Welcome to our To Be Read pile! Or what was recently a part of our TBR pile. Here you can find reviews of the books we meant to pick up for months, sometimes years, and have only recently gotten to read. These are reviews of books that aren’t quite new, but not quite old either.
Sum: Tales from the AfterlivesDavid Eagleman’s Sum: Tales from the Afterlives is a very short collection of stories all centering on the afterlife or what a possible afterlife may entail. This isn’t Eagleman’s only published work. He has quite a long list of nonfiction books, most of which involve Eagleman’s background as a professor of neuroscience at Standford University and CEO of a neurototech startup.
How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? Vol. 1With an anime adaptation released at nearly the same time, How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? Vol. 1 by Yabako Sandrovich and MAAM was a contemporary manga that certainly didn’t escape notice. Sakura is a teenager who loves food but doesn’t love her waistline. When she begins going to the gym, she finds student council president Akemi there as well. The duo quickly go from awkward and unsure to gym buddies under the tutelage of their trainer, Machio.
Light BoxesShane Jones’ debut novel Light Boxes is a short, vivid thing with all the trappings of a fable. Prior works of Jones’ include poetry and short stories in publications such as New York Tyrant, Unsaid, Typo, and Pindeldyboz.
The Best of the Best Horror of the Year: 10 Years of Essential Short Horror FictionEditor Ellen Datlow has curated collections of horror fiction for more than a decade. The Best of the Best Horror of the Year: 10 Years of Essential Short Horror Fiction edited by multiple Hugo Award winning Ellen Datlow is a collection of some of the best short horror found in the Best Horror of the Year collection over the past ten years.
Knightmare ArcanistKnightmare Arcanist by Shami Stovall is the first book in the young adult book series the Frith Chronicles. Shami is the author of two series, including the Frith Chronicles and The Sorcerers of Verdun.
The Moe Manifesto: An Insider’s Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming If a look at moe and anime culture is something you’re interested in, The Moe Manifesto: An Insider’s Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming by Patrick W. Galbraith is book you’ll want to flip through. Galbraith holds a PhD in Information Studies while pursuing a second PhD in Cultural Anthropology. Several other anime and manga nonfiction books have been authored by him as well.
Thicker than Blood (Zoe Bentley Mystery #3)Funny story, I received the ARC from NetGalley and I read it before the book released. In my head I thought about how to phrase my review and was ready to write it. Then, I just never wrote said review. So here we are, reading a long overdue review for a great book!
The Loot (Charlie McCabe #1)This should really go without saying at this point but I adore Craig Schaefer. When I saw this new book come out last year and I realized it was mystery, thriller and no magic I was intrigued. I mean, come on, Craig Schaefer is the brilliant man that brought us Daniel Faust, Harmony Black and the Revanche Cycle. When I saw this story didn’t hold a hint of magic, urban fantasy or anything in that realm I was curious. Obvious I’m a crime/thriller/mystery fan. So how would one of my favorite fantasy writers match up in a genre devoid of fantasy?
DownfallWhere do you go after you finish the greatest work of your life? What lies past the completion of your life’s work? How do you find it? How do you live up to the world’s expectations, let alone your own? These are the questions poised within Downfall by Inio Asano, the Eisner nominated author of the series Solanin and Goodnight Punpun. This is a single-volume manga as opposed to the much more common series length manga works.
This Is How You Lose the Time WarIf you like time travel, romance, and epistolary style novels look no further. This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an utterly fantastic novel and so very deserving of the many award nominations it’s been nominated for recently – including a Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novella (2019), British Science Fiction Association Award Nominee for Best Shorter Fiction (2019), and Ray Bradbury Prize (2020).
Welcome to Looking Glass Reads! We review speculative fiction novels as well as manga, light novels, and graphic novels.
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