10 Random eBooks in my Calibre Library

Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by Artsy Reader Girl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share a love of all things books! I love thinking up my responses and the weekly blog hop to see what everyone else wrote!

This week our prompt is: The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf.

I decided to do this with my eBook library because I have 547, and I’ve not looked at most of them in years! I used the random.org generator and scrolled to the position in my Calibre Library.

Full disclosure, about 400ish of those are ePubs I got on a disc(!) from a family member when I first got a Kindle around 2009ish, and I was an unemployed graduate. These days, I have full-time employment and I buy all my eBooks!

Anyway, that is why this is such a weird selection of books, and I have not and don’t plan to read most of them! It also made it more fun to see what I have lurking.

1. The Road Trip by Beth O’Leary *️⃣

Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend’s wedding in the north of Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed.

But, not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie’s ex, Dylan, who she’s avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier.

Dylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they’ve totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride. The car is soon jam-packed full of luggage and secrets, and with three hundred miles ahead of them, Dylan and Addie can’t avoid confronting the very messy history of their relationship…

Will they make it to the wedding on time? And, more importantly… is this really the end of the road for Addie and Dylan?

I have had this for a couple of years since getting it for 99p, and I’m never in the mood to read it. I previous read The Flatshare, which was OK but with a very irritating protagonist, and The No-Show, which annoyed the shit out of me, but that was more a marketing issue because it is not the book the cover would have you believe it is.

2. 3001: The Final Odyssey (Space Odyssey 4) by Arthur C. Clarke ❌

On an ill-fated mission to Jupiter in 2001, the mutinous supercomputer HAL sent crew members David Bowman and Frank Poole into the frozen void of space. Bowman’s strange transformation into a Star Child is traced through the novels 2010 and 2061. But now, a thousand years after his death, Frank Poole is brought back to life—and thrust into a world far more technically advanced than the one he left behind.

Poole discovers a world of human minds interfacing directly with computers, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and massive space elevators built around the equator. He also discovers an impending threat to humanity lurking within the enigmatic monoliths. To fight it, Poole must join forces with Bowman and HAL, now fused into one corporeal consciousness—and the only being with the power to thwart the monoliths’ mysterious creators.

I think this is book 4 in the Space Odyssey series (you know, 2001 and Hal and all that from the movie), so very random pick. I will almost certainly never read this… all thought “genetically engineered dinosaur servants” … !

3. The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Maxwell Krauss ❌

What exactly “warps” when you are traveling at warp speed? What is the difference between the holodeck and a hologram? What happens when you get beamed up? Are time loops really possible, and can I kill my grandmother before I was born? Until now, fans of “Star Trek” were hard pressed to find answers to vital questions such as these. Now Lawrence M. Krauss, an internationally known theoretical physicist and educator, has written the quintessential physics book for Trekkers and non-Trekkers alike.

Anyone who has ever wondered, “Could this really happen?” will gain useful insights into the “Star Trek” universe (and, incidentally, the real universe) in this charming and accessible volume. Krauss boldly goes where “Star Trek” has gone — and beyond. He uses the “Star Trek” future as a launching pad to discuss the forefront of modern physics. From Newton to Hawking, from Einstein to Feynman, from Kirk to Janeway, Krauss leads the reader on a voyage to the world of physics as we now know it and as it might one day be.

Featuring the Top 10 biggest physics bloopers in “Star Trek,” as selected by Nobel Prize-winning physicists and other dedicated Trekkers!”This book is fun, and Mr. Krauss has a nice touch with a tough subject…Readers drawn by frivolity will be treated to substance.” “–New York Times Book Review”

I do love ‘Trek but this is something my Physics PHD Husband is more likely to read than me!

4. The Restaurant at the End of The Universe (HHGTTG 2) by Douglas Adams ✅

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle through space powered by pure improbability – and desperately in search of a place to eat. Among Arthur’s motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a long-time friend and contributor to the The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMilan, a fellow Earth refuge who’s gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, who suffers nothing and no one gladly.

Book 2 in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, and I must have read this because I had a paperback omnibus when I was a teenager… I have no memory of i,t though.

5. Romancing Mr Bridgerton (Bridgertons 4) by Julia Quinn ✅

Everyone knows that Colin Bridgerton is the most charming man in London. Penelope Featherington has secretly adored her best friend’s brother for…well, it feels like forever. After half a lifetime of watching Colin Bridgerton from afar, she thinks she knows everything about him, until she stumbles across his deepest secret…and fears she doesn’t know him at all.

Colin Bridgerton is tired of being thought nothing but an empty-headed charmer, tired of everyone’s preoccupation with the notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown, who can’t seem to publish an edition without mentioning him in the first paragraph. But when Colin returns to London from a trip abroad he discovers nothing in his life is quite the same – especially Penelope Featherington! The girl haunting his dreams. But when he discovers that Penelope has secrets of her own, this elusive bachelor must decide…is she his biggest threat – or his promise of a happy ending?

Finally one I have read! This is book 4 in the Bridgerton series and it was my favourite – I read it in 24 hours – but I don’t know how I’ll feel about it when I eventually re-read it.

6. Blackwood Farm (The Vampire Chronicles 9) by Anne Rice ❌

Lestat is back, saviour and demon, presiding over a gothic story of family greed and hatred through generations, a terrifying drama of blood lust and betrayal, possession and matricide. Blackwood Farm with its grand Southern mansion, set among dark cypress swamps in Louisiana, harbours terrible blood-stained secrets and family ghosts. Heir to them all is Quinn Blackwood, young, rash and beautiful, himself a ‘bloodhunter’ whom Lestat takes under his wing. But Quinn is in thrall not only to the past and his own appetites but, even more dangerously, to a companion spirit, a ‘goblin’ succubus who could destroy him and others. Only the unearthly power of Lestat combined with the earthly powers of the Mayfair clan could hope to save Quinn from himself and his ghosts, or to rescue the doomed girl Quinn loves from her own mortality. Shocking, savage and richly erotic, this novel with the deceptively gentle title bring us Anne Rice at her most powerfully disturbing. Here are vampires and witches, men and women, demons and a doppelganger, caught up in a maelstrom of death and destruction, blood and fire, cruelty and fate.

Every 5 years I do I consider reading some Anne Rice – I never have! – I suspect I am now well past the point in my life when I could enjoy vampire trash.

7. The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick *️⃣

Set in the middle of the twenty-first century, The Simulacra is the story of an America where the whole government is a fraud and the President is an android. Against this backdrop Dr. Superb, the sole remaining psychotherapist, is struggling to practice in a world full of the maladjusted.

Ian Duncan is desperately in love with the first lady, Nicole Thibideaux, who he has never met. Richard Kongrosian refuses to see anyone because he is convinced his body odor is lethal. And the fascistic Bertold Goltz is trying to overthrow the government.

With wonderful aplomb, Philip K. Dick brings this story to a crashing conclusion and in classic fashion shows there is always another layer of conspiracy beneath the one we see.

One I have not but probably will read! Also doesn’t this sound a bit too plausible in 2025?

8. Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick by Lawrence Sutin *️⃣

“The only biography I’ve ever read that’s as exciting as a spy novel . . . Phil Dick’s life was as weird and mysterious as any of his science fiction books.”–Robert Anton Wilson

With thirty-eight books currently in print and seven of his novels and short stories adapted into blockbuster films, Philip K. Dick is recognized worldwide as one of our time’s greatest and most influential novelists. Lawrence Sutin’s Divine Invasions, acknowledged by the Dick family as the official Philip K. Dick biography, illuminates the life of the man who loosed the bonds of the science-fiction genre and profoundly influenced such writers as Pynchon, Delillo, David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Lethem. Absorbing, beautifully written, and profoundly revealing, Divine Invasions is a must-read for Dick fans and for all fans of contemporary fiction and film.

I might actually read this one too! I think 2026 will be the year I get back into Dick.

9. Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty ✅

A murder…A tragic accident…Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

I have read this! It was a book club book, and I enjoyed it. It was the first Lianne Moriarty I ever read.

10. How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds Or Less by Nicholas Boothman ❌

Whether selling, managing, negotiating, planning, collaborating, pitching, instructing-or on your knees with a marriage proposal-the secret of success is based on connecting with other people. Now that connection is infinitely easier to make through Nicholas Boothman’s program of rapport by design.

How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less is the work of a master of Neuro-Linguistic Programming whose career is teaching corporations and groups the secrets of successful face-to-face communication. Aimed at establishing rapport-that stage between meeting and communicating- How to Make People Like You focuses on the concept of synchrony. It shows how to synchronize attitude, synchronize body language, and synchronize voice tone so that you instantly and imperceptibly become someone the other person likes.

Reinforcing these easy-to-learn skills is knowing how to read the other person’s sensory preferences-most of us are visual, some are kinesthetic, and a minority are auditory. So when you say “I see what you mean” to a visual person, you’re really speaking his language. Along the way the book covers attitude, nervousness, words that open a conversation and words that shut it down, compliments, eye cues, the magic of opposites attracting, and more. It’s how to make the best of the most important 90 seconds in any relationship, business or personal.

I don’t think I’ll ever read this, though (as a wallflower) I think I do need tips in making a better impression on people! But then, with a blurb phrased like this, doesn’t it sound horribly manipulative? I suppose, like all self-help books, I could just read the chapter titles and get all the information I need from it.

So in summary, I have read 3, plan to read 3 and will likely never read 4 of them.