On March 2nd, having just finished the second InCryptid novel, Midnight Blue Light Special by Seanan McGuire, I decided to play a game. I have so many Kindle books. So many, indeed, that Mr. Price accidentally nicknamed my Kindle “Thousands of Books” — he came into the living room a few years ago, looking very disgruntled. He didn’t mind, he said, that I bought so very many books. He just wished that I would take better care of them. When I inquired as to what he meant by that statement, he replied that I had left thousands of books just laying on our bed. Then I got his meaning and had to smile.

Cut because I care. Read on if you want to learn about Kindle Roulette (and you do).

Anyway! So, the game that I started playing on March 2nd, Kindle Roulette, is quite simple. I open the Kindle app on my phone or tablet, sort the books by whatever given category sounds best at the time, and then close my eyes and proceed to start swiping up and down at random until I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve gone in either direction. Then I stab a title on the screen and open my eyes. Ta-da! My next book is chosen. I was inspired to start doing something like this after somebody on Instagram talked about her enormous TBR jar. I mean…that’s a fantastic idea, if you’ve been doing it all along, and are diligent about adding titles to said jar when you acquire new ones. So this is my version of a jar.

It was this game which led to me reading Emma Newman’s Planetfall (review to come on Speculative Chic). Honestly, I started the book that evening, and then put it down to read another InCryptid novel (Pocket Apocalypse) and then Indexing (review here). I started reading Planetfall in earnest on March 11th and finished on the 13th. I’m a little shy around true science fiction. While Planetfall technically takes place in space, on another planet, I’m not sure that I’d qualify it as space opera, yet I’m uncertain as to what else it could be called. Either way, I’ll be reviewing it later this month.

My newest Kindle Roulette pick is Trailer Park Fae by Lilith Saintcrow. It’s not at all what you’re expecting by the title, I can assure you of that much. I’m around 4% in so far, and I can already tell that it’s doing things with the fae that I haven’t seen before. This is great! I’m also deeply intrigued by the book so far. This is also great, because remember, I’m only 4% in. More to come, either here or over at SpecChic.

My delight in this game is that it’s going to force me into reading things that otherwise might have languished unread for…who knows how long. I purchased Planetfall in March of 2017. My Kindle edition of Trailer Park Fae was purchased in December of 2015 (I once owned a paperback that I purchased earlier that year, but it was lost due to circumstances that I’m not going to talk about right now). Additionally, these are two wildly different books. One is a thoughtful, character-driven piece of space opera that goes into subjects such as community, religion, and the lengths that one will go to in order to hide a secret. The other is an urban fantasy, and I genuinely remember nothing else about it. There’s no book cover with a handy premise, after all, and I’m far too lazy to look it up. That’s kind of the point of Kindle Roulette. I let fate decide. I’ve decided to give myself a veto, if most definitely something that I’m not feeling at the moment. If I spin again, I must at least start reading whatever comes up next, unless it’s part of a series that I’m not caught up on.

It’s fun so far, and I’m hoping to keep it going. Let’s see how random my reading list gets this year!