Happy Monday, bibliophiles! I’m not fully back on schedule yet (still in the process of cleaning up my dorm), but I figured I would put out this post for the occasion.
Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Among the many histories that America has been attempting to erase is that of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, even though they are a critical part of our country’s history. We’re so quick to dismiss the discrimination of Chinese immigrant laborers in the late 1800’s, the Japanese internment camps, and the bigotry faced by South Asian Americans, whether or not they were Muslim, as part of the rampant Islamophobia post-9/11. This history may not be in the spotlight as far as discrimination targets, but just because it’s getting less press doesn’t mean it’s there. Just look at Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who received requests from her publisher to remove specific mentions of racism from the author’s note of her picture book, Love in the Library, which takes place in the Japanese internment camps. (Good on her for not taking the licensing deal. Another reason to love Tokuda-Hall, who appears on this list!) Erasing the horrors of discrimination and racism from our shelves only serves to raise an uneducated, uncritical generation—the opposite of what we need right now.
Looking back on my previous lists, I noticed something. I’ve neglected the PI in AAPI, and that’s a mistake on my part. Books by Pacific Islanders rarely seem to get the spotlight, even during AAPI Heritage month, but that still doesn’t excuse me overlooking that part of the acronym—and the world. This is the first year that I actually do have a few great recommendations from Pacific Islander authors, but please let me know if you have any more recommendations! I’m on the lookout.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of the books on this list, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by AAPI authors?
Today’s song:
That’s it for this list! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Man, time to do wrap-ups? Barely, but I have some time on my hands and there’s nothing I love more than organizing my reading stats into bulleted lists, so why not? (The only reason I’ve been able to make this many posts this week is because most of them were started several weeks prior, but I digress.)
The past few months have been strangely calm, if you set aside…well, everything that’s been going on lately. I don’t think I have to explain. I’ve been working really hard to try and be as levelheaded as I can in the face of all of these crises. Levelheaded and hopeful. Neither of these mean ignorant bliss to me—I’m continuing to speak up when I can, read what they don’t want us to read, and put my money into places that respect my existence. (wink wink, nudge nudge…hope everybody who was financially able participated in the economic boycott today! 😉) Miraculously, this semester has given me the space to work at practicing that—I’ve had a lot more free time (almost an alien concept after last semester), so I’ve been working at putting my energy into what counts, mainly being creative and feeding my soul. I finished the first draft of book 3 in the sci-fi trilogy I’ve been working at since I was 16 (!!!!!!!!!!). I’ve tried to take up knitting. (Unsuccessful so far, but I’m trying to keep at it), and I’ve tried to draw and read when I’ve got the time. That, and getting on the mining grind in Minecraft and being paralyzed as Severance consumes every waking thought I have. GOD, what a show. All this is to say that this isn’t a straight journey—I’m by no means a master at being levelheaded and balancing work with creativity, but I’m trying to learn from my mistakes. All you can do is try.
JANUARY READING WRAP-UP
I read 15 books in January! In the gap between winter break and the start of the spring semester, I read some fantastic books, from whimsical graphic novels to classic sci-fi hijinks.
I read 13 books in February! This month was slightly slower (and shorter, obviously) than January, but I was able to read several books that I’ve been excited to get around to for months! As I usually do, I focused more on Black authors for Black History Month, and discovered some great books and authors as a result.
Michelle Zauner jokingly referenced this song when posting about her recent appearance on the Tonight Show to promote “Orlando in Love,” the first (excellent) single from her forthcoming album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). But before she got Jimmy Fallon Big, someone else tried to—Deven Craige, the bass player for her former band, Little Big League; Zauner wrote the song about how he split the band after his other band was, in his words, about to go “Jimmy Fallon big,” and decided to put his energy into that instead of Little Big League. The move left Zauner crushed: she told NPR in 2017 that “it felt like losing a brother, and there was this shame, feeling like I was never going to get there myself.” There’s truly something more than bittersweet about it—the passion she poured into every bit of the vocals shows a deep devotion to her former bandmate, and yet the resentment sloughs off of the chorus in relenting waves: “Why walk/When you can show up on time?” I mean, they’re on good terms now, but BURN.
I promise this segue will become relevant, but I recently listened to the first episode of Björk’s excellent Sonic Symbolism podcast, where she frequently refers to the history of music as a great tree with thousands of interspersed branches that connect and diverge from one another. Listening to “Jimmy Fallon Big!” is one of those 21st century moments where I can so clearly see the tree rings, the ancestry and lineage where an evolutionary branch broke off. Michelle Zauner has been crafting intricate, emotional dream pop for quite some time now (see: “Sit,” which I talked about back in July), but this track has the Cocteau Twins written all over it. It’s not just the warm, dreamlike drone of the instrumentals, but the way that said instrumentals obscure the meaning of the chorus almost completely. It makes the opening line of “We aren’t bound by law/We aren’t bound by anything at all” make all the more sense artistically. On the first few listens, I almost wondered if it was born from the same songwriting method that Fraser used to craft her nonsense miracles. Where they break off—besides having a clearer anchor tying the music down to earth, is how Zauner grounds the emotion; not many people can get to the level of Fraser, and I don’t think Zauner is one of them, but she’s got the clear talent of crafting the most elaborate musical smoke screen to cloak her misgivings.
Memes aside, shoutout to Paul McCartney and his joyous whimsy. I’m fully aware that I use the phrase “joyous whimsy” with the same frequency of congresspeople emailing you saying that you have a MIDNIGHT DONATION DEADLINE and it’s URGENT, and I don’t want to repeat myself, but I think the world needs more of it. And who’s got it? PAUL!
BUTTAH PIE!
BUTTAH PIE?
THE BUTTAH WOULDN’T MELT, SO I PUT IT IN THE PIE, ALRIGHT?
As far as Beatles lore goes, I feel like Ringo gets more of the credit for whimsy, and for good reason—the dude saw the other three tearing at each other’s necks and decided to write a song about an octopus. But as obnoxious as Paul got during a lot of those sessions, over the course of his career, he had a gentleness to his artistic soul too, and it showed in his songwriting.
“Admiral Halsey notified me/He had to have a berth or he couldn’t get to sea/I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie?” C’mon. That sounds like something straight out of some 1940’s British children’s book with yellowing pages and inked illustrations. But uptight is the opposite of how McCartney and McCartney—Linda deserves the brunt of the credit for the sheer jubilation she brings to the “Hands across the water, Heads across the sky” refrain—delivers this song. Plus, the Admiral Halsey in question was loosely based off of an American admiral from World War II, and McCartney painted him as a stiff authoritarian who is “symbolic of authority and therefore not to be taken too seriously,” so it’s making him uptight just so you can stick your tongue in his face. It’s just so infectiously jolly. There’s an orange-hued, sunlit laughter to the whole bit. It’s got the warmth of reuniting with an old friend, or being back in some rose-tinted decade and sweeping your lover off their feet on the dance floor, particularly the “Admiral Halsey” section. It’s hard to think of a song so wonderfully carefree, in every sense of the word. Hands across the water, heads across the sky indeed.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Tidesong – Wendy Xu – hands across the water, as well as a hearty, healthy dose of childlike wonder.
Hoooooowhee. Going straight from Paul & Linda McCartney frolicking through a field to Faith No More…I don’t think whiplash even begins to describe that. Well. Welcome to my shuffle.
Faith No More seem to have been on the fringes, even where hard rock is concerned, and it’s easy to see why even the freakier people weren’t as willing to embrace them—Mike Patton’s voice and their mishmash of rock and early hip-hop influences stand out immediately. As does the goofy video. The lyrics and subject matter are standard fare for any kind of alternative music of the time (“Indecision clouds my vision/No one listens/Because I’m somewhere in between/My love and my agony”), but everything else is just off the walls. Directed by Ralph Ziman, the video is the last thing you’d expect to match the song’s aesthetic—neon colors aplenty, Mike Patton in a bowler hat and some kind of clown suit for half the video, and enough fish that I imagine the storyboarding process went something like this. Patton’s distinct vocals rangefrom a nasally standard to a hint of the heights he’d later reach on “Midlife Crisis,” and they stand behind a bassline that holds all of the instrument’s resentment for being in the background for decades. Even in a subgenre that’s already weird, this is real weird, unpredictable, unabashed weirdness. Somebody needs to bring back green-screen goldfish back into hard rock.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Shadow Speaker – Nnedi Okorafor – the lyrics are broad enough that I couldn’t narrow it down to a specific theme, so I added the mood—and came to this book, a bold, chaotic punch to the face.
On April 18th, I’ll have to show where my allegiance lies…Thee Black Boltz and Send A Prayer My Way come out on the same day. Well, okay. I’ve already decided. My allegiance is to Tunde Adebimpe, to the republic! But I’ll stagger my listening. The former has a priority over Julien Baker & TORRES, but I’ll give both a listen.
They recalled an experience of taking Sylvia on the road and feeling as though they were truly meant to be. There’s something special about holding a puppy when you’ve just brought them home, and not just in the warm-and-fuzzy way. There’s an immediacy you feel, the knowledge that you’ve got a little heartbeat next to yours, a furry, helpless body that you’re suddenly in charge of. It really is a new member of the family, and one that you have the responsibility to protect. Puppies are exhausting—the time my boy Ringo slipped out of his collar, ran down the street, and evaded me for a solid five minutes before showing up on my porch with a shit-eating grin comes to mind. But “Sylvia” taps into that feeling of knowing you have more than a companion: “Haunted by all the goodnights that I’ve missed/Every time your cheek goes unkissed/A day for me is a week for you/And my life’s already halfway through/Tomorrow, today’s worries might turn out to be regrets…” It taps in to being conscious of your pet as something you can keep around for amusement, but a deeply ingrained part of your life, while retaining the simultaneous fear and joy of giving them all the love you can in their short lives.
The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly – “Sylvia” had me thinking of fictional dogs—as far as books go, my first thought was of Boswell, David’s loyal dachshund that accompanies him on his adventures.
Really and truly Severance-pilled rn…CAN WE TALK ABOUT SEVERANCE? The deepening of existing friendships and yet also the storylines of corporations driving a wedge in their workers to discourage them from solidarity? Unity…unions, perhaps? HELLY WOULDN’T BE CRUEL? SHAMBOLIC RUE? THE WORST MELON PARTY YET? A CHILD? PAPERCLIPS? THE TENDENCY OF CORPORATIONS TO SHOW PROGRESS AS MARGINALIZED PEOPLE SIMPLY SWALLOWED INTO THEIR SYSTEM? GOATS? THE—
Oh, wait, there’s a song here? ALL THE BETTER TO PUT INTO SEVERANCE—
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
A Song of Salvation – Alechia Dow – “Let me put you in the picture/Let me show you what I mean/The messiah is my sister/Ain’t no king, man, she’s my queen…”
Since this posts 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!
First book review of 2025, and so far, the best book I’ve read this month! Granted, we’re only a week into the month, but it still counts for something, right? loved Mooncakes, which Wendy Xu illustrated, but I had no idea until recently that she had published a solo graphic novel—and a sci-fi one! What resulted was an incredibly emotional read to start the year off with: robot romance and explorations of how relationships make the universe work.
Clementine Chang is headed for Mars. In the distant future, it’s a place of peace and industry, and it’s precisely the place that Clem wants to start her new life. A clever inventor, Clem has a knack for working with AI. She hopes to continue her education under Dr. Marcella Lin, a legendary AI engineer who inspired her work. But Dr. Lin is not what she seems—and she’s hiding a secret from the scientific world: a lifelike, humanoid AI that she refers to as her son. His name is Kye, and he yearns for a life outside of the one that Dr. Lin programmed for him. As Clem gets acquainted with him, she discovers that Dr. Lin’s intentions in making him were not as noble as she once thought—and that she may be falling in love with her former hero’s creation.
art by Wendy Xu(p. 150)
TW/CW: emotional abuse (past/present)
You know me. I’m a sucker for a good Frankenstein story. Oh, so you brought a conscious being into existence, expected it to be completely obedient to you and your whims, and didn’t expect anything to go wrong? Surely this will not have a domino effect of consequences…
That being said, The Infinity Particle isn’t just a Frankenstein story. We’ve been inundated with stories about AI and the ethics of giving robots human-like consciousnesses since day one of sci-fi’s conception (back to Frankenstein), but The Infinity Particle does what many of those stories try and fail to do: make the story human. It weaves both engineering and the complicated legacies of familial trauma into a story that is ultimately about relationships: that of parents and children, but also of young lovers. It’s a story of breaking cycles and of forging something newer and better out of their ashes. All of it is worth your time.
Wendy Xu’s vision of Mars in the distant future is one that I want to live in, which isn’t something I often say about sci-fi novels. The world of The Infinity Particle is a cozy, comforting one. In spite of the more emotional moments of the story, Xu’s setting is one you can get lost in. Rendered in a pastel color palette that’s easy on the eyes, it’s a world full of greenhouses, cafés, and cobblestone paths. Here, Mars is the perfect place for a museum date—except here, the museum features all manner of robots from bygone centuries. Although there are ethical conflicts with some of the AIs (this forms the central conflict of the novel), none of Xu’s AIs are malicious creatures—they’re all in the form of cuddly cats or owls, and in the case of Clem’s custom companion, a cat-moth hybrid. (SENA!! WE LOVE SENA!!) It’s a world I was eager to escape to, and one that I could dwell in forever.
Clem’s motivations were part of what made this story stand out. As she begins to dig deeper into Dr. Lin’s true motives for creating Kye, the way her former hero treats her AI creation begins to mirror how she was treated as a child; the emotional abuse from her mother is very similar to the emotional abuse by Dr. Lin to Kye. The Infinity Particle is a fantastic example of how very far-fetched, sci-fi concept can be used as incredibly emotional metaphors. We have Clem, who is a clone of her mother and was raised to live out the dreams that her mother could not, and Kye, an AI made to replace Dr. Lin’s son and live out her fantasies. Admittedly, the clone part was very on the nose, but the way that Xu delivered with care, giving The Infinity Particle an undeniable heart. In part, The Infinity Particle is a story of how trauma always echoes into the present, and how it can create ripples that both tear apart and rebuild relationships with others.
That shared trauma is part of what made the romance between Clem and Kye one that I was rooting for from page 1. Not only were they the most adorable couple (museum dates! Philosophical conversations in greenhouses!), their shared connection allowed them to help each other in ways that made the relationship blossom. Clem had experience with having to escape from the same kind of emotional abuse that Kye was undergoing, and as they realized that connection, their relationship deepened. However, it wasn’t just that aspect that made their relationship so lovable. Their chemistry was some of the best I’ve read in a YA novel in a long time—they were both such curious and sensitive people, and that combined curiosity not only drove the plot, but the course of their romance. Every shared moment was sweet, but never saccharine—TheInfinity Particle was just a warm hug (and a kiss on the cheek) in so many ways, this being one of the most prominent.
However, even though Dr. Lin was objectively in the wrong, I appreciated the way that The Infinity Particle humanized her; never once were her actions condoned, but in the end, she wasn’t a purely evil person—she was a person who slipped so far into grief that she failed to realize how she was treating those around her. She did horrible things that could not be undone, but she was also capable of healing. It’s an incredibly difficult line to toe between acknowledging a character’s humanity and acknowledging that their actions were inexcusable; most media gets it wrong (I am looking directly at Encanto), but in the short time that was given to this plot, Xu did a graceful job of hitting that balance. Dr. Lin did some unspeakably terrible things, but deep down, she is still human. My one (minor) complaint is that this was squeezed into the end and didn’t have as much time to develop as some other parts of the novel, but it was executed thoughtfully nonetheless.
And the epilogue…hnnnnnnnngh do I love a good “the fabric of the universe is made up of love” story AUUUUUUUUGH
All in all, a heartwarming, sensitive, and thoughtful story of love, robots, and what it means to have—and to want—a mind and a life of your own. 4.5 stars!
The Infinity Particle is a standalone, but Wendy Xu is also the co-creator of Mooncakes and the creator of Tidesong.
Today’s song:
I feel like I remember this song about every 5 years and realize how much I’ve missed it…
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 