I completed my first book of 2026. It was The Three Body problem by Cixing Liu. The author is Chinese and the book has been translated to English. Its a three part series and there is also a Neflix series based on it and season one is complete. I watched it before reading the book and the show is actually pretty good in my opinion.
Without giving too much away, it is a Sci Fi story about earth coming in contact with an alien species. It story alternates between past and present incorporates true Chinese history and hard science concepts and quantum mechanics. These concepts make it particularly interesting to me.
Admittedly, there were parts of the story that I didn't understand because the science was a little too complicated for my understanding. One part went somewhat deep into unfolding and atom into multiple dimensions and microsomic realities and all that. I was like, "this is all very interesting, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about right now." That was only one small part of the book but I just couldn't invision what was being explained by the author.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book but my one main criticism had to do with the translation, or maybe the authors writing style? Some parts of the story felt like they were written by different authors and certain parts read very amateurish to me, like they were written by a high school student or like the book was young adult fiction. For instance, I found the chapters about the past or the scientific concepts to be well written but then some chapters in the present moment were quite poor. Dialogue was especially challenging for me and took me out of the moment at times. It lacked elegance and came across as as poorly written, or again, like a childish writing style. I think that it could be a product of it being translated but it could also be that writing good dialog is is difficult.
Overall, for me it was the concepts that made it a very worth while read and kept me engaged and coming back for more. I'm generally a slow reader but I read this quite fast relatively speaking. I completed it in only 2 weeks, whereas most books typically take me about a month to read.
Two other books I read at the end of 2025 were, The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown and a Graphic novel called Ducks. Dan Browns book was like his others in the Robert Langden series (ex. The Da Vinci Code). It was popcorn but entertaining, fomulatic but a good page turning mystery. The concept was actually pretty interesting too.
MILD SPOILER AHEAD SKIP IF NEEDED....
It was essentially where the CIAs Stargate program would be today if it had continued on after the 1990s (or maybe it actually has continued?).
Anyway it was entertaining and an easy read.
Ducks is a graphic novel about a young woman's experience of working in the Canadian oil sands. It wasn't the best graphic novel that I've read but it was a decent biographical story.
