a cave and the stringy sunlight shyly peering in. Both the vocals of Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell take a blinding backseat to the mounting ocean of sound that reduces all else to a wavering echo. Slowdive were one of many alternative bands inspired by David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy, citing Low and Lodger as key influences, but funnily enough, I discovered this song through this inspired mashup of this track and David Bowie’s “Heroes.” I’d be surprised if that missing album didn’t creep in there, given how seamlessly the chorus of “When The Sun Hits” glides into Bowie’s opening chords. Having the first line of the pre-chorus be “It matters where you are” is a choice that defines the song’s experience: when you’re in the midst of experiencing it for the first time, all else seems to fall away. You can’t help but be pulled into the undertow, to be in the present, just to experience this song. That’s shoegaze.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Heart of the World (The Isles of the Gods, #2) – Amie Kaufman – “Sweet thing, I watch you/Burn so fast, it scares me/Mind games, don’t leave me/Come so far, don’t lose me…”

“Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying” (feat. SOAK and Quinn Christopherson) [Belle and Sebastian cover] – Julien Baker & Calvin Lauber

If you’re able, consider supporting this album, TRANSA, a compilation album featuring over 100 artists organized by the Red Hot Organization to bring awareness to trans rights! The album features Jeff Tweedy, Adrianne Lenker, Bill Callahan, André 3000, Perfume Genius, and so many more amongst its ranks, with both original songs and covers ranging from Kate Bush to SOPHIE.

Predictably, I first heard of TRANSA through Julien Baker, who covered Belle & Sebastian’s “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying” with SOAK, Quinn Christopherson, and Calvin Lauber. Lauber, who also produced many of Julien Baker’s newer material as well as boygenius’ “Black Hole,” turns Belle & Sebastian’s melancholy, jangly yearning into an urgent spectacle, a sprint through the woods to a brighter future for all four minutes and 13 seconds. If there’s anything that Baker can always deliver on, it’s urgency—the urgency of trauma, the urgency of love. With the context of both Baker’s queer identity and the album’s overarching theme of the trans experience, “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying” takes on a whole new light; “Oh, I’ll settle down with some old story/About a boy who’s just like me/Thought there was love in everything and everyone/You’re so naive” becomes the loss of innocence in the face of homophobia and transphobia and finding solace in fiction, and “Here on my own now after hours/Here on my own now on a bus/Think of it this way/You could either be successful or be us” feels like a vignette of someone on the run after being kicked out of their home. Even the title becomes a rallying cry of wishing to break free of the confines of prejudice that so many queer people know like the back of their hands. SOAK and Quinn Christopherson, both trans artists, trade verses and backing vocals with Baker, creating a harmony of solidarity that gives Belle & Sebastian’s original words an even more emotional meaning.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

I Wish You All the Best – Mason Deaver – heartbreak, new love, and a desire for a new life.

“Dang” – Caroline Polachek

Even with specific music categories being an illusion kept afloat by critics, I feel like what I’ve heard of Caroline Polachek aligns with my hazy definition of indie pop. It’s theoretically everything that should be popular, but like alternative or mainstream rock, it’s the label or the sensibilities that separates it. In the case of Caroline Polachek, she’s definitely too out there for the Top 40, but make no mistake: in the words of XTC, this is pop (yeah yeah, this is pop, yeah yeah, etc). The pop part is what prevents me from entirely getting into her music; as impressive as her vocal range is, it’s often too polished for me, and sometimes the isolated instrumentals feel like they could belong in a commercial. Not always my cup of tea.

But. But. I can’t not admire how weird she gets with it. I’m not seeing any other pop star willingly turn themselves into a chimera in their music videos, after all. And Polachek has more than a few excellent belts and screams in her. (Plus, she has my immediate respect for, after being called “this generation’s Kate Bush,” responding by saying that “SHE [Kate Bush] is this generation’s Kate Bush. Damn right.) “Dang” gets recommended to me in droves around every 6 months, and I can’t not be compelled by it. When I call it corporate, I mean it as a compliment—it feels like a strange distillation of disinterest and sanitized, company-wide messages saying something on the lines of “we’re all a family.” The intro of garbled vocals, followed by Polachek’s bored delivery of “Dang” feels like the pleas of low-level workers drowned out by an uncaring boss waving them off. “Aww, you don’t have enough to provide for your family? Dang. Get that spreadsheet on my desk by noon.” No wonder Polachek, in this live performance on The Late Show, is presenting an unconventional powerpoint, including but not limited to diagrams about “how many wolves are inside you” and a notes-app apology consisting of a paraphrased version of William Carlos Williams’ “This Is Just to Say.” (I’m wondering about the significance of replacing plums with grapes…maybe it’s not that deep?) Her music as a whole remains a bit too pop-polished for me, but I have nothing but respect for her unconventional spin on it—and her vocal range. The shriek beginning at 1:51? Autotune or not, either way, it’s enough to convince me that this is unedited:

good for you, Caroline…put those geese in their place

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Machinehood – S.B. Divya – corporate disinterest and neglect, with a dose of S.B. Divya’s signature weirdness (and a Christopher Nolan-style thriller).

“A Country Dance” – Joanna Sternberg

I write this as a light snow is falling outside my window, and even though this song was released in August (as was the film it was written for, Between the Temples), it’s so distinctly placed in that period between autumn and winter for me, as far as the sound. “A Country Dance” has a gentle, intimate warmth to it that could only come from the embers of a fireplace in late November or mid-December. It lands on the opposite spectrum of The Shins’ “Black Wave,” which I spoke about around a year ago; seasonally, it’s at the same time, but “Black Wave” feels more like huddling around a fire, exposed to the elements. “A Country Dance” is comfortably cozy, without any notion of the snow biting at your cheeks. For me, good folk music gives you the feeling that you’ve just eaten a stomach-warming, rich holiday dinner—maybe some kind of stew or soup—and that warmth stays in your bones long after you’ve digested it.

I fully thought that “A Country Dance” was a cover—it sounds like it could’ve come out of the ’60s or ’70s, but this is a Sternberg original, and that timelessness is hard to capture—it feels very ’60s and Adrianne Lenker at the same time. (Their music teacher voice certainly contributes to that effect as well.) As the leaves fall off of the trees, this track feels like the perfect antidote to the coming chill—warm, tucked inside of a log cabin, half-asleep and wrapped in woolen blankets. Not every Joanna Sternberg song captures me, but “A Country Dance” honestly makes me feel like the Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Bear, and that’s not something I’d say about just any song.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Any Way the Wind Blows (Simon Snow, #3) – Rainbow Rowell – Even if it is tumultuous in places, the quiet Christmas scenes here invoke this song.

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

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

Posted in Books

♿️ The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Disability Pride Month – 2024 Edition ♿️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., July is Disability Pride Month! In the three years that I’ve been making these lists, disability is still forgotten even in many intersectional feminist circles, and the importance for uplifting the disabled community has never been more important than know, what with the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, where disabled people, especially those who are immunocompromised, were disproportionately affected. Every year, even though I look in as many places as I can, it’s difficult for me to find books with disabled stories at the forefront that don’t center suffering or being “inspiring.” (As of now, I have only ever read one book with my disability, SPD, and heard of only one other. Inspiration for me to write my own stories…) So with these lists, I hope to provide disabled books with a wide range of representation, both in terms of disability and in the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality.

NOTE: my memory (and the internet) is imperfect, so if I’ve misrepresented/mislabeled any of the specific rep in these books, don’t hesitate to let me know!

KEY FOR TERMS IN THIS POST:

  • MC: Main character
  • LI: Love interest
  • SC: Side character

For my previous lists, click below:

Let’s begin, shall we?

♿️THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR DISABILITY PRIDE MONTH (2024 EDITION)♿️

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC FICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you enjoy them? What are some of your favorite books with disabled rep? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

this song makes me SO so incredibly happy!! thank you to Horsegirl for recommending it!!

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/30/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: this ain’t rock n’ roll…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/30/24

“Future Legend/Diamond Dogs” – David Bowie

Another victim of me trying stubbornly to fit this into a color scheme, and also a victim of me trying to align my albums with what I draw on the whiteboard of my dorm. Listen, if the original sleeve was banned in the U.S., that generally means it’s a cool album cover, but probably not a good idea to be displayed for the world and my RA to see. And I was not about to draw David Bowie’s anatomically accurate canine lower half. Nah.

A time-proven rule: nobody does it like Bowie. You can put on all of the theater and spooky voices that you like, but nobody will ever replicate the sheer goosebumps that the intro to this album induces. The same can be said for many songs on this album (see: “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing [reprise]”), but I put “Future Legend” and “Diamond Dogs” together because the most enriching way to experience them is to experience them as a single song, and that single song is one of my favorite album intros of all time. Diamond Dogs is glam rock covered in flies—the lovelorn hope of Ziggy Stardust remains, but stinking of a world left in tatters, a hunk of rotting meat left for the mutant vultures in the searing desert heat. Cobbled from shreds of William S. Burroughs and Bowie’s failed attempt at a musical adaption of 1984, this album is a dystopia full of lust and peril. As a prologue, “Future Legend” is the height of Bowie’s theatricality. On anybody else, a dog’s howl, distorted as though bellowed through a plastic tube would feel like a feeble attempt to set a scene. Bowie, of course, makes it into the most bone-chilling alarm bell signaling the beginning of the end. It’s not the kind of sound any normal dog makes— it immediately triggers a sense of uncanny valley, a hair’s breadth away from being distinctly, evolutionarily wrong. His staticky narration is accompanied by synthy moans and high-pitched, delirious singsong beasts echoing “love me, love me!” as he tells of an alien landscape where all that remains of the 20th century is the excess it produced, the last monoliths that the mutant survivors of some horrific extinction now cling to. Panting dogs and drooling bloodsuckers lick their lips in the distance as Bowie lifts the curtain to declare this an era beyond the collapsed remnants of our sense of time. No month, no four-digit number to designate this hellscape: it is the year of the Diamond Dogs.

And “Diamond Dogs?” Hearing it for the first time while freshly 13 rearranged my molecular structure. In that moment, nobody had ever done anything as cool as that. It’s still true.

Because there will never be another album intro like this:

And in the death, as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare,
The shutters lifted in inches in Temperance Building, high on Poacher’s Hill
And red, mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City.
No more big wheels.

Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats,
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes,
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love Me Avenue,
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers.
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald.
Any day now…
The Year of the Diamond Dogs!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

1984 – George Orwell – need I really explain this?

“On Repeat” – International Teachers of Pop

In terms of Co-Pilot, I end up focusing. more on Jim Noir, which…well, he has played a very prominent part in my musical life, but Leonore Wheatley’s musical ventures rarely get the praise they deserve. Wheatley’s talents extend to The Soundcarriers (big thank you to my brother for introducing me to them!), Co-Pilot (who released their incredible album Rotate almost a year ago!! Make some noise!!), and International Teachers of Pop, where she provides vocals alongside Katie Mason.

I’ve heard far too many bands who desperately want to market themselves as a second-coming of a certain era of music (We haven’t recovered from what Stranger Things did to shove the ’80s in everybody’s faces…I want out), but only end up sounding like plastic imitations. The key, which this school board of musicians has figured out, is not to set out to imitate. This sounds like a product that emerged from a desire to have fun and make catchy dance-pop and not try and sound like somebody more famous. Fun should be the prime motivation to make music, especially in a side project like this, but the bar’s low in such a hit-churning industry. You can hear Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys in every synthy buzz and flourish, but not because they set out to sound like them—it’s an homage, never an imitation. Mason and Wheatley’s harmonies center this pulsating track, built for booming bass and bouncing feet. (It really was a shame to see how lukewarm the crowd was in the video above—why are they barely dancing??) With lyrics swimming between existential dread and a desire for oblivious joy, “On Repeat” is the product an extensive pop study. Maybe the name is a touch presumptuous, but they’ve got the talent to back up their assertion, tongue-in-cheek or not.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Machinehood – S.B. Divya – ooh! aah! capitalism! woo! woo! yeah! this economy cannot sustain human life! get funky!

“I Won’t Tell” – Conlon & The Crawlers

Listen, I am BEGGING the Hacks fandom to do their stuff, because I can’t keep looping this song over and over on YouTube, and I don’t have a record player and therefore have no reason to snag the copies lingering on eBay…PLEASE. WE NEED TO GET THIS ON STREAMING. WHATEVER IT TAKES. DO YOUR STUFF!!!!!

“I Won’t Tell” was one of two one-off singles (the other being “You’re Comin’ On”) by Conlon & The Crawlers, an offshoot of The Nightcrawlers (top 10 band names that I totally want to steal for reasons that are totally not X-Men-related). From the looks of it, neither song went anywhere, and now the only remnants are floating around on eBay, and, thanks to some digging, a few eagle-eyed people on YouTube. All of this begs the question: how were they able to get this on Hacks? Somebody’s got a great record collection…unfortunately, the scene isn’t on YouTube, but it appears in Season 3, Episode 6, and briefly soundtracks a hilarious slo-mo of Ava and Deborah on a golf course, with Ava confidently strutting beside Deborah with her caddy vest on backwards.

The minute I heard it, I knew I had to hunt it down—it encapsulates a very distinct sound of the late-’60s that I just adore. It’s just deliciously jangly, from the opening riff (a reworked and arguably improved version of the opening to The Nightcrawlers’ “Little Black Egg”) to the almost banjo-like strum that builds the track’s backbone. Chuck Conlon’s butter-and-sugar voice spins the strings of “Little Black Egg” into a precocious, peculiar masterpiece—who would forget a song that opens with “A teaspoon holds more than a fork does/A long snail eats more than a short one?” This vibrant, jangly oddball is practically asking to be used for a tightly-shot Wes Anderson montage. Surely it’s obscure enough for him…

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Floating Hotel – Grace Curtis – lighthearted, jaunty, and equally matched on the Wes Anderson vibes front.

“A Million Times” – Lisa Germano

I’m not sure which direction I should go for next in terms of Lisa Germano’s discography. She has nine studio albums, two of which I’ve already listened to (Excerpts from a Love Circus and Slide). I know I’ll feel like a kicked puppy lying on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere after I listen to any given album, so chances are, it probably doesn’t matter where I start. Either way, on a whim, I dipped my toes into a handful of songs from her 2009 album Magic Neighbor. Many of the reviews have categorized it as having a childlike innocence juxtaposing the veil of darkness that never lifts from her discography, and there’s tangible strings of it stretched throughout. Even if you’ve dictionary-definition Been Through It like Germano has, I feel like you’d still have to have at least the tiniest mote of innocent glee—or humor—left in your soul to name a song “Kitty Train,” even if it’s a short instrumental break.

“A Million Times” has a childish glint to it, but childish here translates to complacency and toxicity; it feels like the emotional progression of “Small Heads,” musically twelve years down the line, but personally, only a handful. (At least…I hope so. I can only hope that the abusive bastard who inspired her to write any of the songs from Love Circus is just one guy, and that he got his comeuppance.) “Small Heads” acknowledges how unhappy she is in said relationship, but wryly admits that it’s not all the other party’s fault: “How convenient to forget/All the lies that you say/When you’re really really drunk…like me.” It’s a mutual kind of tangling, with both people ouroboros-ing themselves into their own minds so deeply that they’ve ceased to think of each other (“Did I ever think of you?/Did you ever think of me?/Probably not, with our heads in the clouds”), or, as Bowie might put it, “making love to [their] egos.” It’s all just fun and games, right? Whee! “What a lonely life!” she sings to the cheer of the crowd and dainty recorders.

Such fun and games echo through “A Million Times.” Said recorder has made a comeback, and all of the egg shakers and brushes in the background sound like remnants of rusty toys being disassembled. Just as childlike, Germano tosses the relationship across the room like a discarded doll, letting its limbs crumple now that she’s had her fun: “We fell in love and we were caught/Inside this game we call together/And it felt good until we found/We had more fun when we were strangers.” Every motion they go through is described in the same way that Ken tells Barbie “we’re girlfriend boyfriend,” smashing doll heads together to simulate kissing. Such kisses and games are a distraction from the inevitable implosion of their excuse for love—they’re so caught up in performing love that both of them have retreated into their own heads, convincing themselves, over and over, that they’re not sick of playing. It’s self-aware in the way that an arsonist is self-aware: they know that they’ve just burned down a building, but they’ll continue to set as many fires as they like. Germano seems to regress as she drags out her cry of “You can’t leave me/No, not really/We are happy with this misery/So we’ll start it all again/A million times, a million times.” Never before have I heard an accordion that sounds so distinctly ominous—the bellow of it as Germano’s lyrics get progressively poisonous might as well be the siren in a bomb shelter, a low, distant warning of disaster to come. “You can’t leave me” is simultaneously the rug of innocence being pulled out and the dread of pulling apart from someone who you know will collapse without you to parasitically cling to. Platonically, I’ve been the host/discarded toy in such situations, so for my sake and hers, I hope Germano’s since quit playing with her dollies. I’m willing to give her some leeway, since if she’s played up the eerie overtones in this song, she recognizes these patterns for the toxic mess they are.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Emperor and the Endless Palace – Justinian Huang – “We fell in love and we were caught/Inside this game we call together/And it felt good until we found/We had more fun when we were strangers…”

“Feet-like Fins” – Cocteau Twins

Rounding out the month with yet another Cocteau Twins song…sorry, everybody. Get Victorialand‘ed, I guess. The only thing keeping me from swallowing this album in one gulp like some kind of deep-sea abomination of god is knowing that this is the perfect album for winter, what with the Artic and Antarctic inspiration.

Situated near the end of the album, “Feet-like Fins” is a dewy spiderweb of reverb that glitters in waning sunlight through gray clouds. Crested by soft cymbal crescendos, you can never pick out a note from the track that isn’t vibrating like raindrops on a speaker. Even the bongos that gently steady the melody never truly feel percussive, nothing but droplets sending ripples out into the frigid water. Like “Aikea-Guinea,” “Feet-like Fins” is distinctly watery, but where the former feels like being tossed through the waters of time, this track is a gradual descent into the ocean, watching the last threads of silky light disappear into the shallows as you’re pulled downwards. Judging from the “Frozen World,” Living Planet-inspired patchwork of the album, the feet-like fins likely belonged to the various seals that appear throughout the episode: crab-eater seals, fur seals, and elephant seals; Indeed, the sleek movements of this track mirror their bubble-trailing paths through the water as they hunt for prey.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Lagoon – Nnedi Okorafor – a mysterious, alien lifeform stretches its feelers and emerges from the ocean…

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 AAPI Heritage Month (2024 Edition)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! This is my fourth year making this particular list, and I’ve found and read so many incredible books since then. As always, diverse reading shouldn’t be restricted to one month only, but here at The Bookish Mutant, I try to take any opportunity I can to shift the focus to marginalized voices—and to recommend fantastic books. It feels especially important to make these lists in the past few years, what with the book bans that are not-so-subtly targeting almost exclusively POC and queer voices—read between the lines. Freedom to read is freedom to resist.

As with last year’s list (see below), I’ve now expanded them to included both YA and Adult titles, organized by genre.

For my past lists, click below:

Let’s begin, shall we?

THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR AAPI HERITAGE MONTH (2024 EDITION)

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION

REALISTIC AND HISTORICAL FICTION:

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

Today’s song:

NEW BEABADOOBEE????? I’m seated—

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

August 2023 Wrap-Up 🎂

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Friday, bibliophiles!

I just finished my first week back to school, but after this, chances are I’ll be somewhat radio silent until I can get fully settled into my routine. The only reason that this post is seeing the light of day is that I start working on my wrap-up posts about a week in advance, so here we are.

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Summer’s officially over, but the weather sure doesn’t seem to think so. Hopefully I won’t have to endure much more of my (long) walk to class in this 90+ degree heat.

That aside, I’ve had a good August, for the most part. My initial “yay, I’m going back to college!” got partially replaced by “oh god, I’m going back to college” closer to move-in, but I’m feeling better now. (The fact that I’m in a much nicer dorm than I was last year certainly helps. It doesn’t constantly reek of weed in here! Huzzah!) I had the opportunity to soak up the last dregs of summer beforehand, at least. I finished up my summer job at the library, bought a catnip toy for my cat for his sweet 16, completed another trip around the sun, and blew part of my paycheck on books to celebrate said trip around the sun. Worth it.

My blogging’s been a tad slower since I’ve been trying to get everything together before I moved in, but I feel like I’ve still been able to be productive. I’ve enjoyed reviewing all of my books this month and putting together graphics and going off about music. And I got in one book tag that WordPress screwed up and I had to recreate from scratch, but it was fun in the end. Once my schedule figures itself out, I’ll get back on the writing train, but for now, I’m mapping out the best route to my class in That One Building on the other side of campus.

Other than that, I’ve just been drawing, watching Only Murders in the Building (for the love of god, can we just stop pairing Mabel with people who have zero chemistry with her 😭). Good Omens (pain, suffering, even), Heartstopper (Lucy Dacus and Wolf Alice paying in the same episode >>>>>>>), and Taskmaster (“you’ve got no chutzpah”), and reveling in the fact that my new dorm has air conditioning. It’s the (not so) small things.

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 17 books this month! Other than the one stinker in the batch (sorry, The Surviving Sky), it’s been a great reading month in terms of quality and in terms of quantity. Expect some kind of mini-review post for all of the books I bought for my birthday and the books I got as gifts, because they’ve all been fantastic so far.

1 – 1.75 stars:

The Surviving Sky

3 – 3.75 stars:

The World of Edena

4 – 4.75 stars:

A Half-Built Garden

5 stars:

Thi is How You Lose the Time War

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: This is How You Lose the Time War – 5 stars

POSTS I’M PROUD OF:

POSTS FROM OTHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

SONGS/ALBUMS THAT I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

UNDERRATED ALBUM ALERT
the catchiest
guess who blew through season 2 of Heartstopper in less than a week
too groovy to clean the bathroom to
good lord I love Lisa Germano
this song tickles my brain in the most pleasant way possible
man I need to listen to more P.J. Harvey

Today’s song:

deliciously 90’s earworm

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

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/8/23) – Machinehood

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

After I read Meru back in June, I immediately went through the rest of S.B. Divya’s full-length books and put them on my TBR. Even though sci-fi is my favorite genre, I don’t readily jump for sci-fi thrillers quite as often, but after loving Meru, I was willing to give this one a chance. And while it wasn’t without its flaws, Machinehood was an incredibly detailed and twisty novel!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Machinehood – S.B. Divya

2095. In Welga Ramirez’s world, humans and machines work in an uneasy symbiosis. Artificial intelligence has become so advanced that humans must take all manner of pills, not only for them to keep from getting sick, but to be strong enough to compete with the machine labor force. Welga has intentions to retire from being a bodyguard. But after a client is killed in front of her and a hybrid human-machine terrorist group called the Machinehood is to blame, she must track down her killer—and the members of the Machinehood that have threatened to attack every major pill funder until production comes to a standstill.

TW/CW: violence, murder, racism, substance abuse, abortion/forced pregnancy, miscarriage

You ever finish a book that’s so detailed in its worldbuilding that not only can you imagine all of the described conventions and their ramifications, but the massive google doc that was probably behind it all? That’s how Machinehood felt to me—aside from the one other S.B. Divya book that I’ve read so far, Machinehood was one of the most thoughtfully-crafted books I’ve read in a long time.

At its best moments, Machinehood felt like a good Christopher Nolan movie. There was no shortage of suspense, and while it was difficult to keep up with at times, it was always an enjoyable read. I don’t gravitate towards sci-fi thrillers as much, even though sci-fi is my favorite genre, but this novel reminded me of what the really well-written ones are capable of doing; the suspense kept me guessing, the tension hardly ever let up, and there were twists aplenty to satisfy any sci-fi reader’s appetite. And of course, nothing makes a thriller like a main character about to retire, and then has to do that One Last Mission™️. When it’s not a part of a huge franchise, it works for me.

Machinehood is S.B. Divya’s first novel, and even then, it’s easy to see the threads from where they eventually branched off to Meru. The most prominent of those was, by a long shot, the worldbuilding. Like Meru, the dystopian, AI-dominated world of Machinehood is painstakingly detailed, down to the most minute consequence of any given sociopolitical ramification. I wouldn’t be surprised if Divya had some kind of Pepe Silvia-style conspiracy cork board to keep track of all the possibilities of this world that they created. There truly was no stone left unturned, and for the most part, it was a positive experience—between the moments of suspense, it was fascinating to see these possibilities unfold. From the myriad of pills that keep humans competing with the AI labor force to the ways that genetic and physical modification advanced, there was nothing that Divya didn’t think of, and that created one of the most fleshed-out sci-fi worlds that I’ve read recently.

Unfortunately, the downside of all of that excellent worldbuilding was its delivery. Having read Meru first, it’s easy to see how Divya improved on this delivery from Machinehood to there. Meru deftly toed the line between explaining its complex worldbuilding and dumping it all in one sitting. Machinehood, on the other hand, could have used some work in that department. As much as I enjoyed how richly layered the worldbuilding was, Divya had a frequent tendency to ramble on about said worldbuilding; even with all of the suspenseful plot points falling into place, this novel took frequent breaks to explain why [x] was a result of [y] and [z], which took away from the tension built up during the parts where the actual plot occurred. It’s a pitfall that I can almost excuse, given that a) Divya’s worldbuilding is obviously top-tier, and b) this was their debut novel, but it definitely took away from some of my enjoyment of the book as a whole. This novel probably would’ve gotten the full 4 stars from me if not for all of this.

All in all, a twisty and suspenseful debut with extensive worldbuilding that sometimes suffered from just as extensive rambling. 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4!

Machinehood is a standalone, and S.B. Divya’s first novel. Divya is also the author of the Alloy Era series (Meru, Loka, and an untitled third book) and Runtime, and has contributed to many short story collections.

Today’s song:

been listening to this song a bunch again, we’re levitating over here

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

Posted in Uncategorized

Book Review Tuesday (6/20/23) – Meru

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve been eyeing this book for a while—I remember it being heavily advertised on Goodreads when it was first released, and normally, I don’t pay much attention to Goodreads ads or sponsored books, but all you had to say was “space opera” and I was hooked. I’m a woman of simple tastes. It was cheap on the Kindle library, so I bought it to read on vacation. To my excitement, it ended up being my favorite book that I read on vacation—so detailed and gripping!

Enjoy this week’s review!

Meru (The Alloy Era, #1) – S.B. Divya

Jayanthi, like all other humans in her day and age, are confined to Earth. Kept there by the Alloys, evolved human descendants with advanced capabilities, she has been raised by Alloy parents on her homeworld, but has always dreamed of seeing the wider galaxy. But when an opportunity arises for Jayanthi to explore the newly discovered planet Meru with the aid of an Alloy pilot, she jumps at the chance—what better way to show the galaxy that humans are more than their violent past?

With the help of Vaya, her Alloy pilot, Jayanthi touches down on Meru. Soon, they find themselves embroiled in a human-alloy conflict, seemingly engineered to separate the two of them. Will Jayanthi and Vaya beat the odds—and restore faith in the human race?

TW/CW: ableism, xenophobia (fictional), sexual content/pregnancy, descriptions of injury, sci-fi violence

I got carsick while reading this book, but I don’t hold it against it at all. That was on me and my hubris of thinking that I wouldn’t get nauseous on a long car trip just this once. Whoops.

Reading some of the lower-rated reviews of Meru is kind of cracking me up…listen. I get that zie/zir pronouns (and neopronouns in general) are somewhat obscure, but of all the absolutely wild, dense, and out-there concepts that this book throws at you, that’s what makes you jump ship? Not the exceedingly complicated…well, everything else?

That being said, Meru lived up to the hype I’ve seen it getting for the past few months! It hit a sweet spot for me that a lot of sci-fi and fantasy books rarely do—creating a complex and multilayered universe, but very delicately balancing when and where to deliver all of this information. Divya came very close to going over the edge, but she navigated the worldbuilding delivery with aplomb.

So, about said worldbuilding. I’d say that Meru isn’t for the faint of heart, even for longtime sci-fi fans—as I mentioned in the beginning of the review, there’s a lot to take in, from the post-human history of the Alloys to all of the machinations surrounding new genetic modification laws in the future. But even though we do get some of this information in larger chunks, Divya excels at navigating which information is actually relevant to the scene it’s informing, and not sledgehammering you with extra information that only becomes relevant elsewhere in the book. It also helps that every inch of said worldbuilding is truly fascinating—it’s clear to see how much care was put into the creation of this universe.

If you’re talking about disability in sci-fi, you’re generally bound to open a particularly dicey can of worms. There’s quite a lot of eugenics narratives that a lot of readers have let slide for years, and the narrative of curing all disabilities is seen as positive, when a lot of the disabilities being described never needed curing in the first place. For the sake of this review, I’ll keep it short, but the bottom line is that it’s gross. But Meru takes a refreshing perspective on disability in sci-fi—not only was Jayanthi, the protagonist, specifically engineered to have sickle-cell anemia (now THAT’S a subversion I like), her disability is depicted in a far more advantageous and positive light. Anyone who’s ever touched a high school biology textbook probably remembers this example: despite its drawbacks, those with sickle-cell also have increased resistance to many tropical diseases. That’s exactly the case for Jayanthi, whose sickle-cell anemia makes her more suited to the environment of the planet Meru than those without it. Positive disability rep is good enough, but having it specifically depicted as something that gives the character the edge is something special. That, along with the wonderful discussions around disability and bodily autonomy (both allegorical and literal), made Meru a wonderful experience for me as a disabled reader.

In addition, Divya has created such a vibrant cast of characters in Meru! Jayanthi was such an endearing and powerful protagonist, and her relationship with the equally endearing Vaha was full of tenderness, despite its ups and downs. Almost all of the cast added to the book’s masterful suspense and tension, making you feel deeply for all of the relevant characters before things got (very) hairy. Plus, the integration of Sanskrit, several Indian-coded (and other POC characters), and loads of casual queerness was a breath of fresh air from all of the white, male, cishet sci-fi that still dominates the market. We need more books like Meru.

All in all, an intricately-crafted sci-fi novel that dazzled with its detailed worldbuilding, diversity, and refreshing discussions around disability. 4 stars!

Meru is the first book in S.B. Divya’s Alloy Era series, continued by the forthcoming Loka, slated for release in July of 2024. Divya is also the author of Machinehood and Run Time, as well as a contributor to several short story collections.

Today’s song:

NEW SMILE IT’S SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD (does this mean that we’re closer to hearing “Read the Room” too?????

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