Tag: Wearing the Lion

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

July/August 2026 Wrap-Up 🦁

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Monday, bibliophiles!

Summer is waning, and thankfully, I can close this chapter knowing that I’ve filled it with an awful lot of books and iced coffee. I’m itching for fall now, I am SICK of this 80-90 degree weather!

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

This is the first summer that I haven’t had to wake up, toss everything aside, and go back to school. It’s weird. I still have friends in college, and it’s so strange to see everybody going back to class knowing that I don’t have to. In a way, I miss it: classes with friends, hanging out in the library, walking across campus in the fall when the leaves turn yellow. But man, I’m glad that my days of honors theses and extensive study sessions are behind me. (For now. We’ll see about grad school.)

Either way, I’ve managed to stick to my goals I set at the beginning of summer: writing a short story per month, taking walks three times a week. (I did cave and buy some yarn, but they were only $4, can you really blame me? And they were fun ombre colors!) Said creativity has definitely been an anchor as I’ve mired myself in the job hunt trenches, which have been…y’know, as frustrating as most everybody says that they are, but, uh. We stay silly, I dunno. I’ll find a way. I gave up on the political temperature checks long ago; safe to say, it’s hard to ignore how increasingly messed-up things are on more fronts than you’d ever think possible. But when I’m having to be in the Real World and looking for Real Jobs, all this creativity that I promised to myself at the beginning of the summer has become so much more meaningful. It’s always given me purpose, but giving myself time to enjoy it has been vital in enjoying my life, whether it’s making or consuming things.

And boy, there have been some fantastic things to enjoy lately—The Odyssey (I have insufferable English major thoughts, but a solid adaptation overall), Spiderman: Brand New Way (healed me, 10/10), a much needed rewatch of Ghosts (DIP IT AGAIN 👹), and Widow’s Bay (watching episode 10 tonight, NO SPOILERS, Y’ALL). So at least, wherever September and October takes me, I’ve made a commitment to keeping that creativity and love alive. I’ve taken another trip around the sun now, and I vow to make the weirdest of it! Nothing will break me down, not fully! Not as long as I’ve got the essential British double-hitter of new seasons of The Great British Bake-Off and Taskmaster to look forward to. Everybody say thank you to the Brits 🙌

JULY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 14 books in July! Oddly, I read a lot of novellas in July, for whatever reason. There were more stinkers than usual this month, but they were outweighed by several showstopping highlights. I also read some new-to-me and familiar authors for Disability Pride Month!

2 – 2.75 stars:

The Last Contract of Isako

3 – 3.75 stars:

A Drop of Corruption

4 – 4.75 stars:

1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left

5 stars:

Machine

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH (not counting re-reads): Machine – 5 stars

Machine

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

AUGUST READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books in August! Unfortunately, I had another DNF (Braking Day…finally, somebody was brave enough to ask the question “what if Aurora Rising sucked?”), but I had lots of excellent reads from all across the genre spectrum.

1 – 1.75 stars:

Braking Day

2 – 2.75 stars:

Unconquerable Sun

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Republic of Memory

4 – 4.75 stars:

Brownstone

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Mixed Marriage Project – 4.5 stars

The Mixed Marriage Project

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

Today’s song:

OBSESSED with the guitar tone on this song!!

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

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/9/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

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

This week: A Beatles cover that David Bowie faltered on, but somebody else succeeded in. Plus, weird movies with weird scores, and mediocre movies with great needle drops.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/4/26

“All We Ever Look For” – Kate Bush

Kate Bush has her share of iconic album covers, but I swear Never for Ever has to take the cake for my favorite one. Can we acknowledge just how fantastic Nick Price’s album art is? Aside from capturing Kate Bush’s spirit and musical style, it’s just so kooky—how could you not love the parade of spooky storybook creatures coming out of Kate Bush’s skirt? It’s uniquely suited to most of the tracks I’ve heard from the album, but “All We Ever Look For” is an especially good fit. All of the flutes, koto, and quaint synth bubblings feel like they should be the backdrop for an elaborate story with stylized, woodcut characters rotating on a wheel, like a Rousseau painting that never came to be. The wheel is key here, not just because “All We Ever Look For” is neatly cyclical musically: the lyrics are as well: Bush explained in 1980 that “It’s about family relationships generally. Our parents got beaten physically. We get beaten psychologically. The last line – ‘All we ever look for – but we never did score.’” Aided by the almost medieval stylings of the instrumentals, the track plods along like a dirge, but what it’s mourning is the continuing cycles of generational trauma: “The whims that we’re weeping for/Our parents would be beaten for/Leave the breast/And then the rest/And then regret you ever left.” In a way, it remains a dirge—a kind of funeral for all of the generations who fell victim to these cycles.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Wearing the Lion – John Wiswell – “All we ever look for, a god/All we ever look for, ooh, a drug/All we ever look for, a great big hug/All we ever look for, just a little bit of you…”

“Everytime I’m With You” (feat. Jason Lytle) – Sparklehorse & Danger Mouse

Dark Night of the Soul was Sparklehorse’s final project before his too-soon passing, and it was an ambitious one: a collaboration with producer Danger Mouse, with a guest list consisting of the usual suspects (Nina Persson, Jason Lytle, Vic Chestnutt) and the more unexpected (Gruff Rhys, David Lynch). I haven’t listened to the whole album, but Mark Linkous and Danger Mouse’s powers combined make something so cohesive, that you’d think only a singular mind was behind it. “Everytime I’m With You” creeps along with a proto-C418 instrumental (tell me that this doesn’t sound a little like “Chirp”), where Mark Linkous and Jason Lytle’s vocals meld in a slurring warble, musing about how “everytime that I’m with you/I am drunk, and so are you.” It’s a woozy track that almost feels drunk itself, like the subjects have infected the very structure of the song itself with their own intoxication. It bridges the gap between something brighter than Sparklehorse’s usual palette, and something gentler than Danger Mouse’s usual fare.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words – Eddie Robson – “Yeah, everytime you come by/We get so trashed and stay up all night/Well, it’s so wrong, but it’s so right/Yeah, it’s alright…”

“Silver Lining” – Rilo Kiley

I’ve already aired out my many problems with Supergirl, but if it has one redeeming factor, it’s that it had a fantastic soundtrack. Then again, most of Rilo Kiley’s discography is made of songs that feel reverse-engineered for coming-of-age movies—and I’ve never gotten tired of it. It really doesn’t feel like a one trick pony situation, because they’ve clearly got the capability for breathless, adventurous indie pop (“Portions for Foxes”) and some truly devastating yet affirming wallops to the face (“A Better Son/Daughter”). It’s no wonder that “Silver Lining” was the pick for Supergirl; although the movie never followed through on this arc, it’s a stomping, indie-pop ode to dusting yourself off and regaining your self worth. Like Jenny Lewis leaving her fictional groom at the altar in the music video, this track celebrates, in all of its complicated, mushy feelings of guilt and freedom, of refusing to be treated as ornamental: “I never felt so wicked/As when I willed our love to die/And I was your silver lining/As the story goes/I was your silver lining/But now, I’m gold.”

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Something More – Jackie Khalilieh – “And I was your silver lining/As the story goes/I was your silver lining/But now, I’m gold.”

“Korben Dallas” (from The Fifth Element) – Éric Serra

The Fifth Element was back in theaters recently, so I had to do rewatch #3 on the big screen. Every time I watch it, I forget the sheer amount of bizarre things that had to align for this movie to have happened. It’d be easy to see this and lament the sameness that’s overcome pop culture, but I maintain that weirdness will always find a way to slip through the cracks. This, however, is on a level of originality—and absurdity—that just can’t be replicated. The supreme being of the universe teaches Bruce Willis about consent, and he still doesn’t quite get it. Gary Oldman with a horrendously funny haircut and a soul patch. Tricky gets two minutes of screen time and then gets blown up. Incompetent space priests. Top-tier creature design for 10 minutes. A climax synced up with a blue alien singing opera. It’s so unafraid of being weird, and for that, The Fifth Element will forever be aspirational for me as a creator. I just get jumpstarted with inspiration with every rewatch, once I get over the bafflement that Leeloo’s godawful Band-aid outfit got past that many layers of studio scrutiny. (War crime, I tell you.)

Most of the soundtrack for The Fifth Element gets overshadowed by said opera piece, and rightfully so, to an extent. But the pockets of brilliance like this in the score deserve so much more love. The “anything goes” attitude of The Fifth Element translated to Eric Serra’s score; you go into this film weaned on a few pieces that are very much indebted to John Williams’s Star Wars scores, only to be knocked senseless by this slick, grungy trip-hop track with some of the funkiest basslines ever committed to a sci-fi film. It has everything. Percussion that sounds like one of 23rd-century New York’s elevators malfunctioning, weird little electronic warbles, and a loop of a cat’s meow to coincide with the first glimpses of Korben Dallas’s cat. And did I mention the bass? Oh my god. It sets the scene with the immediacy of somebody kicking your door down in combat boots. All that, and it instantly gives you a sense of Dallas as a character (all sorts of disparate elements held together by…Bruce Willis, of course) and the aesthetic language—both visual and oral—of Luc Besson’s world. All that for a song that’s not even two minutes long. SUPER GREEN!

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle, #1) – Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff – look, I know I used this last week, but Amie Kaufman has cited The Fifth Element as one of her favorite movies of all time, and has said that it was a major inspiration for this series. See? All the cool people like The Fifth Element.

“Across the Universe” (The Beatles cover) – Fiona Apple

I’ll never stop being a die-hard Bowie fan, but I’m mature enough to acknowledge when he misses. David Bowie covering one of The Beatles’s most moving and iconic songs—what could possibly go wrong? A lot of things, unfortunately. The vibes are just off. His cover of “Across the Universe” appeared on Young Americans, and even though John Lennon contributed guitars to this cover, I think it’s just an awkward pairing, with Bowie stretching his voice out too much and the worst of the plastic soul of Young Americans grating against the transcendental beauty of the original. Oof.

Fiona Apple, on the other hand, knocked it out of the park. Nothing can top The Beatles’s original version, but I think she captured what a lot of covers have failed to do. I’ve always taken the song to be about transience, but the persistence of love regardless; all of the overpowering sensations are threatening to overtake Lennon (“Pools of sorrow/Waves of joy/Are drifting through my open mind/Possessing and caressing me”), and yet he remains firm that “nothing’s gonna change my world”—he can still anchor himself to what matters, which seems to be that sense of “limitless, undying love.” (Of course, he wrote it after an argument with his ex-wife, which doesn’t paint the sunniest outlook on the song, but I think the meaning breaks through like sunlight regardless. It’s just an arresting song.) But I think what Apple understood about this song is how weightless it fundamentally is. Against Lennon’s poetry, where all manner of objects drift free of gravity or any earthly constraint, Apple’s voice—and the gentle yet cinematic instrumentation—make it feel as free-floating as the original. Like Lennon, her voice is quietly reverent of witnessing these wonders every single day, her pronunciations making the word “sorrow” into something that I mistook for “sound”—that’s how soft she makes things. Like the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed music video, which finds Apple oblivious to a diner getting robbed and ransacked, it has that core of tearfully transcendent emotion while still feeling wholly untethered from this earthly plane.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Mad Sisters of Esi – Tashan Mehta – “Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes/They call me on and on across the universe…”

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 (8/4/26) – Wearing the Lion

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I was a huge fan of John Wiswell’s debut novel, Someone You Can Build a Nest In; it got a 4.5 star rating from me, and it’s one of the few books that I’ve been able to swallow my squeamishness for body horror for just because it was so lovely and heartfelt. Naturally, I wanted to read more of Wiswell’s books. I’m not usually one for Greek myth retellings (they’re saturating the market, we’ve had enough!!!), but I trusted Wiswell enough to pull it off. Unfortunately, Wearing the Lion had its moments, but turned out to be a Greek myth retelling that was sanitized in all the wrong places.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Wearing the Lion – John Wiswell

Hera has another son, and she despises him.

Born out of wedlock, her distant son Heracles proves to be stronger—and more devoted—than the average human. He thwarts every attempt by Hera to kill him, and grows up to have godlike strength. All he wants is for Hera to answer his prayers, but Hera wants nothing to do with him. But as Hera’s mounting, seemingly impossible challenges stack against him, endangering his family and relationships, Heracles wants answers. And he’ll do anything to find out why Hera doesn’t love him, despite all of his devotion to the mother he never met.

TW/CW: grief, child death, loss of loved ones, violence, birth/pregnancy, descriptions of injury, animal cruelty, war

To give you an idea of my experience reading Wearing the Lion, let’s consider the best scene in the book. It reminded me of why I loved John Wiswell’s debut, Someone You Can Build a Nest In. About a third of the way through the novel, Heracles wrestles the infamous Nemean lion. In the throes of battle, the lion’s claws pierce Heracles’s skin, and as they’re locked together, the pinprick of the claws remind Heracles of the embrace of his dead son, who was cursed by the gods to have lion-like features. It’s a harrowing scene. It’s written with such startling humanity, but it also works on its own as a kind of thesis for Wiswell’s interpretation of Heracles as a more empathetic hero who goes to the lengths he does because he fundamentally just wants love and is willing to find it in unexpected places. So he doesn’t kill the Nemean Lion, and it becomes his companion.

Then he names it Purrseus.

Wham. Just like that, all of the emotional impact gets deadened. It’s symptomatic of a larger problem with the novel, which is that the narrative voice was insufferable. The overwhelming feeling that I got was that it felt like the product of a millennial who watched Disney’s version of Hercules one too many times as a child. The narrative voice of both Hera, Heracles, and the other characters was in that overly “quirky” style that tries too hard to be witty by sprinkling in a weird mixture of terrible puns and improperly-placed swearing so that you know that it has a sense of humor, but it’s also adult! Ooh, I’m so edgy, here’s Hera calling Zeus her “dipshit husband” for the millionth time! (Not that the label wasn’t earned for Zeus, to be fair.) Heracles is the most precious cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs! Why does the Hydra talk like they’re trapped in a Tumblr post circa 2012? It made me wonder if this was really the same author as Someone You Can Build a Nest In, because this writing style was nothing short of grating.

Unfortunately, my issues come back to Heracles being an alleged precious cinnamon roll who can do no wrong. “They woobified Heracles” is an unholy sentence that I wish that I never had to write, but it’s pretty much exactly what happened in Wearing the Lion. I’m not even that familiar with the original myth, but even here, I can see that this is an unnecessarily sanitized interpretation. In attempting to create a more sympathetic view of the character (not that his reputation was all that tarnished in the first place), Wiswell erased most of his flaws. He’s human, of course—Wiswell didn’t hold back in depicting Heracles in the throes of his grief—but every hint of a flaw that comes up is easily smoothed over. Any hint of wrongdoing on Heracles’s part got hastily justified in service of making him “sympathetic.” I’ll eat up found family any day of the week, but there was so little differentiation or conflict—even minor arguments—between Heracles and his motley crew. He just became a Disney Princess with a bunch of monsters following him through the woods on his wacky little quest. Effectively, he becomes exactly what Wiswell doesn’t want Heracles to be: infallible and perfect. It just made Wearing the Lion fundamentally less interesting, knowing that anything bad that Heracles did would inevitably not be his fault.

That being said, Wearing the Lion at least had the seeds of something good. Though it wasn’t executed as well as it could’ve been, I liked that it became a story of breaking the cycle of trauma; in Wiswell’s interpretation, both Hera and Heracles had been dually traumatized by their circumstances, but they were both entwined in a chain of hurt that, naturally, led back to Zeus sleeping around and not considering the consequences. Though overburdened by its grating voice, the manifestations of Hera and Heracles’s trauma were unique to them, and the ways that this trauma evolved and informed their characters was actually quite touching. Of course, it was wrapped up too neatly for my liking, but I kind of expected that from this novel. For all its flaws, Wearing the Lion set out to be a very human novel, and in some places, it succeeded.

All in all, a retelling of Greek mythology that sought to shed new light on its protagonist, but sanitized him instead. Without the Nemean Lion scene, I definitely would’ve rated it lower. 3.5 stars.

Wearing the Lion is a standalone, but John Wiswell is also the author of Someone You Can Build a Nest In and The Dragon Has Some Complaints.

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!