Of course, I see no use for such a useless feature, and if you don’t either, here’s how to hide it completely:

• Go to Preferences > Plugins > AI provider, select each one and click on Enable/disable plugin.
• Go to Preferences > Tweaks
  • Scroll all the way down until you see Hide AI features (You could also use the search bar for this)
  • Go to the text editor box and set the variable to True.
• Restart Calibre.

All the references and buttons will be gone from Calibre’s interface, it’s a bit of a bummer that the plugins can’t be fully deleted, but hey, as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

Of course there are also some forks made due to this addition in the form of Arcalibre, as well as library management alternatives like Booklore.

Personally, regular Calibre works fine and I don’t really feel the need to fully switch away from it. It has been a great project for years, and since most of the alternatives are rather young and have yet to prove themselves, I am inclined to just not bother, at least for now.

This is day 41 of #100DaysToOffload

Feel free to reply to these as well, I would love to read your answers in the comments or on your own blogpost, send me a link if you do.

What is your favourite genre?

Science Fiction no doubt! Pretty much the only thing I read outside detective stories (like once a year), literary classics (which usually overlap with detective stories or science fiction), and manga.

Who is your favourite author in this genre?

This has to go to the one and only Jules Verne. His stories were the first contact I had with the genre and pretty much inspired me to pursue my engineering career—I want to be as clever as Cyrus Smith when I grow up.

Over time however, I’ve come to discover a lot more authors like Brian W. Aldiss or Arthur C. Clarke, and the modern works of James S.A. Corey and Dennis E. Taylor, it was hard to go with them though, since I can’t deny who has had the biggest impact on my life.

What is it about the genre that keeps pulling you back?

The variety, the possibilities, the way in which stories can both celebrate the progress of humankind at the same time it can warn and predicts how that progress can come at a cost.

Another aspect I love is how no matter how much we know, nature and the cosmos always have more surprises waiting for us. From the Maelstrom to the Protomolecule.

What is the book that started your love of this genre?

I would have to point to an abridged version of Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne, which was on the 2008 edition of Español Lecturas for the 3rd grade at my primary school.

The is a book which came bundled with other works for education purposes, which the government provided to public schools at the time, the artwork included in those readings to accompany the words is still ingrained in my memory. You can freely access this book online!

If you had to recommend at least one book from your favourite genre to a non-reader/someone looking to start reading that genre, what book would you choose and why?

A great, modern starting point may be something like the Bobiverse series, which are about a guy who gets resurrected as an AI in the future, tasked with exploring the galaxy, as he’s put in charge of a Von Neumann probe. It has some great science, but it’s funny and full of geeky stuff I really enjoyed.

Why do you read?

Because it is fun! To explore so many possibilities, futures and what-if scenarios. Visualizing all of it in my head, just the power of the mind picturing the impossible, or what could be. I probably could go further but honestly I just love to be immersed in the words, living lives and visiting places I could never do otherwise, it’s cool stuff.

But well, that’s it! Not a very long post perhaps, but I actually had a lot of fun looking back and trying to recall how I got into it, discovering all my primary school books are available online was definitely the highlight of my day too.

Last year was pretty good when it comes to books, I managed to make a lot of progress and even started a new series—even if I hadn’t finished the previous one, but whatever.

Books I read in 2025

I reviewed almost every book I read, so feel free to check out my separate thoughts on each, linked in the titles here. However, I have a few more words about them—as well as some mini-reviews for some books that I didn’t actually review on my website at all! Let’s start from the beginning.

Abbadon’s Gate by James S.A. Corey

Start: 2025-01-04 End: 2025-01-15 Series: The Expanse #3

I love all of the Expanse books, and this one was an amazing conclusion to the first trilogy of the series. Featuring quite a few characters with different points of views that I really enjoyed. A few of them are a bit forgettable, but the overall product was great!

This one explored quite a bit of how faith and religion have changed in this future, it features themes of revenge and redemption, with some chapters being done from the point of view of the main “antagonist” that causes the conflict of the whole thing.

The science at hand and the catastrophes that go one during this finale are just awesome, lots of great scenes and revelations that completely change the status quo of Human society until then, as interstellar colonization becomes available to Humanity for the first time.

The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie

Start: 2025-01-02 End: 2025-01-28

This was an amazing read full of twists and turns, where Poirot has to solve yet another murder mystery.

Featuring a fun Sherlock Holmes parody, a romantic subplot and many many twists and turns that made me unable to follow up on who had done it.

I loved the contrast between Poirot’s methods and the ones his rival does, looking for fingerprints and the like, and of course, reading along with @isa was super fun.

Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey

Start: 2025-03-17 End: 2025-05-05 Series: The Expanse #4

Before any paperwork or treaties can be made to control who gets to visits the new worlds, a rogue ship has decided to colonize one of the new planets Humanity has access to.

After a company gets permission to get into the same planet and sent a ship to mine its resources and claim them as their own, conflict ensues, and Holden is tasked to step in and resolve them.

Of course, things don’t go very well when alien technology starts to show up. I loved the build-up of this one, the absolutely catastrophe and implications of how the plot unfolds. Really awesome start to this trilogy.

The Space Merchants by C.M. Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl

Start: 2025-02-17 End: 2025-05-09

This was a fantastic one! A classic piece of science fiction satire where we follow the life of a copysmith workin in the marketing industry, tasked with convincing the world to colonize Venus. Mitchell Courtenay is on its way to the top of the company, but he ends up betrayed by a rival, his identity is lost and he’s sent to prison, I mean, to work and live the life of a consumer, enslaved by contracts and debt.

Our protagonist will try everything to get back on track, even joining a resistance to the consumerist propaganda machine, all to get back to his rightful place. A lot of facets of society are explored in this dystopian future—that isn’t far from reality at this point—and I absolutely loved it once it got going.

There are certainly some dated aspects about it, but the story is tight and entertaining and rather thought-provoking, one of the highlights of the year!

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

Start: 2025-05-09 End: 2025-06-17

This was definitely the weirdest read of the year, featuring a super strange cast of characters in a rather unique setting. It is the weirdest, most mixed book of the bunch I read this year.

Featuring a cast of characters from different time periods and species, during a war across time between the Spiders and the Snakes—two factions that we know very little about. The war stays in the background, as the actual story happens in a pocket of time where soldiers go to rest and recover. The protagonist works providing that relief, as a friend, a nurse, an escort and the like. Suddenly, this pocket of time gets “stuck”, and the device that controls this is stolen, as an atomic bomb starts ticking. And now we are in a detective story!

Honestly, this was fun, but a pain to read, the style and prose is absolutely painful and dated, every character speaks according to their time period and stuff, it was bizarre, but not bad.

Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey

Start: 2025-06-17 End: 2025-09-03 Series: The Expanse #5

The story continues and this time all of our protagonists are split apart! Everyone goes on to their own adventures and journeys, facing different problems that will eventually bring them all back together.

As Humanity is eager to embark on to new planets and reach new frontiers, lots of different events begin to unfold, a plot against Holden, against Earth, against Mars and the OPA, that plans to shake the very foundations of mankind.

I absolutely love the political intrigue and the family drama that happens on this one, I was on the edge of my seat as the dangers faced by each and everyone of the Rocinante’s crew grew bigger every second. This was a terrifying entry in the series, and genuinely intense. Lovely stuff.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Start: 2025-08-28 End: 2025-09-04 Series: The Murderbot Diaries #1

As I waited for my Book Club friends to finish up reading The Expanse, I got the Martha Wells Humble Bundle which came with all the Murderbot books. As I saw most are novellas, I decided to give them a go.

This was a lovely action thriller science fiction story introducing us to Murderbot, an android tasked with protecting humans, that managed to jailbreak himself and become free to do whatever he wants. However, he keeps pretending to be just a “SecUnit” and just sticks to watching TV Shows and other media on his free time, interacting as little as possible with his human clients.

At some points things go wrong and he ends up having to save humans who actually care about him as a person, which makes it so he has mixed feelings about life now! A fun read with lots some good actions moments, but more of an introduction to be honest.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Start: 2025-09-05 End: 2025-09-09 Series: The Murderbot Diaries #2

The second book with Murderbot details how he escapes from the humans that liked it because it’s insecure about himself or something.

There’s also the introduction of ART, a super cool smart AI that helpes Murderbot to blend in as a regular-looking human, even causing hair growth and stuff with some advanced code stuff.

Anyway I actually forgot what the exact plot of this one is, but I remember the relationship between Murderbot and ART being absolutely hilarious to read. I think there was not as much action on this one, I may be incorrect, good short story.

Hollow Knight - Wanderer’s Journal by Ryan Novak & Kari Fry

Start: 2025-09-16 End: 2025-09-16

In the middle of my reading, there was an obsession with Hollow Knight brewing within me, so I had to order this super neat physical book that featured a lot of art of the game and some nice tidbits of lore. I read the whole thing from start to finish in one day, since there was not a lot of text, featuring more drawings, maps and the like.

I can’t really say much more, there is not a lot of new lore that you can’t find from the wiki page or from YouTube videos, but the finish and the design of the book itself is top notch and it was absolutely worth the purchase given the quality of the materials and printing. An absolutely lovely collector’s item, in my opinion.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

Start: 2025-09-09 End: 2025-09-19 Series: The Murderbot Diaries

After meeting ART and continuing his escape from his human friends. Murderbot decides to infiltrate somewhere and actually maybe help his human friends who got in trouble because of his escape.

So he ends up infiltrating as a Security Consultant for an interesting group, featuring a Robot “pet” who is actually the friend of a human who treats her with respect and as an equal. There’s quite an interesting contrast going on here that makes for both wholesome and very funny moments.

The action goes up a notch as well! Which I really enjoyed.

Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey

Start: 2025-09-25 End: 2025-10-17 Series: The Expanse #6

And at last, the last Expanse book I read in the year, and the conclusion to the second trilogy of the series. Once again, the conflict continues to focus on Humanity and how everything the series has built upon thus far is changing the way society works.

After a new military power arises, old enemies have to become allies and work together for once. Holden and the crew will also face their own difficulties, with old enemies joining in as well.

This book picks up with a mystery setup since the previous one, and it does so masterfully. I really enjoyed the new character dynamics and how it set everything in place while giving closure to many characters as well. It was fantastic, even if I could already tell how it would end like 10 chapters in advance.

Overscan by Nicholas Bernard

Start: 2025-09-02, End: 2025-10-20

This was an amazing collaborative effort between multiple authors who worked together to make a small collection of short stories. The whole anthology, whose subtitle is Stories from Beyond the Screen’s Edge, was simply a joy to read. I read half of them in one day, and I would have done them all in one sitting if it wasn’t because I’m a professional procrastinator. I will actually read it again and write a proper review soon, because this book deserves it.

I got it physically as a chapbook, and despite some quality issues, the book is just cozy to have in such a state. Definitely worth a read. Not just because it’s a small indie publisher, but because it’s a genuinely thought-provoking collection of human stories, standing up against the AI dystopia we live in today.

Reading per month

Looking at a table of these stats is quite eye opening to be honest, you can easily see how badly I fell during many months, but at the same time, I don’t feel terrible about it, when combined with the manga and the videogames I enjoyed as well! I could have finished at least three more books if I had procrastinated less, but such is life sometimes.

From worst to best

These would be my picks from least to most favorite books, by the way! You should keep in mind I absolutely enjoyed each and every one of these reads, except for maybe the very last one that I actually listened to instead.

In any case, here’s my ranking!

• The Big Time was just too convoluted and weird and difficult to read even if it’s interesting.
• All Systems Red is a good entry to the series but not that good on its own.
• Wanderer’s Journal was a beautiful physical book with great art with not a lot of value as a text.
• Rogue Protocol great continuation but it doesn’t feature ART in it. Enjoyable tho
• The Murder on the Links was just a fun page turner and really entertaining, but not as good as the next stuff.
• Artificial Condition is incredibly fun, featuring the best side character, ART, who made me actually laugh many times. Can’t help but love it.
• Cibola Burn felt like the weakest Expanse for me, the scale of everything going on felt too low, but it’s the start of a new trilogy, so it’s understandable. Also too many characters.
• Babylon’s Ashes was fantastic but I could easily tell how things would get solved, it was nice and exciting in the moment though, and the tension and drama were still top notch.
• Overscan may be short, but it sure is awesome, I am even rereading it right now for my proper review.
• The Space Merchants is my favourite standalone book this year, and an incredible satire that deserves a read even today, more than 70 years later.
• Abaddon’s Gate was a wonderful conclusion to the first trilogy, I just loved the tension at every moment! The Expanse kept getting better and better.
• Nemesis Games was simply fantastic, how everything built up and came together, the scale of the event even when it was a purely human conflict, absolutely thrilling, definitely my favorite of the year and maybe the series too.

Books left unfinished

I started a few pages of the following books, and I did enjoy some of them, but for one reason or another I dropped them I didn’t read more than a couple chapters on each, so I’ll happily resume some of them if I have the time, I just need to get over my reading slump.

• Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi - I acquired the Humble Bundle, and I know the author is rather active on the Fediverse, I remember hearing about this one a while back on a video from HexDSL, when he still did content from time to time. I enjoyed what I read, some day I’ll return.
• Perelandra by C.S. Lewis - I completely adored Out of the Silent Planet back in the day, and I thought I’d continue the series, but adding a third series to my agenda proved too much for me.
• The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle - This was the choice for a book club I joined, one I was interested on, but
• A Short History of the World by H.G. Wells - I listened to the audiobook of this in the Boring Books for Bedtime podcast, it wasn’t boring at all, but the voice was easy to sleep to.
• The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald - A book mentioned by Amin a while back, it seemed interesting and the prose was nice, but I just read other things and forgot about it.

Physical Books

I grew my physical collection quite a bit this year, even though I didn’t add many of them to my reading list online, I had pics to remind myself I got them, so here’s a list of all the books I acquired in 2025.

• Abbadon’s Gate by James S.A. Corey
• Hunter x Hunter Vol 38 by Yoshihiro Togashi
• The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Overscan by Nicholas Bernard
• Father’s Day by Sefton Eisenhart
• Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• Foundation & Empire by Isaac Asimov
• Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
• Robot Dreams by Isaac Asimov

Finishing thoughts

Overall, I’m happy with all I’ve managed when it comes to reading, given my focus ended up being somewhere else for most of the year. I want to improve during 2026, even though January was kind of a weak start, especially compared to how nicely I did early last year.

This recap has a bit of everything, it wasn’t as well planned and I kept adding sections I thought were fun, but well, it’s all kinda interesting, I’d say!

In any case, I enjoyed all of what I read, fantastic books and series so far, I had a good time, even if it wasn’t as much.

This is day 12 of #100DaysToOffload

It was a long one, I couldn’t really read the title of it from where I was. All seats occupied, I was standing five or so seats away and the title was written in a cursive font that was not legible from afar.

She was reading the last twenty or so pages, by the art style of the cover, I assume it was some sort of romance YA novel, she seemed to be rather emotional about whatever was going on. I noticed the back and forth of her eyes as she was flying through every line, paragraph, and page.

After a couple minutes a seat freed up right in front of her, I glanced at her general direction, although she was so glued to the book to notice, although I wasn’t being obvious, I think. I still couldn’t make up what the title was, so I gave it up, sat down, rested my backpack on my lap, took my Kobo reader out, and continued my sci-fi novel.

I didn’t notice when she got down from the bus.

Sorry if you expected some sort of romantic twist, or any kind of interaction at all, oh well.

Anyway, that little event really made me think about books read in public.

Today, most people are looking at their phones, tiny screens, each person using different apps, social media platforms, or ad-ridden mobile games, and all of it is for the same thing, feeding from quick entertainment, slop and domapine, in the best case maybe having a chat with someone, although it’s usually a bubble—yes, Facebook Messenger here rules 🤢—left on a corner, replying when needed as one continues to consume.

So, I wonder how it would be if we just carried a book around instead?

Wouldn’t it be a sight to behold? Every person sitting at the bus, with a book on hand, or in ther pockets, reading something and engaging in a whole unique world for themselves. Some guy would be carrying one of those pocket-sized editions of some timeless classic, holding it at their eye level, another wouldn’t mind the full-sized 900 pages long romance novel, half-way hidden by the open bag its leaning on. Some other person would be standing, one hand firm on handle, the book held with the other in an awkward position, flipping a page with their some weird maneuver, the next guy just tapping on an e-ink device enjoying some sports manga.

Imagine, a never-ending book club, during lunch breaks, after the gym, or on a video-call, conversations sparking when two people notice they are reading the same one, heated discussions when the finale of a long-running series comes out at last. Best-sellers only lasting a few days as the fans catch up on them and the rest just borrow from their friends or libraries, which are fully functional buildings providing easy access to everyone in town, as ids aren’t needed, just pick what you want and leave it anytime, nobody really worries because there is plenty of supply for the demand.

Who needs “BookTok”, when your circle of friends will have suggestions and a backlog to share? when everyone is out there displaying their book cover as they read something?—instead of watching reels with monotone AI voices at full volume. Approaching people and making friends with shared interests would be much easier too!

I wonder if historians know of a period like this, a time where this was a common thing. I must admit I am completely unaware of a period where this was the case.

Did books ever get widely popular, as to be read in public or be carried around in pockets? I feel most people were too busy trying to get by with whatever working conditions there were at the time, and of course, knowing how to write or read was a privilege that not many people got to have for centuries.

If there’s something that I know, is that today we are more “connected” than ever before, and we have more access to information than any previous age, and more books widely available in both physical and digital format, and yet, it seems like books remain a niche, something rarely talked about in public, because you are seen as a snob or a geek when you mention it to someone, somehow.

In any case, just imagine that picture again, that bus, filled with people, wobbling their heads with their books on hand as the driver avoids the potholes on the roadway. The only noise inside? the fluttering of pages turning over, such a pleasant breeze.

Now that I think about it, some people can’t handle reading while on the move. I guess that’s how you can tell it’s just a dream.

It would be nice though.

I started out reading the classics by Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. But actually, my earliest read for Verne was an adaptation of Around the World in Eighty Days that I read at school, and came with fantastic art accompanying the text. I knew then that science and speculative fiction would be my jam!

Since last year, I’ve been reading The Expanse series. And honestly, it has managed to stay really really engaging for me the whole way through. I am currently on the 6th book: Babylon’s Ashes, and it’s seriously incredible to see.

At this point in time, I am completely invested in the world—the society, technology and conflicts—and even more so, its characters—their struggles, development, and relationships. Bundle that with the fact that it’s great at pretty much everything it tries, such as military action, political intrigue, cosmic horror or existential monologuing. Even if the build-up in some entries can take time, it always manages to hook me by pulling off some crazy premise, and seeing how the story evolves as the series has gone on has been a complete joy so far.

Even so, there are books where I can’t even tell you the name of the protagonist at all, but I can vividly remember the imagery and the wonder of the world described in the pages. This is the case for Brian W. Aldiss’ Hothouse, with it’s dying Earth, tidally locked, two million years in the future, dominated by sentient and deadly vegetal life, interwoven to the moon by giant webs and huge vegetal beings roaming free in the space between, with humans devolving to almost animalistic insticts, as everything around them represents a constant danger.

Or maybe the concept of a story is simply incredible to read, getting deep into the human psyche when put in terrifying situations. The utopian future lead by a benevolent alien species over the whole planet in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, or the very much not utopian society found in D.G. Compton’s Farewell, Earth’s Bliss where every “undesirable” individual is sent to a settlement on Mars to form its own culture—which doesn’t go too well when every character is broken and messed up.

There’s this one time that I went blind into a book and was completely disgusted by it, while also being unable to stop reading—despite my best judgement—because of the premise of it all, Tender is the Flesh, by Agustina Bazterrica kept my eyes peeled, as Humanity resorts to cannibalism because they would rather do that over going vegan, after all animal meat on the planet becomes unedible.

Overall though, I’ve mostly stuck with older works of science fiction, classics of the 20th century, like The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle, which is still the most interesting first contact plot I’ve read, while featuring a bunch of cool concepts and world-building. And of course, Dune, an incredible, dense, palpable story that I got to both watch and read, and needs no introduction.

I guess I prefer to read older books because I like to compare the differences and similarities between the future they envisioned and today. How things turned out to be. From something like E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops which I feel I’ve mentioned so often because it’s just so ahead of its time, or the bleak hyper-capitalist world in The Space Merchants by Kornbluth and Pohl, filled with massive advertisement campaigns, modern slavery, and never ending debt.

Despite how dire some of those futures seem, there will be other books that fight back. The fear of the unknown, quickly replaced by an admiration for the alien, something beyond our humanity that gives us hope, in the spiritual and natural harmony shown in C.S. Lewis’ Out of the Silent Planet. Or the inspiring, never-ending ingenuity of the human mind in its battle for survival, which can be seen in the journey against all odds on Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary.

If there’s something that long time readers may be able to tell, is that me truly disliking something I read is rather strange. Sometimes I think I just don’t go that deep into the things I read, even if I am enjoying them and even when they stay with me for months or years. I’ve never rated anything under 3.5 stars. I rarely rate things during my reviews at all—the times I’ve done it, they haven’t really added any value in the end—I just share my thoughts and overall conclusions.

As long as something gets me thinking and entertains me, it usually works out. Even when I didn’t enjoy the topic, or what happened, or dislike its conclusions (it’s hard to look away during a train-wreck). Most of the time I try to appreciate what an author attempts to do. Besides, I tend to be really picky about what I read in the first place, so it’s hard for me to end up with something I don’t enjoy at least a bit.

And of course, there’s space for books that are just dumb fun and filled with geek references while keeping the science pretty real, like the Bobiverse series! I read that long before I started this blog, but maybe I’ll revisit it someday.

This post ended up being a general overview of books I’d recommend—except for the cannibalism one but you could read it I guess—so that was quite the ramble to go on. I was going to turn this into something general for other types of media like Manga and TV Shows, but I think I’ll just do separate posts for them.

Funnily enough, after all this time, I am yet to read anything from the big authors of the last century, nothing by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick or Robert Heinlein. Other authors like Ray Bradbury are still a blind spot too. There’s just so many things to read.

In any case, just check my bookshelf! Pretty much everything there is good in my opinion. Although I haven’t updated it with my latest reads like the Murderbot series.

Morning, woke up, got a change of clothes and got ready for work, walked through the mud to the bus stop while listening to the last 20 minutes of Into The Aether’s latest episode, and then started an episode of Avatar: Braving the Elements.

When I got to the bus, I whipped out my PSP and unwired my earphones, plugged the jack in, and started a course of Ridge Racer 2, quite literally the most cathartic solo racing experience I’ve had in years. I have been playing it on and off throughout the year, starting with the original, but the sequel is literally the same with more levels. The earphones are a must because the music enhances the experience to the max.

The bus arrives, I walk towards the office, stop for a bit. I always get half an hour early to work, so I think about what to do. I consider reading, but not yet.

I take out my phone, and start a classic match of 20 floors of Slice & Dice, I play the whole time until 8 o’clock gets going. I turn on my laptop, check any emails and have my phone by my side again. I play a turn, I reroll here and there. and then real work shows up.

Slice & Dice is way too dangerous. It’s a roguelite where you control a party of characters, all of them represented by dice, each side does something like attack, heal, or shield. There are also status effects, like poison, losing 1 hp per turn, stone, which makes one side of the dice unusable, or pain, where you get damage back when you hit an enemy.

Each turn you roll the dice, and you can lock the ones with values you want, and roll the rest again twice more. The enemies are also dice, and will have their own turns and do a variety of attacks as well.

It extremely easy to pick-up and play. The decisions made are quick and you don’t need to do precise inputs or anything like that. Just roll some dice, choose which ones to pick, roll again and again, and then execute the chosen actions in the order you want to.

I start playing again for a little bit, and I die by some wrong decision I made 10 turns ago maybe. Okay then, time to actually get to work for a while, and then suddenly it’s time for brunch!

I’ve been making an effort to not use my phone much when I’m with my coworkers, and it actually goes relatively well. I picked it up after we were done eating and played a bit more.

Eventually, more actual works shows up, but I can always sneak a turn here or there.

All of this going on while I somehow got into this little idle game called Idle Slayer which I saw on a post from Wavelengths and I randomly decided to give it a go.

I unlock some stuff there and upgrade things and watch some ads to make things go faster and leave it again to do some other stuff.

Work shows up, I go to a couple of meetings, I sneak in another turn on Slice & Dice.

Somehow, it’s now time for lunch. And my coworker is leaving early today, which I knew since yesterday, thankfully, but he told me he didn’t have any extra unfinished tasks.

At this point, I’ve managed to achieve a victory in Classic Normal and Classic Easy, and I start another run in Normal.

After this, I share some screenshots of my winning runs to some friends who got into the game much earlier than me. They are all celebrating like crazy and sharing stickers.

I wanted to write my Top 25 Games of All Time today and ended up too distracted. However, I wrote the list itself, now I just got to write the thoughts and explain the why of it all.

On the way home, I finally read another chapter of Nemesis Games.

Also, I remembered Silksong is coming out soon, so I have to finally beat Hollow Knight after not having played any of it since July 3rd.

I beat The Hollow Knight on my second attempt, thanks to the Sharp Shadow charm and Unbreakable Heart. Life is good, I share some screenshots online.

I completed Hollow Knight after 46 hours and 18 minutes. I played Slice & Dice for like 7 hours on and off, I did a full tour on Ridge Racer 2, and I read 2 chapters of Nemesis Games.

Now I’m going to sleep.

Right now, especially because of Blaugust, my feeds are being bombarded by new blogposts everyday, this means that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to take some measures and ensure my head doesn’t get overwhelmed by all the words being written and published online for me to read.

I’ve done one or two things to organize my feeds, and I’ve seen other people like Matt judging blogposts by their titles and skipping through the rest.

In my case, it’s not a matter of leaving things as unread, I don’t really care about that at all. Actually, right now there are 3,612 unread articles in my FreshRSS instance, feel free to suffer on my behalf :)

However, I worry about sticking to the same blogs and not growing them further. This is a problem not many have, as I know of others who want to trim down their selection further more—looking at you Amin. Of course, I will probably change my mind in two days, but for now, I want to try to read blogposts from the people I read a bit less, or that may even be completely new (to me).

I constantly mention people on this website that I read all the time, you can usually find them on my blogroll as well. I already know I’ll enjoy whatever Sylvia, RL Dane, Naty or Jakov come up with. And if you are a blogger who reads me constantly and interacts with me, you already know I’m talking about you too—I’m purposefully avoiding to highlight the ones I link all the time ;)

So, at least for a little while, I’m going to willfully skip through my usual reads and try to give a chance to the people I haven’t read as much, and that are totally new to me.

For the sake of it, here are links to some recent additions to my feeds. Some of them are doing Blaugust, but not necessarily, I have checked some of their posts and from what I’ve read, I think I’ll like them.

• Syl’s Blog - I already shared a post from here on my weeknotes, lots of gaming related posts which I’m 100% here for, and some others about music and personal thoughts.
• Unfiltered Thoughts - The title alone lets you know what this is about. Short, personal thoughts, about tech, life, and blogging itself.
• The Tangent Space - More weeknotes to enjoy! With some gaming notes on them, can’t complain at all.
• LMNT - This one is from an artist and it shows, there’s wallpapers, and a lot of other things related to designing icons, logos and websites!
• Thread Pool - I saw this blog on Mastodon a while back and I check it here and there, it’s about technology, coding and just life in general!

Of course, if you know of any other bloggers out there who you think I have not seen and that I may enjoy, feel free to send me a link!

From now on, I really think I have to contain some mild spoilers at least when it comes to the progress of the series as a whole. This is the fourth book of The Expanse after all, so I will assume you’ve read the previous three books, or watched the show, or have some idea of how things have developed so far..

I will not spoil anything about the book itself, of course, or at least I’ll try not to.

After Holden and company witness how all of the ring gates that lay dormant in the slow zone begin to wake up, the way to countless solar systems across the galaxy is now open. Humanity finally reaching the stars, doesn’t seem too far fetched anymore.

As soon as one of those planets is deemed suitable for human life, a rogue Belter ship claimed it as their own and began to colonize it, they name the planet “Ilus”. After some time, an Earth ship is on its way to what they decided to call “New Terra”, with the goal of studying the planet, mine it for resources and of course, to claim it as their own, after making a deal with the belters, and dealing with all the paperwork on Earth to do things “right.”

When things eventually go wrong. Holden is tasked by Earth and the OPA to act as a mediator and try to resolve the local conflict going on, but the tension would only rise, as the planet itself hides a mystery that endangers everyone on it.

This book, was just as fantastic as the others. I can’t help but say the same thing book after book, it keeps being true.

Like before, the story jumps across different perspectives. This time, it features Basia, a character mentioned only by name in the previous book, who is part of the Belter colony and wants to protect his family, and his new home. Havelock, who was Miller’s partner in the first book, is now part of the security team for the Earth ship, and tries to keep things in check and train a militia, in case things go south. Finally, Elvi, a scientist from Earth, that wants to figure out the best way to coexist with the local biology, and study the different forms of life in the planet.

Holden joins the party after plenty of chaos has already been done, and now has to clean up the mess and try to make amends. But of course, it’s not that simple. Eventually, things will turn out to be much more dangerous and cosmical than expected, and boy does it get kind of crazy this time.

I really enjoyed the new characters’ points of view, they all brought something to the table!

It was nice to let Havelock shine for once, and to see the choices he makes and the way his character developes as the story progresses was quite entertaining. He is just really good at what he does too, if a little bit stubborn. Through him, we’ll learn what most of the Earthers in the ship think about the situation, as well as internal conflict between what he is asked to do and what is the right thing to do throughout his journey.

Elvi is almost like a second mediator, being one of the scientists that interacts with Belters the most, while also disagreeing on things like the way they have tampered with the ecosystem without any care. Her relationship with Holden is also kind of interesting, if a bit weird. Through her, we’ll meet other scientists and colonists, how they deal with disaster and finding solutions to their problems.

Basia is an interesting fellow. He is the father of the dead child Holden and company found in Ganymede’s secret laboratory, so, he has quite a lot of trauma and guilt, and a grudge against those that want to take away the new planet and way of life he has managed to build for him and his family, which we’ll get to know pretty well. He has made mistakes, and the way he deals with all of that is a common theme throughout his story.

And of course, Holden is Holden, and he will do everything he can to protect his people, and to find a way to balance everything out. Of course, Miller’s ghost is still haunting him with random quests and revelations about the planet in question.

The planet itself is a really interesting setting, there are some really vivid descriptions of the flora and fauna, as well as signs of an alien civilization that inhabited the planet at some point. How some characters deal with gravity and having a sky above their heads is kinda fun too.

Overall, I really liked this book. I think it has some problems in the way a few characters are portrayed, the villain was pretty clear from the start, and I couldn’t really take him very seriously. But he devolves in interesting ways later on, so I will give that a pass. The dangers faced and the revelations made here were quite mind-blowing, and at the same time, I felt like they weren’t enough. Still, it kind of feels like the beginning of a new trilogy, so I understand the plot keeping some cards hidden for now. I am quite excited to start the next with my reading club soon!

This is day 62 of #100DaysToOffload

Basically, I had plenty of outside activities, a short vacation period, and the like, that aren’t related to media consumption, which is what I usually share month after month.

Being a bit of an introvert, I had never really felt like doing sections for physical activity and the like, you know? Besides maybe gym stats like running distance/speed or weights lifted, which I don’t really keep track of.

In case you care, this month I played plenty of soccer, I tried tennis for the first time, I also played badminton with friends and even some basketball. I had plenty of fun with friends I hadn’t met in a long time, and I am really grateful for that time.

Of course, I also played a lot of card games with different friends at multiple times. Games like Spoons, Snap, Egyptian Ratscrew, Skull, and Oh Hell were played for a few weekends, and it was pretty fun!

Maybe it’s just the vacations i took, but I have lots of energy and just feel great to be alive, I can feel a bit of despair creeping in, thoughts like “this is the peak and you won’t reach any further”, but I am shutting those ideas as soon as they come, I prefer to think better of the future.

Regardless! Here’s the regular monthly update.

Podcasts

• Into the Aether (& ✨Patreon Exclusives) - These guys are still at the top of my listening time, unsurprisingly. I decided to support them on patreon and now I have a whole backlog to catch up on, something I’m doing while typing this post.
• Next Portable Console (& ✨NPC XL) - Even though my listening time for this podcast is low, that’s only because it’s one of the few I follow weekly, with no backlog yet! I enjoy these episodes a lot everytime they pop up on my queue! I’m always being tempted to get new handhelds, but so far, I’m holding up well.
• ✨Verbose Guacamole - A new podcast by Benjamin Hollon where he talks about his projects, comes up with short stories on the spot and talks about whatever he wants, I think. Only one episode out for now.
• The Ten Minute Bible Hour - I finally returned to this bible study podcast, after more than 200 episodes, we haven’t reached the half-way point of the book of Matthew, and I am here for it! Loving the analysis and insight of this one quite a bit, while remaining pretty chill and enjoyable.
• Retro Game Time Machine - I keep only listening to the first 30 minutes of multiple episodes, and I take my time to finish them over time. Still enjoyable for me!
• Welcome to Night Vale - I think I listened to the same three episodes a bunch of times to sleep, so I kinda don’t want to count it, but I also listened to a bunch of it while walking to the barbershop once.
• Unexplained - I listened to the first 20 minutes of a single episode like 5 times, but other episodes too, I think?
• Dungeons and Daddies - I have been struggling to actually pay attention to the episodes I’ve listened of this one. I am still pushing through but I’ve fallen a like 6 episodes behind.
• Trash Taste - Only listened to a couple of episodes and a half this time, it’s nice to be back with the boys!
• Darknet Diaries - Listened to a few episodes, the Bike Index one was pretty interesting! not much else to be honest.
• The Rest is History - Finished listening to ther America in ‘68 series, and a bit of Season 2 of The French Revolution, I didn’t realize it was season 2 so I think I’ll listen to the previous season first.

Gaming

I probably played too many games this month, but welp, it just keeps happening.

Finished

• Super Mario Bros Wonder - I reached the credits for this game! It was a ton of fun to play with friends and solo. I will still play it to get more collectibles and whatever levels I totally missed. Highly recommended.

Ongoing

• Hollow Knight - After a long hiatus, I finally returned to this gem of a game, I have beaten a couple of bosses, including cheesing the Watched Knights because they are a pain; obtained a couple of charms, discovered a new location and places to visit, saved a few more grubs. Doing progress, and getting better!
• Xenoblade Chronicles DE - I have no idea why I decided to start this, it was probably a bad idea, however, I have played like 5 chapters of this already and it’s been awesome! The story has me hooked, the quality of life features in the definitive edition are great, and I can’t wait to play more of it.
• Hades - Finally managed to reach the surface for the first time and make some awesome progress in the story. It’s just amazing! I am working on getting some more wins and reach the credits for once.
• Triangle Strategy - Got back into this for a little bit early in the month, but the story is getting a bit too long for my taste, I think there’s some interesting stuff coming that I hope will lead to some great actual battle gameplay to enjoy though. We’ll see.
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe - Had a couple of great online races with a friend, participated in the tournament at work and just did some local multiplayer races a few times.
• Super Mario 3D World - This is really enjoyable lately, the levels go by so quickly, it feels like a chaotic speedrun every time! Coudh multiplayer of course.
• Nintendo Switch Sports - I haven’t played it as much now, but still did a few rounds of bowling and golf.
• Ultimate Chicken Horse - We finally unlocked all of the available areas, still having fun unlocking costumes and the like, and just playing when we can.
• Worms W.M.D. - Did a few 6-player battles the other day, it’s just Worms, simply perfect. I recently found out fans hate this one? Apparently it has plenty of unadressed bugs, but they don’t bother normie players like us.
• Runbow - Just an 8-player platformer game that I wish had a bit more cooperation built into it, still pretty fun though, even if as soon as someone goes too fast the rest of us die.
• Spelunky - We did a couple of runs and even reached the jungle a few times, but we are all too noob, except for the one friend (not me) who carries the whole team until we accidentally push him off a ledge.
• Balatro - We did another multiplayer run, and we somehow managed to reach ante 7 at last. However, we ended up selling one of our main jokers, and all of our plays became worthless, a sad day.
• Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade - Managed to beat chapter 27, and immediately stopped playing for the rest of the month. At least I’m close to beating the story!
• Astro Boy: Omega Factor - Made a bunch of progress for this one, the story just got surprisingly interesting for a beat’em up platformer, still have some more levels to beat it!
• Final Fantasy VII - Got back into it mid-way through the month, returned to a familiar area after finding some clues of where to go. Now I just need to look for what I need.
• Ys The Oath in Felghana - Got to the final dungeon, unlocked a door, got into a boss fight and grinded for a bit. I still haven’t returned to it, I really should though, I’m so close to the end!
• One Step from Eden - Got it as a gift a while back, have played it for an hour or so. The lack of story is making me lose interest on it, I don’t know if I’ll keep going.
• Dicey Dungeons - Since I got this one on my phone, making progress on it has been much easier.
• UFO 50 - I played just a tiny bit of a couple games in this collection, it’s pretty fun, but I haven’t given it enough attention just yet. There’s so much to play!
• Ridge Racer 2 - I moved on to the sequel of Ridge Racer since it’s literally the same game but with more race tracks, music and vehicles. I am still not at the same point of the original, but I think I’ve raced just as much!
• Faster Than Light - I played a run of this gem and managed to get quite far, however I was invaded and my crew perished in action. They have already be forgotten, but anyway.
• Karmazoo - I am still bitter that the main mode of this game is not available for local multiplayer, but the party mode is pretty fun! I should try going solo one of these days, as it’s quite praised from what I’ve seen.

Reading

• The Space Merchants - Read up to chapter 6. Not enough progress was made, even though I am still interested on the story, I really need to get a grip.
• Cibola Burn - Read up to chapter 8. Book 4 of The Expanse. Finally started this one with my book club, I have surpassed the progress made on the previous book, but I’m still lagging behind some of my fellow club members! Loving it so far.

Manga

• Usogui - Read up to chapter 25. This is a gambling manga, where the protagonist has a thrill for betting away his life on dangerous endeavours and getting away with it. Reminds me of Kaiji somewhat, but in this case the protagonist is more of a prodigy that fell from grace in the gambling world, and is trying to climb back up. Pretty hype.
• Hunter x Hunter - Read up to chapter 358. Progress slowed down by a ton! After all, the current arc seems to require quite a bit of setup and it’s been slower than the previous ones, but I am still looking forward to it, and will try to read it more. The fact that I’m closer to the current chapters is also a bit annoying, as the manga is on hiatus at the moment.

Anime

• Mashle: Magic & Muscles - Finished season 1. This little show was pretty funny most of the time, my sister was dying with the Harry Potter parodies and references, and the gags managed to land everytime for us. It wasn’t very deep or tought provoking, but it is good for what it is.
• Pluto - Finished. Now this is a masterpiece. Pluto is absolutely incredible. Superb animation, fantastic soundtrack and sound design, incredible character development, thought-provoking scenes and writing. This was just amazing, it’s probably the best science fiction anime I’ve seen in a while.
• Sakamoto Days - Watched episode 1. I think I might stick with the manga on this one, my sister wasn’t that impressed by it, and the action, while decent, doesn’t reach the heights of the manga panels.

Movies

• Mickey 17 - A science fiction dark comedy that I found rather strange, I didn’t dislike it but it also made me feel like a lot of stuff could have been better, it was bizarre to watch and quite surreal. The story is about a guy who sells himself as a disposable human that can be regrown and transfer his memories to new bodies time and time again. He’s used for experiments and the like, until one day he gets regenerated while his previous self is still alive. So now there are two of them. There’s also some weird alien worms in an icy planet and other stuff. Not my favorite movie at all, but I kinda think it deserves a watch.
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm - Probably the best animated Batman movie? one of the best Batman movies at all, watched it on a whim and it was absolutely incredible.
• Avengers: Infinity War - I don’t know why I felt like revisiting this one. Happy to say it holds up, absolutely incredible movie that works amazingly as a standalone somehow. Thanos is still brilliant, and mad.

Device Usage

I use ActivityWatch to track my device usage on my laptop and my phone, and KOReader’s built-in reading stats as well.

From this month onwards, I have decided to add the difference between app usage with last month’s, just to see where I’ve improved a little easier.

Laptop

I used it for a total of 60 hours!

• Zen Browser for 34 hours
• Alacritty for 10 hours
• Signal for 3 hours
• Firefox for 2 hours
• GIMP for 1 hour

Phone

I used it for a total of 174 hours (+7).

• YouTube for 50 hours (+2)
• Fennec for 20 hours (+12)
• Tusky for 18 hours (+9)
• Discord for 16 hours (-8)
• WhatsApp for 15 hours (+4)
• Signal for 13 hours (+5)
• Mihon for 7 hours (-18)
• Dicey Dungeons for 4 hours
• Markor for 3 hours

Kobo

I read for a total of 5 hours.

• Cibola Burn: 4 hours, 133 pages
• The Space Merchants: 1 hour, 63 pages

This is day 43 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

I listened to…

• Into The Aether for 27.4 hours. Listened to every episode released this month, and a few more from the backlog. Every Wednesday is a bit of a treat, it’s almost the extra push I need to finish the work week at this point. Fanstastic show.
• Welcome to Night Vale for 11.6 hours. I no longer sleep listening to it because I made a music playlist to play every night instead! Still listen at the gym and some nights though.
• Retro Game Time Machine for 9.9 hours. Always a joy to listen to, they did a top 5 games of the year as well which I listened here and there during the month.
• Eye of the Duck for 5.9 hours. They did a series on alien invasion movies, their episode of The War of the Worlds was great but I was a bit annoyed they barely mentioned the book at all!
• Dungeons and Daddies for 4.3 hours. I lost the thread a little bit and I haven’t had as much time to focus on it sadly, still lots of fun.

Movies

• Mufasa. A prequel to The Lion King we went to watch because it was free, not as bad as I expected actually, but it would’ve been better animated.
• Godzilla x Kong. Fun time, Godzilla is pink and Kong has a metallic fist now, turn off brain, big monster fight, cool.
• Back in Action. Typical Netflix spy movie where they hide and retire and have kids and they are on the run now. The kid character was cool, he enabled 2FA on his devices.
• Shrek 2. Shrek 2 is the perfect sequel, the teaser for Shrek 5 sucks.

Reading

• The Space Merchants I read to chapters of the book, I like it and wanna read more, cool sci-fi stuff with a guy who is bad since he works in an advertising company that basically runs the world now. They wanna colonize Venus and make people want to go there with ads, even though it’s a wasteland and barely worth it, sounds familiar?

Manga

• Hunter x Hunter is all I’ve been reading this month, I don’t think I touched any other manga this month. I am in chapter 328 now, which means I also got to read the Chimera Arc Ant, and that was really one of the most intense and subverting arcs I have ever read in a manga. I really don’t think JuJutsu Kaisen compares at all, they are in completely different leagues. All the previous arcs were great as well, but Chimera Ant really surprised me. 10/10 you should read it from the beginning.

Anime

• Mashle: Magic and Muscles is a fun time, it’s a total parody of Harry Potter merged with the style of One Punch Man. A ridiculously strong guy with zero magic abilities joins a magic academy and tries to become the top student there, a “Divine Visionary.” It’s pretty funny and has some cool action sequences, it doesn’t take itself very seriously which I like, it’s a nice time.

Gaming

Do I really have to write about every single game I have been playing? It’s just too many, check my weeknotes for this month and you’ll see, I will list most and just write about a couple others.

Finished

• TOEM. This was a short little game about taking pictures and fullfiling tasks given to you by people, which grant you stamps that let you travel to other places and take more pictures. The goal of the game is to travel to a mountain and take a picture at the top to show your grandma.

  It was a charming cozy game with a nice artstyle and music, I played it on my laptop this time around, and it was a very nice time.

• God of War: Chains of Olympus. This is a game I started ages ago on my PSP, and since I have been doing a lot of PSP gaming recently, I returned to this game and got to the end of it. Honestly, a fantastic handheld experience that is still impressive today.

Ongoing

• Dragon Quest XI: I played a bunch of this early in the month but lost a bit of steam simply because other games showed up. I am loving it every time I play it and I can’t wait to return to it in March.
• Ys: The Oath in Felghana: I made a bunch of progress on this game and I’ll definitely beat it in March, I only have one dungeon left so I figured I would try other games in the mean time. The combat, the story, the music, everything just works and it’s like, the quintessential action rpg experience! Except flying enemies.
• Triangle Strategy: I returned to this game after ages late in February, and I like it, it just has too much story bits and not enough action moments where I can play and do fun stuff. I like it much more now and have gotten some new characters to play with, I will try to make progress and experience more battles.
• Brave Story: New Traveler: Started it on a whim after it was mentioned on ITA, I had already played it before but I didn’t even get to the gameplay part. Turns out it plays like Dragon Quest does which is, like a traditional turn based rpg. It’s simple and it plays great and it’s not super unfair or difficult, I’m liking it.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade: I beat a few chapters this month and it’s been pretty fun to just open my SP, play a few turns and then do other things, it’s a great gameplay loop that gets interrupted everytime I have to start a new battle and get ready, that’s the only bit I dislike which it’s a bit weird honestly. Still, good time.
• UFO 50: A friend gifted it to me in the middle of the month and I have played like 4 games of it, it’s fun and super interesting but didn’t get into it as much as I’d hoped. I want to clear some other games before I return to it. Super promising though.
• Dungeon Antiqua: A retro dungeon crawler that looks like Final Fantasy, enjoyable, fun and quick. I haven’t really played a lot of it yet, only an hour or so, but I like the simple gameplay loop and it plays just great on my Anbernic SP, since it’s a python game!
• Super Mario Bros Wonder: I returned to this one day on a whim and completed the Lava world before Bowser’s final world, I advanced a few levels too and completed some with missing collectibles. Just a great time.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: I started this over on PC and really like some of its QOL features, but I decided to continue on my PSP and made some progress in a few ongoing quests. I should return to it but other games kept me busy.
• Dredge: Played a couple hours so far, interesting game and mechanics, weirdly relaxing yet scary. Playing it on my Laptop too hoping it captures me like TOEM did, even if they are totally different genres. I will play it a bit more soon.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum: I had this on Epic Games and played it via Heroic, it was a bit hard to get it too run because but no problem once I figured it out, I wanted to see how good it was and I think I will play it more later in the month.
• Mario vs Donkey Kong: When I don’t feel like playing a JRPG, Mario vs Donkey Kong is there, a couple levels a couple times a week! Super fun and simple puzzle platforming.
• Ridge Racer 2: After the great time I’ve had with Ridge Racer, the sequel turns out to be the same game but with more tracks to choose from. So I decided to hop on to this one and keep going!
• Minecraft. Played it early in the month with some friends in our personal server, simply Minecraft.
• Ember Knights: Returned to this late in the month with a new DLC with some new enemies and boss fights, doing 4 player co-op was very fun, we got to the very end but the final boss beat us. We unlocked some new power-ups though which was nice, will probably play it again tomorrow.
• Axiom Verge: Only played like 40 minutes and I’m struggling to figure out if I should buy this on Switch or try and port it to my Anbernic SP. I want to play it properly one of these days…
• LocoRoco: I only played one level of this one and I think it’s fun, a PSP exclusive to this day! Super cute and charming too, we’ll see how it goes.
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Played online and with friends a few times, there’s a tournament going on at work too, so far so good, but my friends have managed to beat me more often which makes me feel old.
• Mario Party 3: Played a single match with some friends on NSO and that was a blast. CPU Wario beat us of course, evil stuff.
• Tyrant’s Realm Demo: A souls-like roguelike that I tried for a bit, honestly quite nice, I have never played Dark Souls but now I’m considering it, not right now though.

Device usage

Laptop

I used my laptop for 61 hours. There’s a lot of gameplay time that ActivityWatch didn’t really pick up though, I wonder what’s up with that, maybe Steam’s Big Picture mode kills it or something, so, some of the time is obtained from Steam’s Time Played instead.

• Firefox for 32 hours
• Alacritty for 7 hours
• Minecraft for 3 hours
• Steam for 2 hours
• TOEM for 7 hours
• Dredge for 1 hour
• Batman: Arkham Asylum for 41 minutes
• Dungeon Antiqua for 40 minutes
• UFO 50 for 34 minutes
• Trails in the Sky for 31 minutes
• Tyrant’s Realm for 27 minutes

Phone

I used my phone for 167 hours

• YouTube for 48 hours
• Mihon for 25 hours
• Discord for 22 hours
• WhatsApp for 11 hours
• Tusky for 9 hours
• Firefox for 9 hours
• Signal for 8 hours
• Bible for 4 hours

Final thoughts

THAT WAS A LOT OF GAMES WOAH.

But hey, they are all good games at least. Anyway, the month was crazy, work is crazy, Hunter x Hunter is crazy, it’s all crazy.

This is day 23 of #100DaysToOffload

This was a fun book of detective fiction to read along with @isa. It had been a while since I’ve read something that was not science fiction, and I was feeling like going for another work by Agatha Christie, so, I went with the second novel featuring Hercule Poirot inveatigating a rather curious case!

Basically, after getting a letter from some rich guy in France, Poirot heads over to help him solve his case, only to find out he has been murdered before he could get there! So, Poirot decides to solve the mystery behind his mysterious demise and find out who did it. Things get only more and more complicated as new findings come to light and even a whole new corpse is found too…

This one was fun! The mystery was pretty cool and it left lots of clues that would make the reader be able to guess who is behind everything! But of course there’s many things that only complicate the investigation further.

The characters were rather fun, Hastings and Poirot are as charming as ever, there’s a bit of a Sherlock Holmes parody detective too that gives us plenty of misinterpreted clues and hypotheses, and a couple of interesting female characters as well that added to the story.

I think I liked this one more than the first one, which had so many names it was hard to track who was doing what. Everything was more understadable to me this time, but I guess it helps that I was ready for it from the start.

To read this I used my Kobo and a physical copy I got from a book fair in my state, my sister got it for me while I was at work, and it was a pretty nice paperback edition! It had a pretty neat font too I gotta say.

Anyway, nice book! I am looking forward to read some more of Poirot’s adventures.

This is day 17 of #100DaysToOffload

I have managed to read a total of 15 books this year! I managed to surpass my goal of 12 books, which I set for myself starting the year, by finishing 3 books in December.

For 2024, I really tried to bring lots of variety to all of my reading, both inside different types of science fiction, as well as other genres outside of it, at least for one of the books.

To add to this, I had decided to only read a single book per author, something I kept true for most of the year, until I decided to read The Expanse with my book club later in the year, and ended up finishing 2 books of the series.

Almost all of the books I read this year have been quite good! A defining factor for me to enjoy a book is, if it makes me think about things from a different light, which is something that pretty much all of the books I read accomplished.

Starting the year, I was using my phone to read books, something I had been doing for years already, with the Librera reader app, since it’s super customizable and open source, I used and enjoyed it for years now, and it is still great!

However, halfway through the year, I got myself a Kobo Clara 2E—a month or so before they released their Color models, but such is life sometimes—and completely moved all of my library and reading to it. Dune was the first book I read on it, although I started it on my phone.

Almost immediately after getting my Kobo reader, I installed KOReader on it, just to have more features and customization over what Kobo offers by default, it is now my favorite way to enjoy my reading on the go, without notifications, without distractions.

The books I read

All the books I’ve read this year have been reviewed already, but I will still share some thoughts that have been lingering in my mind since then—and which books haven’t really left an impact on me since then.

Ender’s Game

The first book I finished, but I actually started in 2023, it was a very good read, and a truly fantastic experience, I enjoyed the characters, the premise and the action sequences. It was very interesting to read a more military side of sciene fiction, which is something I hadn’t done in a while, pretty much since I last read the Halo novels!

I have to say, since I saw the movie, the ending was less strong than it could have been, I am interested on reading the rest of the series to see how it develops—that’s something I’m going to say a lot with all the series and trilogies I’ll mention here.

Childhood’s End

My second book, is probably one of the ones I still think about to this day. Childhood’s End is amazingly good, the utopia featured there, the quotes, the concepts, they still linger in my mind after all the books I read since then! Aliens that come to Earth in peace, with the goal of basically saving Humanity from itself, by stoping war, illness and hunger, achieving world peace.

It a product of its time, but that doesn’t make it dated, for the most part. It is interesting to see this book in context, just a few years after World War 2 ended. The mystery behind the aliens, their real goals and the struggle of Humans to stay creative and seek true freedom are all pretty interesting, and the ending is bonkers. I don’t want to say much more to not spoil it though. Give it a read, it is fantastic.

Out of The Silent Planet

I wanted to see what C.S. Lewis could do in the sci-fi genre with his not so known Cosmic trilogy, starting with Out of the Silent Planet. I was not dissapointed. It is about some guy who ends up abducted by some crazy scientists that aren’t very friendly, he escapes and finds himslef in an alien planet, with different alien races living in harmony.

The peace and the behavior of alien life on this one is very different to what Childhood’s End, Ender’s Game and many of the books after show, also, the more classic style given the age of this novel was kind of nice, it also references H.G. Wells so I love it just because of that. Really, I liked it, and I want to read the other two books next year, which I’ve heard are even better.

I have to say I loved the acknowledgement of the work of H.G. Wells for science fiction, and how this is written in the style of a secret writing by someone who actually went on this crazy trip. Wonderful book.

Cadáver Exquisito

Back to Earth, in some dystopian future, Cadáver Exquisito, or Tender is the Flesh is a about a dystopian world where animal meat is now inedible, making human consumption—the consumption of humans—the only way to eat meat safely, and people love meat so, it becomes accepted. The legality and conflict about it isn’t the focus, it becomes the status quo, and the story focuses on someone in charge of a processing plant.

Many events happen, showing different facets of the state of this world. All the characters suck. It is shocking, disgusting, and somehow I read it in a day.

The Undefeated

Back in space, in a future where slavery is OK—now that they created a species built to be perfect servants, The Undefeated is about a journalist who gained inter-planetary fame during her lifetime, she is now older and goes to her planet of birth, to reflect back on her youth, her choices and how despite it all, she refused to see the elephant in the room.

Now they are back for justice, and revenge. I remember loving the style and the prose, it felt quite melancholic and thoughtful, good read but I can’t say I think about it a lot. It was just too short and left many themes unexplored, still a good quick and short read.

Dune

What can I say about Dune? this book was fantastic from beginning to end, even after watching the movies, I found myself immersed in that world, in the sands of Arrakis. I think it was a pretty interesting journey, full of strange moments, spirituality, religious themes and warnings. It doesn’t read like any other book I’ve read.

I didn’t find it boring or tedious myself, honestly, maybe the movie helped to imagine the locations and follow the thread better. It is an absolute classic for a reason. It was a very good read, I loved it!

The Palace of Eternity

Despite its short length, The Palace of Eternity does space opera and world building in a fantastic way, achieving more with less. Humanity is at war against aliens, and they are winning, the only advantage we have, is that we figured out interstellar travel, and they have not.

The story itself takes place in a planet away from the conflict, filled with artists and creative minds. There are plot twists after every chapter that hooked me everytime, there’s some cosmic scale stuff later on as well that I found amusing. It has some questionable moments that show its age, but overall I really enjoyed it.

The Machine Stops

Speaking of novels that didn’t age very well, The Machine Stops is not one of them. This is a dystopia that predates 1984, Brave New World and the rest. In this short story, technology is so advanced people don’t have to leave their room, they have button to do everything, infinite artificial music, instant communication, and every need fulfilled, making them completely dependant on The Machine.

I found this premise to be extremely on point with how modern life is lived by most people, that I really couldn’t believe this book is more than 100 years old. This is a must read less than 40 pages long. It’s predicted so much it’s scary.

A Mysterious Affar at Styles

Feeling like reading a mystery, I went with The Mysterious Affair At Styles. This is one of the classic detective stories from Agatha Christie, and I remember really liking it! Even if I was very confused some times and I had never seen so many character introductions at once. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I gained quite a lot of interest in Poirot as a character as well, and this year I already started The Murder on the Links, the second book of his series!

Hothouse

Back to more thought provoking stories, Hothouse was an incredible journey. Two million years in the future, humans devolved and survive in a world that stopped rotating, one side facing the sun forever, filled with sentient vegetal life and dangers on every corner.

This book does world building like nothing else here. The creatures, the environments, the moment to moment narrative, the past, the future. This book was a great read that made me wonder like a kid. It is the first book I read in the dying earth sub-genre, and I really want to try some more books of this style, and more works by Brian W. Aldiss.

Leviathan Wakes

And now Leviathan Wakes, what a start for a series. I absolutely loved it! A space opera where humans conquered the solar system, and yet they are technologically outdated. Despite the length, it was a complete page turner, with actual characters that I cared about, a detective story, a war unfolding, cosmic horror, and everything in between.

It’s like the perfect science fiction movie in book form and I want to get popcorn when I read it. Despite all that, it was actual depth and great moments, I don’t know how they managed to pack so much into it, I guess the page count helps. But it’s great.

Black Easter

I started Black Easter on a whim, looking for something to add more variety to the books I was reading, and I found this. In a reality where magic is real and studied with diligence, the most powerful black magician is contracted by an arms dealer to set free all the demons from hell for a single night. A rather unique premise where magic is treated as science and spells must be followed like chemical formulas. A great concept with a a style of writing that can be a bit boring, but I still read it pretty quickly and enjoyed it a lot.

Caliban’s War

The sequel to Leviathan Wakes, I really liked how this one explored life on Earth just a tidy bit more as well as the political climate between all the ruling structures in the solar system. The conflict itself was also fantastic and I really enjoyed the new characters and points of view added to the story. It’s a great continuation and I am going to read the 3rd book, Abbadon’s Gate, very very soon.

Farewell, Earth’s Bliss

I finally had some vacation time from work, and for some reason I decided I would try to read another book before the year ended and the holidays started. And what better book to read than one about a bleak future where criminals are sent to a Martian settlement and they live in the worst possible environment, full of dangers and impossible odds, and of course, other humans that suck.

Even if this book isn’t optimistic at all, and has lots of heavy topics, I still found the commentary and the characters quite interesting. A great read I finished in a a couple days.

Roadside Picnic

Last but not least, I decided to read my first piece of Russian Science Fiction, which happens to be the most popular of them. This book was fantastic as well. I’ve read many first contact stories at this point, and this one is one of the most unique ones. Aliens came and went without further to do, and humans are utterly confused because of the mess they left behind.

I just reviewed this one so I can’t say much I haven’t already say, I think it’s a masterpiece of the genre, a wonderful book that I’ll probably revisit soon enough. This one is required reading as well.

Some stats

So, in the end…

• My longest book was Caliban’s War .
• My shortest book was The Machine Stops.
• I read around 4,293 pages across 15 books!
• I finished a maximum of 3 books a month, in April and December.
• My average page count was 316 per month.
• The shortest span to read a book was 1 day, with Cadaver Exquisito.
• My longest span to read a book was 142 days, with Hothouse.

You can check my Bookwyrm’s Year In The Books if you want some stats but prettier.

Final thoughts

I am very happy with that. Some short, others rather long, but they were all great.

For 2025, I want to read at least another 15 books, I am already planning some future reads, such as continuing my read of Agatha Christie’s work, as well as The Expanse series, there’s some other new (to me) books I want to read like Children of Time and I also have some interest in reading something by Ray Bradbury. We’ll see what the future brings!

This is day 2 of #100DaysToOffload

December was fun! I had vacation time, the first time I’ve been on vacation since I started working, it has been pretty fun! I went to visit my family in Veracruz, in a small town there where my grandparents on my dad’s side used to live. I visited aunts, uncles, cousins and such, I had a great time.

Besides everything mentioned here, I also played quite a bit of tabletop games, such as Mexican Train, Exploding Kittens, Uno and the like.

Podcasts

This month was pretty similar to November, mostly listening while asleep and such so, yeah…

• Welcome to Night Vale for 20.2 hours. Sleep lots of random episodes, good stuff.
• Retro Game Time Machine for 10.3 hours. I have to admit I don’t even remember which episodes of this I listened to, oops.
• Into The Aether for 9.3 hours. Apparently the new Indiana Jones game is insanely good, aldo Dragon Quest III is the only game tempting me to buy it, I will probably fall for it.
• Dungeons and Daddies for 5.6 hours. The story is getting fun again now that a new character showed up and is so chaotic and fun I love this.
• Trash Taste for 4.9 hours. Their episode rambling on tabletops games with ProZD was absolutely fun!
• Late Night Linux Family for 4.8 hours. Just the regular news and events and developer linuxy things.
• NPC: Next Portable Console for 4.4 hours. Listening to Brandon and friends talking about handhelds is always fun, there’s something about the audio that is really bothering me though, like white noise or something.

  Manga

  Lots of manga was read this month, it was really nice to have during my vacation trip.

• Death Note: I completed this manga in a matter of days, it is a very interesting story where we follow Light Yagami, as he finds a notebook that will kill any person whose name’s written in it. Yagami is an ace student and intends to bring justice and rid the world of evil, until L, the greatest detective, decides to find the culprit of these mysterious murders. This was a fantastic read! I understand why it was so popular back in the day, kinda want to watch the anime next. I also read all the official short stories.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: I read lots of JJK this time, up to chapter 224, the action is great but I really think that a lot of things are happening just for the sake of the plot without much justification, some things are explained afterwards but its been a little hard to follow. Still, the action rocks!
• DanDaDan: I am still reading this and I caught up to the manga, its very fun and some crazy stuff is happening. I keep enjoying it a lot.
• Frieren Beyond Journey’s End: I also caught up to this, I just love these characters, and the stakes of the adventure are quite good, it’s thrilling, I want to keep reading!
• Kingdom: The new arc is evolving quite nicely, there’s been a bunch of politics and non-action sequences that I still enjoy, and it looks like war is upon us soon enough as well, epic.
• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou: I read a couple of chapters of it this month, always enjoyable and nostalgic somehow, I will keep reading this at my own pace, monthly mayhaps.

Movies

• Gladiator 2: We went to the movies to watch this one and I kinda liked it, it was a nice movie to eat popcorn to. We went to a really fancy cinema that was twice as expensive as normal, I don’t know why, but we could still afford it so it wasn’t that bad, besides, the seats were super comfortable, and the popcorn was really good. The movie was OK.

Gaming

Since I decided to complete 5 games before I buy one, I’ve been working hard at it to finish some games soon!

• Hollow Knight: I made a lot of progress in this game already, playing it for around 15 hours, I have enjoyed it a lot. It is quite the challenge but I still really like the atmosphere and the gameplay quite a bit.
• Hades: This game as proved to be much more fun than I thought this last two months compared to when I started it early in the year, I really should have given it a proper chance to evolve more and play it more consistently, hopefully I beat it once this month.
• I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: I keep dropping this game for long times and then playing it for 3 hours straight, I really think I’ll finish it this month though, hopefully.
• Super Smash Bros Ultimate: The usual party fighting game I play every sunday with friends, what’s not to love?
• Super Mario Bros Wonder: I played this solo for a bit throughout the month, really fun platforming, may finish it by March if I don’t forget to play it or something else shows up.
• Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury: I’ve not played it since the last time I mentioned it weeks ago, but I played it this month, so here it is.
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword: I played like 10 hours of this game this month, it is absolutely amazing, although I admit I have made a lot of use of save states, since I don’t want my characters to die.
• Final Fantasy VI: I finally returned to this game for a little bit, I also watched a 15-hour long playthrough of it that literally ended where I stopped playing, so that’s fun.

Books

My goal this year was 12 books, and I somehow managed to finish 3 in December, making for a total of 15!

• Caliban’s War: Fantastic continuation for the series, I will read the next one now that the new year has begun! Not much more needs to be said, I really enjoyed it, the world building keeps being top notch!
• Farewell Earth’s Bliss: A dark, bleak future where humans colonize Mars by sending criminals sentenced to live in isolation in the red planet, where a society of convicts has developed. An interesting work with no optimism to be found.
• Roadside Picnic: An amazing take where aliens came to Earth, and then left without further to do, abandoning a bunch of junk and scrap behind, technology beyond human comprehension. The characters move the story forward on this one, a simply fantastic read.

Device Usage

I used my phone, my Kobo and my Anbernic handheld quite a bit, the latter doesn’t have a time activity tracker yet though, but here is what my other devices say.

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 76 hours, I was away from it for more than a week, so it only makes sense!

• Firefox for 52 hours
• Alacritty for 7 hours
• Inkscape for 4 hours
• Calibre for 3 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 190 hours, I was on vacation without my computer, so it only makes sense.

• YouTube for 56 hours
• Mihon for 30 hours
• Signal for 16 hours
• WhatsApp for 15 hours
• Firefox for 14 hours
• Tusky for 13 hours
• Discord for 11 hours

Kobo

I read for 27 hours! Almost 30, but didn’t manage to

• Roadside Picnico for 7:53 hours, 484 pages
• Farewell, Earth’s Bliss for 7:14 hours, 444 pages
• Caliban’s War for 11:40 hours, 762 pages

Finishing thoughts

Anyway, after this I’ll work on the rest of posts looking back at 2024, those should be fun! I only need to dedicate some time to them, I have lots of pending tasks to complete right now…

Oh right, and this shall be day 1, of the fourth run of #100DaysToOffload!

Podcasts

This month was quite regular when it comes to my podcast listening. Also to save you time, I wil use the ✨ emoji when new or uncommon stuff shows up in my media.

• ✨ The Nerd Nest for 1.8 hours, this is a new one! I wanted to give a listen to their Game Awards episode and liked it.
• Welcome to Night Vale for 20 hours. Lots of sleeping listening to this podcast for once, I think I forgot to setup the sleep timer one day.
• Retro Game Time Machine for 7 hours. They’ve been doing some very interesting games lately, including Super Mario RPG!
• Dungeons and Daddies for 5.4 hours. I finally finished a couple of episdoes, but I’m still behind on the 3rd season.
• Into The Aether for 5.2 hours, because of course I listen to them!
• The Rest is History for 3.8 hours, I listened to some of their episodes on 1968, awesome stuff.
• NPC: Next Portable Console for 2.4 hours, just regularly scheduled episodes.

Gaming

• ✨ Hollow Knight: This is my current focus now that I finished PoP, and I want to beat it alongside my friends who are trying it too.
• ✨ Balatro: I returned to this for a bit to play with friends and talk about the best poker plays and jokers to try out.
• ✨ Lumines Remastered: I did a single run of Lumines and I managed to get into my own top 10 runs, but didn’t beat my PB yet.
• ✨ I Was a Teenage Exocolonist: I played this game for like 5 hours last week and advanced the story quite a bit.
• Dragon Quest XI: I continued playing this game for a bit more, I am really liking it but it has been displaced a little bit.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: I finished this game, I love it, check my review of it.
• Nintendo Switch Sports: I play this with friends and my sibling sometimes and it’s super fun!

Books

• Caliban’s War: I started this book and I’m on chapter 20 of it, I am really liking it, it’s the sequel to Leviathan Wakes and it’s just as good so far.
• Leviathan Wakes: I finished this book, check my review early this month.
• Black Easter: I finished this book, liked it a bit less but it was still quite good.

Manga

• JuJutsu Kaisen: I’ve read a lot of JJK, I am beyond the season 2 of the anime and it gets so good.
• DanDaDan: I am loving this and I still don’t watch the anime but I’ve seen some shorts and I might watch it soon.
• Kingdom: I read a couple chapters, always a joy and super epic.

Device Usage

I am using my phone too much, and my laptop not enough, I have uninstalled some apps recently and I hope that helps, I will probably unsubscribe from YouTube Premium honestly, and cut on my messaging as well.

Laptop

I used my laptop for 71 hours

• Firefox for 52 hours
• Alacritty for 8 hours
• Signal for 1 hour

Phone

I used my phone for 221 hours

• WhatsApp for 53 hours
• YouTube for 43 hours
• Signal for 24 hours
• Bottled for 18 hours
• Tusky for 14 hours
• Firefox for 10 hours
• Discord for 9 hours
• Mihon for 8 hours

E-Reader

I read for 17 hours, gotta go for 30 next time.

• Caliban’s War for 7:38 hours, 485 pages
• Black Easter for 3:14 hours, 156 pages
• Leviatan Wakes for 5:10 hours, 333 pages

Finishing thoughts

I made a lot of blog posts because of #WritingMonth, not my best streak at all, but still filled with variety and the start of my week notes as well.

I think I will try to focus on reading more, it’s been a little difficult to balance out my gaming and my reading, but I think there’s a way, maybe calendar blocking or something like that? I don’t know. Should I plan this out some more? maybe. For now, it is now December, and I’ll see what this month brings, lots of gifts I hope!

This is day 96 of #100DaysToOffload

I was interested in reading a novel by James Blish named A Case of Conscience, since it’s apparently one of his best works, but the page count was a bit too high to read alongside something else, and I decided to read it as my main focus later on. I saw Black Easter on my Kobo in the same folder, it had a shorter page count, I saw it wasn’t a space opera, and I went for it.

The book itself starts with a note by Blish, stating that this work was trying to represent magic and demonology in a serious and viable way, instead of the romantiziced view shown by other books of the time.

I found this interesting since the book was published in the 1950s, and I honestly don’t know what were the works that was referrencing at the time. My guess is it was something similar to the movies where a girl falls in love with a werewolf or vampire, or the way astrology is used to find the ideal partner by some people. I didn’t bother looking up more about this but feel free to share if you know about the topic.

The story itself is rather interesting. In this world, sorcery is real, the spells and summonings of demons found on real grimoires from the medieval times, actually work. There are black magicians, and a Catholic order of white magicians too. Magic has real power in this world.

A rich arms dealer has decided to contract the best black magician in the business, specialized on murders, a task fulfilled by summoning demons, who take different appearances and posess different traits, the descriptions and names of those demons are like the kind of thing you would read in Revelations, multiple heads, of lions, goats, snakes; or taking on a human form, with exentric personalities or attractive traits. There are a couple of tests first where the black magician shows its skill, and after that, the real request is made: to unleash all the demons of Hell on Earth to roam free.

Pretty much everything related to how demons are summoned and how rituals are made is taken straight out of real texts and manuscripts from medieval times, the descriptions and the way the “experiments” are performed can honestly be compared to a normal science class, but instead of dealing with chemical reactions or physics, you deal with demonology, magic and symbols.

The characters have some interesting traits, and they kind of represent different views of how they perceive magic and their own desires. Some of them want to see their world burn because they are bored, others seek pleasure and lust, others just want to learn and acquire the knowledge of the Art and others want to use it for good.

The speculation and dialogue from the characters regarding theology, demonology, religion and humanity is rather interesting. With some talk about the problem of Evil, the contradiction between black magic existing and God’s Omnipotence, the downfall of mankind and its constant back and forth between spirituality and secularization, if the demons they see with their own eyes are not real and they are all just experiencing mass hysteria, among other things.

The writing style of this novel completely clashes with the previous works I’ve read, it is not an action-filled adventure after all, and it has aged a bit in some aspects, like how people talk; the spells and manuscripts quoted are usually old style English, with thou’s and thee’s everywhere. The narration has a rather serious tone, the description of the experiments and events don’t really have flare, it’s all very scientific, like a documentary even.

Despite this, I still enjoyed it. The writing was still really good, if a bit of an acquired taste. The story progressed rather nicely, and the topic at hand was enough to keep me reading until the end. I actually flew through the final pages of the book, the way it is described is honestly not what I expected, but it makes sense, and I somehow did not expect it to end as it did.

The book has a sequel novel titled The Day After Judgement, which I’ll probably read soon enough.

Overall, I really enjoyed it for what it is, it will probably not be in my top 5 of the year, but I appreciate what it is going for and respect it a lot. It made me think about things and it kept me entertained for a few hours, I’m glad I gave it a go, and I hope I read more from the author sometime soon.

This is day 88 of #100DaysToOffload

This was a series I frequently saw compared with some of the all time classics of Science Fiction, such as Asimov’s Foundation or Herbert’s Dune. So I really wanted to give them a go for a while.

I have to admit the book was completely different to my expectations, but not in a bad way.

When I think of grandiose space opera classics, I kind of imagine humans expanding throughout the universe, faster than light travel and cosmical events we can’t comprehend, and technology advancements beyond compare. Of course these concepts are used in widely different ways in the genre.

In a lot of classic and modern works of science fiction, the style is usually filled with minimalist architecture, brand new tech, shiny spaceships and sterile, practical interiors.

In The Expanse’s Leviathan Wakes features Humanity expanding just in the Solar System, with more grimy and lived-in ships and stations, decades old future technology and patched up space stations overpopulated with humans, trying to survive another day. Of course, I think it’s pretty similar to the style of the Rebel Alliance from the Star Wars universe, during the original movies, and the Nostromo of the original Alien. There are some more technologically advanced structures and ships in the book but the overall look of the world is that of “a future with a past,” as George Lucas would say.¹

Humans are split into three main factions, Earth, Mars and the Belt, the latter refers to people living beyond the Asteroid belt in space stations and moons, and there’s a certain tension and dynamic between them. Earth is the OG, overpopulated and with older military technology, used to gravity and such. Mars has more technological advancements, since they are still making the planet habitable and need to be on the vanguard, but they are less numbers too. The Belt is conformed by a bunch of stations and satellites, some more fancy than others, constantly farming resources both space, asteroids and such. There are pirates, there are workers, people are taller, adapted to lower gravity, and there are lots of other details and nuances, and of course, space racism.

The story follows two characters and two different plotlines, interchanging every chapter. One of them is detective Joe Miller, living in a station in the Belt, the other is James Holden, the second in command of a spaceship. As the story progresses the protagonists end up involved in lots of events unfolding one after the other, eventually crossing paths, uncovering a huge conspiracy with implications that will completely revolutionize how humans see the Universe, and pretty much have to save Human civilization by the end.

Honestly, I don’t even want to say much more than that, maybe it sounds kind of standard sci-fi fanfare, but really, the story is just too good, there is are detective noir style investigations, there are space battles, there are cosmic horror elements and of some other classic science fiction tropes. There is not as much hard sci-fi explanations as I thought there would be, it is a pretty digestable adventure that borrows from a lot of genres, and sci-fi just happens to be there.

This is an absolute page turner, chapters are short and end at the perfect spot that would made me go “I can read another one” again and again. It was a pretty fast paced book that still handled multiple plotlines with grace, and the characters had lots of great moments and developments. The last 12 or so chapters were impossible to put down for me and many in the book club.

Even if this book is the start of a series, the finale ends really well, you can leave it alone and while not every question will be answered for obvious reasons, there’s definitely a lot to enjoy if you only want to read this one. But I plan to keep going.

I’ll start second one very soon, probably finish the whole thing, as I’ve heard it maintains its quality in every entry. The only reason I have not started already is that there’s a book I’m already reading, and I have to get it out of the way first—it’s a great book too, I’ll review it soon enough. 😉

This is day 86 of #100DaysToOffload

I have to say that during this month I felt like I didn’t listen to that many new podcasts, or new episodes at all, I actually didn’t reach 60 hours of listening this month, and stuck with the same shows as always.

I can’t really say a lot of new stuff or highlights about these since I mention them every month, so yeah, just the names this time

• Into The Aether for 15.1 hours
• Trash Taste for 10.6 hours
• Welcome to Night Vale for 6.9 hours
• Late Night Linus for 5.3 hours
• Retro Game Time Machine for 3.3 hours
• Unexplained for 2.4 hours

Movies

Even though I didn’t really watch any anime or shows this time around, I did watch more movies than usual, which was quite interesting to me.

• Transformers One was not a movie I expected to like enough to even write a review of it, it is actually a fantastic movie that I recommend watching at some point, both fun and tragic, and it works!
• Casino Royale was the first of Daniel Craig’s James Bond movies, and it is a very fun time! I think it was a little long, we actually watching it in two days because of that, but it was still pretty good.
• Quantum of Solace is the black sheep of these newer Bond movies, and I can see why, as the direction and fight scenes felt a lot clunkier, but I still enjoyed it for what it was.
• Skyfall regains its footing and has a lot of epic Bond movies, neither of these three movies (maybe the first one) is a masterpiece but hey, they kept me hooked so that’s good.
• Hercules (the Disney one) was started by my sister on a whime and I just kept watching it, the animation of this movie remains stellar and I wish more 2D animated movies were a thing.
• The Thing from 1982 remains one of my favorite movies due to its direction and fantastical practical effects, and even though I am not a fan of horror as a whole, just the plot and concept of this one is absolutely fantastic, frightening and scary.

Books

• Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey from the Expanse series was not finished this month, but I only have like 10 chapters left now, I have really enjoyed my time with it, and the only reason I didn’t finish it was because of procrastination and also that I didn’t want to get ahead of my book club.
• Black Easter by James Blish is a rather interesting book set in a world where magic and demonology are actually real, and I started it on a whim when I catched up on the previous book too quickly. It is rather interesting and I’ll probably finish it in November as well.

Manga

Jujutsu Kaisen was everything this time, so, not a lot else to talk about as other non-mange things entertained me more this month.

Anime

Dungeon Meshi was watched up to episode 13 with my sister, still awesome! And it got some interesting plot developments, I hope we finish it in November.

Gaming

• Fire Emblem: Blazing Blade is a tactics RPG I started playing ages ago, I recently got back into it on my Anbernic RG35XX SP and it is honestly really fun!
• Nintendo Switch Sports was a recent purchase and I’ve played with family and friends at home, it is quite a relaxing game. I am a bit annoyed that there are still many games missing from Wii Sports and Resort that did not get an update for this game, but it is how it is.
• WEBFISHING is a very interesting fishing game where you can play online with others and chat while fishing and collecting different things. It is a rather relaxing and cozy game that I feel everyone should try!
• Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition was started early in the month and has pretty much become my night time videogame, so far the early hours of the game are rather nice, and every time I load up the game it tells me how the story is going so far, I really just getting back to it, playing 30 minutes and always reaching a good point to save, or just put the Switch to sleep and continue later.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown had a lot of momentum the first week of the month, playing like 8 hours of it in just 3 days, but other things got in the way. I must finish it in Novebember, it has proven to be a fantastic game and I just keep doing other things, but it is definitely my top game of the year.
• Astroboy Omega Factor for the GBA was a little gem I didn’t expect to enjoy as much, I think I played like 3 hours of it in a day and I think I will finish it soon this month, if I remember to pick it back up.
• Monster Hunter Rise saw some action later in the month, playing online with a friend and teaching them the ways of the hunter. I look forward to playing some more during these last couple months.
• Faster Than Light was not played much, but the last week of October I managed to finally reach the final stage and I almost defeated the final ship, I only needed to do one more hit, but it wasn’t meant to be…

Device usage

For some reason, this month I decided to try an app to chat with random people around the world, I do not think the app is really good UX-wise, but it somehow kept me entertained a lot, cutting down a lot of my YouTube usage and Manga reading. As I met interesting people to chat with, I moved to other apps, I only used it like 4 hours in the last week of October and it’ll probably see less usage later on.

Regardless, here are the stats.

Laptop

I used my laptop for a total of 81 hours

• Firefox for 55 hours
• GIMP for 5 hours
• Alacritty for 4 hours
• WEBFISHING for 5 hours
• Faster Than Light for 2 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 222 hours

• Bottled for 44 hours
• WhatsApp for 30 hours
• YouTube for 30 hours
• Signal for 20 hours
• Firefox for 18 hours
• Tusky for 17 hours
• Discord for 14 hours
• Instagram for 8 hours
• Mihon for 4 hours

E-Reader

During October, I read for a total of 12:42 hours, 748 pages:

• Leviathan Wakes for 9:39 hours, 568 pages
• Black Easter for 2:30 hours, 138 pages

Final thoughts

So, yeah, a lot of my time was completely stolen by that chatting app, but I think I’m over it now, and I want to focus on both reading and gaming more this month of November, as well as writing a lot of blog posts! I actually joined #WritingMonth with the goal of 15 blog posts before the month ends.

This is day 85 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

I only listened to 69 hours of podcasts this month, compared to 96 in august, quite the opposite huh.

• NPC: Next Portable Console is a rather new podcast that talks about the world of portable gaming devices, from the cheap retro handhelds by Anbernic and Miyoo, to official ones like the PSVita, portable mods tabletop consoles and high end stuff like the Steam Deck or Ayaneo lineup, also accesories and related news in this small world. I’ve listened to every single episode so far.
• Retro Game Time Machine has been back at it for me, with episodes on Minecraft, Bayonetta, Mirror’s Edge and others, I was quite hooked this month.
• Welcome to Night Vale was my usual bedtime listening show, I actually got quite hooked on a recent arc, so I re-listened to some older episodes instead and will go back where I left off when I’m awake.
• Stuff You Should Know made some interesting episodes on glasses, the 1904 Olympic Marathon and Internet Mysteries!
• Vergecast, Late Night Linux and Into The Aether were of course part of my listening cycle.

Anime & Shows

• JuJutsu Kaisen Season 1 & 2 were introduced to me by my sister. I wasn’t really that much into it at first, but it quickly got really, really good, and we basically binged the whole thing in a week.
• Dungeon Meshi was started only a few hours ago, still during September, and we watched the first 4 episodes, it was quite an interesting premise with charming characters, so we will probably keep watching it and finish it during October.

Movies

• JuJutsu Kaisen 0 was a requisite before going into season 2, and boy am I happy to have seen it, it is a prequel to everything going on during the anime show, but the backstory is quite awesome! Great action sequences and fun anime moments, and an epic setup for things to come in the series.
• Officer Black Belt is a korean action film about a martial artist who fights against predators and abusers, becoming a martial arts officer. The film tackes some serious issues, and it’s one you can’t judge by its horrible cover on Netflix, it has a weird tone and comedy sometimes, but the action is genuinely great and kept me entertained for a bit.

Books

Behold, books are upon us.

• Hothouse was finally finished by me, after like a month of hiatus due to gaming and manga and stuff. Anyway, I was really amazed by this book, everytime I picked it up I was inmersed by its world and environments, I highly recommend it.

• Leviathan Wakes is the first book in the Expanse series, and I’m currently in the process of reading it! I am in a small book club now and I’m flying through its pages like nothing else before, having to commit with other people helps a lot too, and it’s nice to talk about what’s going on. The book follows multiple plot lines masterfully, and has quite a great world I’m very invested in very much.

Manga

• JuJutsu Kaisen was something I started as soon as I finished season 2, I actually went back to the beginning again, and it is really cool to see how those pages were brought to life in the show. I am enjoying the art and the panelling quite a bit on this one.
• JuJutsu Kaisen 0 is actually the oneshot that started it all. I think the movie is much better, but it’s nice to see the early design of some of the characters, very cool stuff.
• DanDaDan is so so close to finally get its anime released, so I’m doing my best to catch up with it, if only JJK hadn’t shown up, I am only 20 or so chapters behind, so that’s good!

Gaming

I bought quite a lot of games last month for my Switch, but I’ve only really played the following:

• Faster Than Light is something I didn’t expect to like as much, but it did, and now I’ve played it for like 11 hours in 2 days, it is a great game with simple mechanics that are hard to master. I am really having a fun time with it and probably will for a while longer.
• Monster Hunter Rise saw a lot of action this month, I have done quite a bit of high rank quests, but I didn’t play as often as before this month. Still a fair bit though.

Device Usage

Laptop

I used my computer for around 40 hours

• Firefox for 15 hours
• Faster Than Light for 11 hours
• Alacritty for 5 hours
• Inkscape for 4 hours

Phone

I used my phone for 185 hours

• YouTube for 48 hours
• WhatsApp for 26 hours
• Tusky for 17 hours
• Signal for 14 hours
• Discord for 12 hours
• Mihon for 10 hours
• Firefox for 9 hours

E-Reader

I finally had enough usage time for my Kobo to be worth sharing.

During September, I read for a total of 11:20 hours, 737 pages:

• Leviathan Wakes for 5:48 hours, 330 pages
• Hothouse for 5:07 hours, 384 pages

Finishing thoughts

I am happy to finally be reading more lately, it is always nice to see progress being made on that part, but I have also enjoyed a lot of the gaming and the anime I’ve watched, so it is cool to be able to do all that. Podcasting + Faster Than Light will probably be a killer combo during October, so we’ll see!

This is day 77 of #100DaysToOffload

Earth, two million years into the future, stopped rotating, half of it is in light, and the other half, in eternal darkness.

Vegetal life reached the peak of the food chain, humanity has devolved to tribalism and has lost most of its intelligence, spending most of their time surviving in the upper levels of a giant tree forest that covers half of the planet.

This book describes a completely alien world, where the Sun’s radiation has evolved plant life in unimaginable ways. No one is safe, and everything that moves is trying to eat you.

The descriptions, the environments, the prose in this book was mindboggling from start to finish. Many times my mind truly get to work trying to comprehend many of the events and concepts exposed here, but it was never a chore, I just wanted to fully experience what was going on, trying to picture how the creatures and the landscapes would be like in this dystopian future.

At first it kinda felt like there was no plot at all, and the characters were all too simple-minded to be interesting to me. However, this quickly changes as a series of events start to unfold and it just keeps going. This story is a journey of discovery and survival. Characters will die left and right, and the question of how things ended up like that will pop up quite a bit. But such is the way of life.

This is not a super fun story, or high stakes and action packed. However, it is not boring, and the more I learned about the world and how it worked, and the more the characters were faced against, only led me to want to keep turning pages, filled with interesting and inventive ideas, that I would never imagine someone could come up with.

Spaceships and faster than light space travel? sure. Alien life and lasers? sure. But the almost lovecraftian vegetal life and the different wildlife and interactions that can be found here are really, really incredible.

I think this is a novel everyone should read, it tackes a variety of topics, but I don’t know if I could say it was the most thought-provoking thing ever, in fact, I barely highlighted any sentences or ideas that I could reflect on compared to Dune or Childhood’s End, but it for sure provoked my mind to imagine, and the ending left me thinking, what would I have done?

This is day 75 of #100DaysToOffload

Podcasts

I listened to 96 hours of podcasts! Although a fair amount of that was while asleep.

• Trash Taste had some really entertaining episodes recently so of course I listened to some of them!
• I listened to many of the Late Night Linux Family shows, more than usual for some reason.
• The Vergecast was also really interesting lately, with their episodes about Gemini and Google being a monopoly
• Stuff You Should Know was indeed awesome
• Darknet Diaries was left behind for a bit lately, but not anymore
• Into The Aether had some fun stuff, but they took a break for a bit so, yeah.
• Dungeons and Daddies was also fun, I am following season 3 as episodes come out.
• Relatos de la Noche remained on top, as my new favorite for night time listening.

Anime & Shows

• Dr. Stone was pretty unexpected, but I chose it on a whim and I basically caught up with it and now I’m just waiting for the time a new season, probably the last one, comes out. The plot is quite interestin; in a world were humanity got turned to stone, pretified for millenia, and the elements deteriorated every building and sight of its existence, leaving almost nothing left. By sheer luck, a teenage scientist breaks out of his petrification, and decides to figure out how to undo petrification and build back civilization with the power of science!

• Loki season 2 was quite the ride, I watched it with a friend in 2 days and it was pretty entertaining, I really like the timey-wimey stuff in it. There were some great developments but my biggest take-away is that I want to watch Doctor Who again.

Manga

• Sakamoto Days made a return with all of its might. I had forgotten how crazy it went with a lot of its fight scenes. I appreciate the creativeness of a lot of its panels and how things developed, it got me hooked until I catched up to its latest chapter. There are a ton of stunning visuals here and I can only hope the anime for it—they definitely have took their time releasing one—manages to do it justice. I am on chapter 178.

• DanDaDan is got a lot of reading time from me as well, but I still a few dozen chapters until I catch up with it. Still, the arc I read was totally crazy like always, but a bit smaller in scale. Despite this, the new character is definitely among my favorites now. I am on chapter 129 so far.

• Creature! is a manga I started a while ago and that I found totally amusing to read, it wasn’t good in the same sense as SD or DDD, but its art was too good for a story that kept going all over the place. I kinda want to find more stories like this of humans surviving some world full of unsurmountable creatures and dangers in some apocalyptic world that also has a serious tone, other than Attack on Titan I guess, which also evolves into something different but in a better way.

• How to Grill Our Love is maybe my favorite cooking manga—a.k.a. the only one I’ve read—with a wholesome marriage in the middle of it all. I don’t know what else to say, its a pretty comfy read and I want to it all the food being cooked in it.

Gaming

• Final Fantasy VI has been really enjoyable, I played a ton of it last month, pretty much a third of the story is complete.
• Monster Hunter Rise has also seen a revival, I am almost done with the village quests and I’ll be doing some of the Guild quests soon enough. I really want to get some new gear though, like the Nargacuga set and some more elemental weapons.
• Trails in the Sky FC saw some progress early in the month, but it stalled for a bit later on, I’ll still try and return to it since its been super enjoyable.

Reading

• Hothouse by Brain W. Aldiss is a book I returned to after a while focusing on gaming instead of reading. The story has evolved in unexpected ways and I want to finish it quickly in September to focus on another book!

Device usage

Laptop

I am not sure why but I think I kinda borked my ActivityWatch data for this month, I don’t really know what happened exactly, but I’m fairly angry right now…

Phone

I used my phone for 223 hours which is kind of horrifying but welp.

• Youtube for 52 hours (help)
• Facebook for 25 hours (help)
• WhatsApp for 20 hours (help)
• Aniyomi for 19 hours (Dr. Stone lol)
• Tusky for 17 hours
• Discord for 15 hours
• Firefox for 12 hours
• Mihon for 11 hours
• Signal for 9 hours

E-Reader

• I read Hothouse for for 4 hours and 8 minutes, 204 pages

Final thoughts

Anyway, I lost my laptop data but I am quite sure I didn’t use it very much anyway. Especially because of the anime binge-watching I did earlier in the month as well as the manga and book reading. And of course, the amount of YouTube I consumed.

I guess everything always balances out and it is what it is. Regardless, have a good day everyone!

This is day 68 of #100DaysToOffload