April - Random Selection

[Stina]

Be your best random self this month! Will you assign numbers to all of your books and then run a random number generator? Will you draw a title out of a jar? Will you make your cat choose? Tell us what ingenious method you devise!

[Jacqie]

Random number generator of my TBR list came up with Lady Helena Investigates, and I usually like a Victorian mystery, so I'll probably go with that unless I decide to run the number generator again!

[Cheryl]

I see that there was once a list based on random word generator -- and it explains the concept. I may go that route -- although the list also has a few books that are on my TBR.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

[Angela]

I decided (instead of using the trusty bowl) I would use a random number generator (53) and then just count the "hard back" books on my shelves (hard back in my sorting method is any book that is not a standard paperback size, so it doesn't fit on the shelf like the PB do) - and ended up with some short stories by Phillip K. Dick

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

[C]

I've been (kind of) doing the Bookspin Bingo random list this year so I'll probably just use whatever that comes out with

[Andy]

I am looking forward to this one. I have six bays of books in my flat, plus a lot of polyhedral D&D dice. So tomorrow I will roll for a bay, then a shelf, then for which book on that shelf I will read. If I get something like a dictionary or something else "unreadable", i will re-roll.

[Leslie]

I am taking a Goodreads suggestion and reading Steve Berry's The Bishop's Pawn. Looking forward to it.

[Andy]

Andy wrote: "I am looking forward to this one. I have six bays of books in my flat, plus a lot of polyhedral D&D dice. So tomorrow I will roll for a bay, then a shelf, then for which book on that shelf I will r..."

And my rolls were:
6 on d6 - my "TBR" shelves.
1 on d3 - 1st shelf.
7 on d12 - 7th book along.
The lucky book is EH Gombrich's A Little History of the World, a birthday present from a couple of years ago which I will finally be getting on with reading.

[Marie-thérèse]

In a random conversation I read the name of Kurt Vonnegut.

I remembered that, for some 20 years, I had a book of this author, and never read it because it was not in the original language.

So this is what will be my reading for April: Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut.

[Cheryl]

I kept hitting the old random word generator until I came up with a word in a book title on my shelf -- "die" -- which is almost worse than all of the ones that didn't work, since I have tons of murder mysteries with words like "dying", "death", and "dead". One of them did have "die" -- Booked to Die.

[Stina]

Seeing as how both a Chance card from Becca's Bookoplathon board and the BookTube Spin game picked Gideon the Ninth for me, I guess that's what I'm reading. I still need to roll up my official April TBR, and there are at least two rolls that will directly pick random titles, not prompts, so I will count those for this as well.

[Dawn]

considering that my shelves are stacked 2&3 deep... I will random number generate a shelf an the do a blind pull from the back.

[Amy]

I did a random word generator online. The first word it spit out was "poetry", believe it or not. Then I did a random number generator, and got #32. I went to Overdrive and typed in "poetry" in the search bar, then counted to the 32nd selection in the results. This is the one I got: Under the Mesquite.

Though now I'm thinking I should have figured out a way to pick one of my TBRs...

[Marie-thérèse]

Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut, so... I read it.

Excellent start, original ideas, but then... so long, so always the same, so "where are you going" ?

The end is completely unexpected it, not related with the rest of the book, so I made some research and discovered that the book is in a serie... that I will never read.

Big disappointment

[Cheryl]

Well, I think I put the "random" in "random" this month. I used the random word generator to select a word and ended up with "Die". I picked a book from my longstanding TBR pile that was registered with BookCrossing (Booked to Die). Then I looked on my unregistered TBR shelf (2 separate actual book cases in my guest room) and saw there another book with "Die" in the title. It was shorter. So I have now read Paulo Coelho's book Veronika Decides to Die.

[Jacqie]

So I ended up doing a randomizer for my Netgalley shelf and came up with A Thousand Ships. I think I should probably do a randomizer for Netgalley every month, to be honest with you, because these poor books will languish due to all the shiny new books coming out unless I get myself to read them somehow. So this was a useful exercise that may start a good habit for me! I was also excited to read A Thousand Ships because I am hoping for a trip to Greece to break free of COVID restrictions. I didn't end up loving the book, but that's the way it goes.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Stina]

Marie-thérèse wrote: "Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut, so... I read it.

Excellent start, original ideas, but then... so long, so always the same, so "where are you going" ?

The end is completely unexpected it, not related..."

Aw, that's too bad. I hate when something promising turns out to be a dud. I haven't read much Vonnegut, but I think he's not really my cup of tea.

[Stina]

Jacqie wrote: "So I ended up doing a randomizer for my Netgalley shelf and came up with A Thousand Ships. I think I should probably do a randomizer for Netgalley every month, to be honest with you, because these ..."

I may have to do something like that with my NetGalley shelf, too. I'm getting better at reading my NetGalley books, but I am still really behind on writing the actual reviews.

[Stina]

Wow, there is such a fun variety of randomness here! I did finish Gideon the Ninth--just barely! I did follow it better doing the text and the audio simultaneously, and I did like it, but I have a feeling I am going to need to do a re-read before tackling Harrow the Ninth.

The other random selections from my TBR dice rolls that I finished in April were The Canterville Ghost and Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, both very good.

[Dawn]

The book I pulled was Patricia Cornwell's Book of the dead. I really want to find the rest of her books now. It's a really good, well written procedural /NCIS type story. I particularly enjoyed the characters she wrote for this. The only problem is that I have a distinct impression that this book is from a series. It's not a big issue with the way the story is put together though.

[Stina]

Dawn wrote: "The book I pulled was Patricia Cornwell's Book of the dead. I really want to find the rest of her books now. It's a really good, well written procedural /NCIS type story. I particularly enjoyed the..."

Yes, it's a ways into the Kay Scarpetta series: https://www.goodreads.com/series/4035.... I've read the first two or three and they're pretty good. I quit reading because I didn't like the direction some of the character relationships were going.

[Cheryl]

I read probably 10 or so, but it was also the character relationships rather than the nature of the mystery content that I finally gave up on. I have contemplated going back and reading the rest from time to time, but I have a large stack of other things in line ahead of them.