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    I've started the new year strong with lots of 4 and 5-star reads, but not counting rereads, these were the ones that stood out as new favourites!      This was as good as I expected it to be after reading two Juliet Marillier books last year, then deciding to go back to the beginning of her most popular series, first published in 1999. It's a fairy tale retelling, and has this lush, meandering, detailed, atmospheric feel that I adored, even though a lot of those things are not usually my thing. It's also very long, but just like the other Marillier books I've read, it doesn't feel like long and deserves the page count.      Sorcha begins the book as a young girl in medieval-ish Ireland. She's the youngest in her family with six older brothers and a distant father who is always away defending his territory from the Britons. Her idyllic childhood ends when she uses her healing skills to help a young Briton soldier, and again when her father rema...

⭐7/10 Another one of the Great Courses which I mostly did because it relates to my job. CBT is kinda the LeBron of therapy - not really the best at this point but it's been around forever and is the one therapy your mom knows. I didn't love going through this but it was certainly helpful and I think I'd have enjoyed it better if it didn't feel like work. There's some interesting stuff here, and actual, proven ways of improving your mental health rather than silly self-help books or mental health tiktoks.  But that also makes it less sexy! Learning proven ways of improving your mental health is kinda boring and slow. The one-liners and controversial, one-size-fits all approaches would have been more fun to learn about, but alas, it wouldn't have made me a better social worker.  So it's good. It's a good book, but I don't think this teacher was the most engaging. I already knew the tenants of CBT and have done courses, but it was nice to ge...

⭐3/10 I kinda hated this. This is a graphic novel version of the Witcher with original stories, though it does also adapt some Sapkowski originals (though oddly some of his weakest stuff). I was so entirely convinced that I would love this that I spent my hard earned birthday money on this pretty expensive book. My birthday is in May. It took me 8 months to read this because although I hated it, I spent good money on it and had to see it through.  The main issue with this is simply the writing. Sapkowski is a good writer, but this book feels like crappy fan fiction, like someone on a Reddit board who likes Sapkowski but doesn't really understand what makes his writing special. He knows that Geralt is funny, but doesn't know what makes him funny, and so in this he tells painful jokes (here's a hint: Geralt doesn't tell jokes). I think the best parts of Sapkowski's writing is what he doesn't say, and this book tries to over-explain lore or motivations ...

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 ...

⭐7.5/10 A new Witcher book! I very rarely anticipate a new release by a living author this much, and yet I admit my expectations were a bit tempered by the fact that his last release was a bit of a dud. This is another standalone Witcher novel that follows Geralt, this time during his early days, learning the values he'd come to live by in the later novels.  I really wanted to love this book. During the early chapters, I was convinced that Sapkowski was back. Yes, the book was rather plotless and meandering, but it felt similar to those first short story collections. I admit the story lost me a little. I still think the book as a whole is good, or at least better than A Season of Storms, but this novel -- one that's rather short -- took me forever to read. It's kinda that bad cycle where the book doesn't grab you, so you take longer between sittings, so you forget some names and places, and soon you are both confused and uninvested.  Still, I think it's ...