Hello everyone. I am writing this between the holidays and, as usual, this will be a shorter issue. After all, the time from December 24th to January 1st is always a mess. I want to do anything other than something productive.

This year, then, it is even shorter than usual. In fact, I don’t have a lot of content. I spent this month three ways: revising my second novel-length story, doing this year’s Advent of Code, and living the Christmas atmosphere.

This left me with little time for movies, reading a lot, and exploring new music. But it was not a bad December. I was quite content, even if this December had a definitively melancholic undertone.

Anyway, now I need to think about New Year’s Eve preparations, so let’s not waste any more time.

Reading

• Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. I am annoyed. This was supposed to be right in my alley: mythology, paradoxes, and traveling in the underworld. Instead, it is a bland book that tries to be more elevated than it is. It is not fun. It is not moving. It is not interesting. It is not fantastic. The entire premise of Hell is wasted because it could have been set on Dune without any problem. So yes, I am really annoyed.
• On The Calculation of Volume 1, 2 and 3 by Solvej Balle. These are actually three small books of a Danish eptology. The premise looks stale: someone is stuck repeating the same day, like Groundhog Day or Palm Springs. But this concept is quickly expanded beyond any sensible limit. Written like the pages of a diary (there are ZERO direct dialogues), it is a moving exploration of love, family, distance, the importance of seasons, the meaning of life, the purpose of education, the ecological impact of humans, the consumption of natural resources, and… more? It is incredible how many concepts can arise from such a simple and already explored idea. The translation of book 4 should come in 2026. I’ll be waiting.
• Internet for the People by Ben Tarnoff. It suffers from the “this book may be a blog post” problem. It doesn’t add much to the discourse, and there are some wacky proposals where he never explains why they should work. As with many heavy, left-leaning pamphlets, the basic assumption is that a well-educated population and a good government will never abuse the system. But people suck, and governments do too. So I am not convinced by many arguments.

Watchlist

This month I will not highlight a couple of Movie of the Month because no one really hit that bar. As you will see, I am continuing my 007 marathon, but there are a couple of extras*.

• Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Sean Connery came back for one last round as James Bond. The result is horrendous.
• The Roses (2025). The remake of the old 80s movie. It is fun, at moments. But I think it tries too hard to be fun in some places. It is jarring.
• Live and Let Die (1973). Great theme song. I like Roger Moore as Bond even if it is a bit caricatural, pushing to eleven all the quirks. But I didn’t like it a lot. And there is a neverending chase on a boat that it is numbing.
• The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). This one I liked more. It felt less absurd, somehow, and Christopher Lee is great in it. However, I am a bit annoyed at the recurring “dumb woman agent” trope and I still cannot believe they used a goddamn cartoon slide-whistle sound effect on the best car stunt of the series.
• The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). I liked this one. It felt like a better Diamonds Are Forever with more sensible plot and less “Sean Connery disguised as a Japanese and weird stereotypical Asian stuff.”
• Moonraker (1979). They clearly wanted to milk the Star Wars cow. Not bad though. But super silly. I mean… AT SOME POINT A MAN GETS OUT OF A COFFIN, THROWS KNIVES AT BOND, KILLS THE GONDOLIER, THEN 007 TURNS THE GONDOLA INTO A MOTORIZED GONDOLA THAT BECOMES A FUCKING HOVERCRAFT.
• Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025) The final chapter. It was entertaining, and I liked that there is less obnoxious exposition than in the previous one. Still, not my favorite of the series.

I also started watching some series I missed, but I’m only on episode 2 of each. We’ll talk about them next month.

Music

Because December has been quite moderate in my music consumption (other than tuning to a Christmas songs radio), I’ll take the chance to use this space to jot down some retrospective of 2025.

It has not been particularly exciting. I also listened to massively less music. Looking at my stats, I listened to half of what I did in 2024. The cause is that massive depressive spike from March to June. I can see the dip in the graph.

Nevertheless, I thought of sharing the top 20 songs I listened to this year. But you should know that I rarely listen to the same song in a row, so 14 listens is enough to get to number one. Moreover, tracking number of plays instead of time is a problem for my beloved progressive rock tracks (which are usually 20 minutes long, so there are fewer tracks on an album). But this is what I can do.

Said that, here is the list:

• Arm’s Length — Sam Fender (14 plays)
• Runaways — The Midnight (13 plays)
• Change the Channel — clipping. (11 plays)
• Autogrill — Francesco Guccini (11 plays)
• Please Don’t Cry, You Have Swag — Hot Mulligan (11 plays)
• Season of Unrest — In Vain (11 plays)
• Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) — Kate Bush (11 plays)
• Right Back to It (feat. MJ Lenderman) — Waxahatchee (11 plays)
• Asking For A Friend — CHVRCHES (10 plays)
• Money for Nothing — Dire Straits (10 plays)
• Starburster — Fontaines D.C. (10 plays)
• Hunter’s Moon — Ghost (10 plays)
• Satanized — Ghost (10 plays)
• Deadstick — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (10 plays)
• Every Day Is Exactly the Same — Nine Inch Nails (10 plays)
• Your Idol — Saja Boys (10 plays)
• Closer — Streetlight (10 plays)
• Easy on Me — Adele (9 plays)
• House of Sleep — Amorphis (9 plays)
• You May Be Right — Billy Joel (9 plays)

And this is the same for the most-listened albums:

• Stream of Consciousness — Vision Divine (75 plays):
• Teenage Rebel — Nestor (55 plays)
• Dead Channel Sky — clipping. (54 plays)
• Ignition — Streetlight (50 plays)
• People Watching — Sam Fender (45 plays)
• Glass Houses — Billy Joel (44 plays)
• Syndicate — The Midnight (44 plays)
• Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — The Beatles (42 plays)
• KPop Demon Hunters (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film) — KPop Demon Hunters Cast (38 plays)
• Nostalgic Nintendo Beats — Bknapp (37 plays)
• Eclipse — Amorphis (36 plays)
• Tigers Blood — Waxahatchee (36 plays)
• Enema of the State — blink-182 (35 plays)
• Prequelle — Ghost (35 plays)
• Far From The Madding Crowd — Wuthering Heights (35 plays)
• Ghost of Yōtei (Original Soundtrack) — Toma Otowa (34 plays)
• SNES BEATS — Bknapp (31 plays)
• Phantom Island — King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (31 plays)
• The Twelve Temples — Quest Master (31 plays)
• Street-Legal — Bob Dylan (30 plays)

Gaming

My last logged time is one hour of Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay on November 29th. As I said in the introduction, I used very little of my time for active entertainment in December. Therefore, I have very little for the gaming section. :(

Conclusions

And that’s all for this month. Sorry for the short issue. I’ll catch up in the January post. I already have some new things to talk about that happened after I closed this one. But, for that, you’ll have to wait. :)

See you next month.