December in Books

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

December will be remembered for the book fair, not the books I read. I bought more than ten and finished seven real ones and one unreal, leaving my pile of unread books growing.

Best

  • Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine – 5/5. If there’s one book that stood out, it was this one. An intense serial-killer thriller and the first in a series. I would have bought the second immediately if it had been available in Bulgarian.
  • The Detective by Matthew Reilly – 5/5. This was not a sci-fi, who could’ve imagined. Matthew Reilly didn’t disappoint despite that.
  • Where the Evil Dwells by Clifford D. Simak – 5/5. The Roman world turned into a fantasy world after an evil invasion. Features a troll who lost his bridge and bloodthirsty unicorns.
  • The OC by D.P. Lyle – 4/5. Another intense serial-killer thriller. However, less intense than the other one.
  • The Last Days of Kira Mulan by Nicci French – 4/5. The Nicci French duo wrote an activist thriller, where the main character was not Detective Maud O’Conner. Still a good story, but a bit heavy.

Worst

  • The Hunger of the Gods by John Gwynne – 3.5/5. A nice fantasy world with some cool characters shuffling around on a map and engaging in pointless battles. The second part of the series didn’t add much to the story and could’ve been skipped.
  • Ninja by David Walters – 4/5 but objectively, worse than the previous one. A prequel to the Way of the Tiger series that fit well with the series as a feeling, but not as well as a story.
  • Murder on Mars-4 by Snejana Tasheva – a short story gamebook. It has 20-ish episodes, 1 or 2 actual choices that didn’t impact the outcome, and a hidden episode. I didn’t enjoy the AI use, the story, the size, and the price, and only completed it because it was very short. 1/5.

This concludes my year in books, as the two books I’m currently reading aren’t even halfway through.

Happy New Year! 🍾 🥂

Fitness Goals

~ Veselin ~ 19 Comments

Sharing your goals on a public blog adds extra pressure to actually complete them. Thankfully, most of my friends and family don’t know I blog, so the embarrassment is not too big. I set some goals last year, and now is the moment to look back and see how well I did.

  • âś… I’ll try to climb Vihren (2 failed attempts in 2024) – success
  • âś… I’ll try to keep an average of 10k/day for 2025 as well but increase the difficulty by doing more hiking and less city – success for the steps and mostly for the hiking as well
  • đźš© I’ll try to add 1h/week of gym time, starting with body weight exercises like push-ups and plank. – failure

Honestly, the Vihren goal was too optimistic and we stopped doing hiking after it. I don’t know what happened with the gym idea. I did a grand total of under 1 hour of exercise. I don’t have an explanation, it was never part of my todo, had zero interest in spending time on it, and just dreaded the idea that I’m going to do that. But, reality is, that I need to find a way to do it.

So, for 2026, let’s try again:

  • 10K steps on average for the year – it is at risk because one of my knees doesn’t feel right
  • Get back to the mountain and post 3 bean soup blog posts. The mountain misses me
  • Make one pull-up

Wish me luck.

2025 in Cats

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

I counted all the cats published on this blog one by one. Placed them in a spreadsheet. Added aggregation. This is the result.

I published 382 posts before this one in 2025. 98 had cat photos or 25.6%. Many of the photos featured multiple cats. The total number of cats for the year was 151. In comparison, I also published 64 book photos and 66 screenshots.

The most catilicious posts of the year are:

Some cats from the gallery.