Tag: The Tainted Cup

Posted in Books

♿️ The Bookish Mutant’s Books for Disability Pride Month (2026 Edition) ♿️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Here in the U.S., July is Disability Pride Month! It seems like every year, representation—and all-around recognition—for disabled people only progresses by millimeters. Time and time again, it’s left on the back burner by so-called intersectional activists, continually ignored from unaccommodating public education to inaccessible infrastructure in the biggest cities and the smallest towns. It’s gotten bleaker still with the damaging rhetoric spread by R.F.K. Junior and by the Trump administration at large. And we’ve somehow let the r-word insidiously creep back into common use. I feel like it’s relevant that when I was in high school, I frequently heard people call their phones “autistic” when they were broken or not working—2019 wasn’t as long as ago as people would like to think. Dehumanizing disabled people has always been baked deep into the roots of our language and slang—and yet it’s so easy to just switch words around.

In short, the world hasn’t exactly gotten kinder to any of us in the disabled community. But recently my best friend sent me this hilarious (and wonderful) reel, and it reminded me of the endurance of our community:

Yes, this is totally goofy. But it’s true. Despite all of the rampant campaigns to dehumanize and outright eradicate disabled people in all aspects of life, we are still here. The disabled community is as diverse as our struggles, but we have weathered all of them. There are countless issues that we have to face, in the highest forms of government and even in the simple ways we interact with friends and strangers. But if there’s one thing that the disabled community has done, it is endure—and endurance is nothing without community. The strength of our community is what has allowed us to create a more accessible world, little by little, and it is the key for making the world a kinder and more accessible place to be.

Also, four years out from my installation of this post where I talked about the absolute dearth of SPD representation out there (see 2022 in the “previous lists” section below), I’ve finally read one more book with a main character with SPD. Halfway through 2026, and it was one of the best books I’ve read this year by a long shot. Thank you, Jamie Sumner. Representation matters. 🩵

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 (2026 EDITION) ♿️

FANTASY:

SCIENCE FICTION:

REALISTIC/HISTORICAL FICTION:

*the POV character in Pod is a dolphin, but I feel that the representation still counts.

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of the books on this list? What are your favorite books with disability rep? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

THIS JUST IN, ROLE MODEL HERMIT IS A BANGER

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

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

November/December 2025 Wrap-Up 🧣

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles, and happy New Year’s Eve!

I know this is probably the millionth wrap-up post you’ve seen today, but this is mostly in service of my love of bullet points and categorizing and such.

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

New Year’s Eve. It’s the time of the year when your social media is flooded with everybody making neat little wrap-up posts about everything that they achieved and how much fun they had in the past year. Now, I fully acknowledge the irony that I’m doing almost the exact same thing in written form. But with Instagram, I often find myself reluctant to post big end-of-the-year lists or posts like I do on here. With my art account, everybody seems to have stuff all ready for the holidays, but I’m just drawing whatever I see fit, rarely ready with anything festive for Christmas or the new year. All this is to say, it’s good to remember that this is, after all, social media. Even as the year ends, it’s okay to not have everything wrapped up in a neat bow. Social media’s all a sham anyway, so post at your own pace.

Compared to this time last year, when I felt like I’d gotten a proverbial pummeling from 2024, I’m at least grateful that I’m in a better place, even if 2025 was…god, it was certainly a year. And honestly, 2025 pummeled me too. But it was marginally better for me than last year, which is saying something. I’ve learned to take better care of myself. Even though keeping my head above water with everything going on in this country has been—and continues to be—an uphill battle, I feel like I’ve come so much further from the person I was last year. I moved into an apartment, I got another two semesters of good grades, I learned how to knit, and above all, I feel more independent. (I’m saying that in my head like they do in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In-dee-pendent!) Yet I’ve also been beaten down by stress, by school, by tragedy—preeminently a school shooting at my old high school back in September. Above all, it’s been a year of upheaval for me—not just the negative upheaval of the government (because they think that our Constitution is a suggestion, apparently), but a year of so much change. But I’m here. And hell, I’m so proud of myself. Half of the things I listed here (and many that I didn’t) are things that I never imagined myself doing even five years ago. But I’m here. I can ride the bus and make easy conversation sometimes, I know the way there and back to my record store, and I am surrounded by people who I love and who love me back. I am grateful.

Plus, the more important holiday is Ringo’s 4th birthday. Send your birthday wishes, or the birthday boy will bite your feet…

NOVEMBER READING WRAP-UP

In total, I read 174 books in 2025!

I read 14 books in November! Though my reading count was buttressed by several re-reads and school books (and one unfortunate DNF), I encountered so many lovely books.

1 – 1.75 stars:

Cosmic Love at the Multiverse Hair Salon

3 – 3.75 stars:

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls

4 – 4.75 stars:

Mad Sisters of Esi

5 stars:

A Closed and Common Orbit

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Serviceberry – 5 stars

The Serviceberry

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

DECEMBER READING WRAP-UP

I read 13 books in December! Finals put me way behind my usual reading amount for the month, so I thought this would end up being my worst reading month of the year…and then my power went out for four days. I ended up reading two books in a single day, something I haven’t done since I was, what…9? 10? Either way, the power outage, as unfortunate as it was, gave my reading a bit of a boost.

2 – 2.75 stars:

Planetfall

3 – 3.75 stars:

Loving Day

4 – 4.75 stars:

Embassytown

5 stars:

Begin Where You Are: The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Begin Where You Are: The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology – 5 stars

Begin Where You Are: The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

Today’s song:

Above all, thank you for everybody here. WordPress isn’t exactly the most popular site anymore, and I’ve considered moving platforms myself. But for the people who are still here, thank you for the likes, the comments, and the kind words. This year would’ve been ten times harder to endure without my family and friends here to support me—it is the privilege of a lifetime to have you all in my life. And to anyone who’s casually read any of my posts, thanks for stopping by. Keep reading dangerously, keep loving each other. Spread love, not fear, and go to your local record store or library or indie bookshop every once in a while. Smile at people. And celebrate this new year however you see fit.

Posted in Books

The Bookish Mutant’s 5-Star Reads of 2025

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

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

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

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

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

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

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

HONORABLE MENTIONS (4.5 STARS)

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

Today’s song:

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