July 2026

July has been the month I read the most book so far this year!

I read mostly in Japanese and Chinese. Unfortunately, I’ve been stuck with one Korean book for the whole month, so I didn’t make any good progress on Korean readings during July. The last week of the month has been entirely devoted to 流星蝴蝶剑 which has been a really long and intense read.

Apart from the Korean novel, I loved all the books I read in July! Four of them have won literary prices too, I’m really happy with my decision to read prize winners. I know it’s not a guarantee I will love the book, but it’s a good starting point to pick up new titles.

Another one of these months where I would like to put several titles in the favourite book of the month slot!

First, I read authors I really love: Yen Yu, Otsuichi and Uketsu. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by these authors so far, so every time I pick a new book, I know it’s a safe pick. All three titles have been amazing, I especially loved 警察執勤中：正義的代價 . I’m continuing reading Otsuichi’s bibliography in chronological order, and 天帝妖狐 was his second published work. Finally, reading 変な地図 means that I’ve now caught up with Uketsu’s publications…

Then there are really good discoveries: the Mystery Novel Award, a Taiwanese award for fiction inspired by real criminal cases that took place at any point in Taiwan history. The novel I read by Shuei-yüeh was so great! I will continue reading those prize winners. And the winner of the Soji Shimada Mystery Award, 消失的你 by Shepherd Boy T. has been such a fantastic read, it would have been my favourite book of the month if I had not read 百年の時効…

百年の時効 has won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2026. I’m glad with my decision to stop reading them in chronological order, and instead read more recent ones. I loved this crime saga so much, and it also made me want to go back to reading some shakai-ha novels of the 60s. I could see this one being my favourite book of the year…

I’ve been slacking off with my Chinese study… I have barely made any progress on studying Genshin’s events, and there’s a lot of day when I added none or close to no new words at all…

However, I changed my flashcards display so that now, the single character view is much better. What it does is that the single characters present in the word I’m studying all get a single character card with similar meanings grouped together and all the words of my wordbook associated to them. It has been a huge improvement. I like being able to see the meaning of single characters in a word, see other words I’m learning that use this character, but most of all, being able to see the different meanings or pronunciations of this character and words associated to each of them. It’s a really recent feature, but I’m sure it will help a lot.

If my retention rate improves next month, it would be a sign that it worked.