This book was perfectly timed to my paternity leave, a time where I was not actively working and could reflect on my job. The post will be a short review of the book, followed by a much longer section where I will attempt to verbalize all my thoughts on Palantir. Thoughts on my time there, what I did and didn't like, and why I am leaving. I am not writing this as some manifesto. I have been explaining to a bunch of people in my life why I have been considering leaving, and my thoughts never feel coherent, the reasons change day to day. This is for myself to reflect, and I might even continue to edit it as I remember things. I thought this book was excellent, a biography of Alex Karp, but also a tale of Palantir's history. The author was around Karp for an extended period of time, providing a lot of details that even I did not know. It lays out all the Palantir milestones over the years, many of which I remember quite clearly, but hearing about it with a bit more distance is co...
I read a lot of books this year as usual, and spanning a ton of different genres and categories. That's pretty evident in my favourites as well, as I have a book or two from most of the genres I read, and I loved them all for different reasons. Most of these will be repeats from some of my monthly favourites, but these are the ones that really stood the test of time! Here they are, in no particular order. This fantasy book from an underrated author is about Maeve, whose hands were badly burnt as a child, and so she has lost the use of them. She has spent the last ten years with her aunt and uncle, who were healers, but now she's finally returning home to the family she barely knows anymore. She feels misplaced as they're still adjusting to how she needs to do things now, but she finds solace in her youngest brother and the stray dogs she adopts. When they all disappear into the forest one day, she goes after them, and adventures begin....
This book blew me away, and that was after I already loved The Six Deaths of the Saint, the short story she wrote that inspired her to turn it into a full novel. Owen is a scholar of Dominion who studies the mythology of Saint Una Everlasting. He suddenly gets sent into the past to meet her and record her story, so he journeys with her to find the grail, knowing that in the end she will be betrayed. The central relationship in this book is gorgeous, filled with yearning and devotion. All of the characters and relationships are so rich, with fascinating character arcs. But I was equally entranced by what it was saying about mythology, nationalism, and empire. In my opinion, Harrow is just getting better and better. This is what to read if you want a book about a magical school with dragons that is actually good and cares about its world-building. In an alternate version of our world, Anequs is a young Indigenous woman living happily on her island when a dragon lays an egg and the ...
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