Books

the first two books are a series of short stories, and it gets linear after that. you'll be able to read several complete stories without having to finish an entire book to see if you like it

I listened to the audio books and thought it was great fun. You can start with the last wish, which is the collection of short stories that the first Netflix series butchered. I knew who geralt and yen were from the games, so really enjoyed the story of how they met. The stories are quite scattered world building though, so if you're not in the mood for that you could jump straight to Sword of Destiny.

I thought I was getting myself into some serious high fantasy type thing with this series, but it felt more like a Polish medieval die hard movie, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

They are great. S1 adapted some of the short stories (along with S2E1) in a okayish way, rest of S2 had nothing familiar with the books really. Books are awesome and can recommend, it's my favorite tbh.

As others have said, get Last Wish, a collection of short stories with nothing but some of the characters in common. Sword of Destiny is the same, but it begins to be interconnected. After that begins the Saga of 5 books - Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt, Baptism if Fire, Tower of the Swallow and finally Lady of the Lake. It picks up right where the Sword of Destiny left off. Then there is Season of Storms, which is a prequel.

Can't advise on translations as I didn't read them in English.

The series took out all the humour. Read the short stories and see how you like them.

The key thing to remember is the series was originally written in Polish, so if you're approaching it in English, it's only going to be as good as the translator.

Not to say there aren't EXCELLENT translations of other books. The Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Sergei Lukyanenko books are all excellent.