January 2026 Readings
We are back with a new year, and new books. There's finally gonna be some more physical books as I have as a goal to go through everything that I have bought and not read yet, as I've mentioned in the previous monthly, I'm doing a sort of booklog. On the menu this month, a bunch of manga, and a decent amount of books.
Carmilla – Author
A classic vampire novella, predating Dracula by 25 years.
It was a nice little read. It could have been so much more, but it does some good things for what it is. I liked the lore of vampire that they established, that is not just derivative of Dracula (as it as written before). The predation relation of the vampire with the victim is more interesting here. The setting is kinda bland and too classic — a rich family in a manor with servants, with a doctor at their disposal and generally anything at their disposal. It was a bit repetitive at times. The story resolution happens kinda fast, but at least it's not wasting the readers time.
First book of the booklog read.
The Three Body Problem – Liu Cixin
Very enjoyable read. The story was very original, and the way the author incorporated the game into his story was cool. I think that was a really interesting and engaging way to introduced the three body problem and the trisolary civilisation. I had been talking to Shrey who remarked that the characters were a bit 1D (way to throw him under the bus), with only Wei Wenjie getting some love, but I think it's fine for that type of story. It was certainly a breath of fresh air after reading Katabasis — since I read the bookclub books on the train, it was nice not to have to pull up my phone every paragraph because something stupid or incoherent happened in the book. The characterisation of physics was generally alright, although the “physics doesn't exist” thing at the beginning made literally no sense. (shows bit of a misunderstanding of physics too, the most exciting time in physics is when measurements don't match expectations) The book quality kinda drops off a bit at the end, and I found the Trisolary POV we get from the other messages kinda incoherent. Thankfully we're saved with my favourite line in the book:
“YOU ARE BUGS“
how to – Randall Munroe
DNF
First DNF of the year, but to be fair, I stopped reading it around November last year, but kept lying to myself that I would “pick it back up again later”. The book is fine. The only reason that I stopped is it's like quirky science, with calculations and stuff that are supposed to wow people not very well versed in sciences, but are kinda all just very simple first year course “fun” problems. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, it's engaging science vulgarisation, but I'm just really not the target audience. It's also a bit too “internet quirky” for me. The stick figure illustrations are a nice addition.
Au Coeur de la Forêt – Many Authors
Also a book of the booklog. A little collection of stories centred around the forest.
It was a really nice read, and also very french but in the real sense of the term, it felt very regular french life, not whatever parisian romantic fantasy people mean when saying french. It was also a nice little mix with a bunch of stuff, some more regular stuff, some SF, some more poetic stuff. Made me kinda yearn having a forest nearby, and not some shitty grove, and actual forest where you can explore and get lost in.
Fire Punch (Volume 1-8) – Fujimoto
From the booklog. The world is experiencing another ice age, and some people have powers. Agni his sister and the village are trying to survive.
PEAK. It's easily in my top 2 manga series ever. I had started reading it when it came out in France, around 2017, which also the time I set off to Canada. I therefore had the chance to buy the first 5 volumes and completely forgot about it afterwards, until I went back to France in 2023 and grabbed the rest.
While the first volume is maybe a bit immature in some aspects, the rest of the manga is absolutely fantastic. There is a ton going on at all time, the story never gets comfortable and always pivots in an interesting way. The drawings are awesome, the themes fantastic, and we even get trans representation, which is way ahead of its time when it was written. It's also nice and short, no dragging anything for the sake of making more money or whatever, my man had something to say, his art and story telling is focused, and he got what he needed to off his chest. Absolute masterpiece.
The Last Wish, Sword of Destiny, Blood of Elves, The Time of Contempt – Andrzej Sapkowski
(Book 1-4 of the Witcher Series)
All books from the booklog. It took me a while to get into the Witcher III (a video game), but once I did, I found the lore and setting very interesting. I then saw the first season of the show, which was alright. The later seasons were ass, and so I turned to the books. I had heard that the books were super sexist though so I was a bit apprehensive. For books that were written in the 80 and 90's in Poland, they could have been so much worse. I think the main complaints I would have is the very male gazey tone the books have, how a lot of women are described by their looks and have their degree of promiscuity be a character trait, when it is totally absent for men. I also find it a bit odd how every single hot lady is infatuated with Geralt at first sight, our main protagonist, even if he is described in the book as a bit repulsive due to the witcher mutations. Women are overall written as smart, powerful and competent in the book, but that doesn't absolve it of the aforementioned.
I do have to share something I read on the forums though: in the book, there is a part in which, after vigorous fighting, the seam of the dress of one of the womanly protagonist rips a bit, and you can see a bit of her “shapely breast”. One of the poster, to reinforce their point about the male gaze in the book, asked if you could imagine the same thing happening to Geralt and the writer saying that through the crack in his pants, his “pert penis” was revealed. The book would have been 100% better if stuff like that happened to the male characters too though.
Putting the books back in their historical and cultural context, and going beyond this more modern analysis, we have very good fantasy books. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the world and its political canvas are detailed, and how rich and “alive” a world is presented here. There are some very interesting themes of colonialism, neutrality and moralism, and our protagonist Geralt does engage with all of those, they are not just things happening in the background. I also liked that Geralt, although undeniably being very capable, also gets a lot of things wrong and we are shown a lot of vulnerable sides of him, he's not just “hard strong brooding man/killing machine with no emotion”. The first two books are a collection of novellas about Geralt, and the later are full length stories. I think the short stories do a great job introducing us the witcher and his world, and it is definitely necessary as without those, following all the political stuff in the later book would have been complicated (and frankly not that engaging). The novellas also allow the author to jump around the timeline, without needing to fill all the blanks. Very enjoyable so far, my only complaint would be that with the later books, we are kinda ditching the usual witcher-monster slaying aspect of the story, with all the investigating and lore that follows, which I quite enjoyed
So far I'm at 14/60 books in the booklog, and at 3259/19886 pages. I do not expect to keep up this pace as a bunch of books of this booklog are about philosophy or sociology, which are not as quickly readable (unless I just read the words without parsing through their meaning). In any case, I'll catch you next month.
Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author