Do you usually read entire book series?

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

I love books.

I can literally get lost on someone else's world for days (or even weeks) at a time and love every damn second of it -- the more there is to explore, the better. But I actually find it very hard to keep engaged with a story that has multiple entries, regardless of how much I enjoyed my time with it.

My favorite example of this sort of thing is the "Snow White" trilogy by Salla Simukka: "As Red As Blood" (the first entry) was so incredibly good that it made me HUNGRY for more, but the story felt like it had wrapped itself so nicely that I just didn't see the point on continue onwards after reading what the second and third book were about. It felt like the overarching plot was going on a vacation and just wanted to bring you along for the company. Likewise, the Redwall series captured my imagination a lot as a young lad, but I just couldn't read more than the first few entries both because of how seemingly impossible it is to find the right chronological order to read them in (which is, in itself, a hotly-debated topic on fan communities) and also because it expands upon many other characters that don't really seem related to the plot, at least not directly. It kind of drove me insane, if I'm being honest.

With all of that said, I HAVE found a couple of book series that I just loved going through and felt very rewarding: Sir Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" is somehow guilty of the very things I was roasting Redwall for, yet delivered so spectacularly that I never felt like I had lost the plot. Laurie Faria Stolarz' "Blue Is For Nightmares" also kept a good line throughout that made it easy to follow, despite wildly tossing and turning throughout the series.

I guess it really depends on how skilfully the author can weave the series together. Expanding upon the core plot while also keeping it from becoming aimless must be one hell of a tough job, and not one I think I'd be able to master, either.

What about you, though? Do you find it easy to go through a series you enjoy or do you just pick the few entries that personally excite you?

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

I haven't before.

 

[Tonberry]

I still suck at reading, but I've been working my way through my giant Complete Chronicles of Conan book, and I intend to read it all, I just suck at allocating proper time to reading.

 

[Segadude113]

I love books.

I can literally get lost on someone else's world for days (or even weeks) at a time and love every damn second of it -- the more there is to explore, the better. But I actually find it very hard to keep engaged with a story that has multiple entries, regardless of how much I enjoyed my time with it.

My favorite example of this sort of thing is the "Snow White" trilogy by Salla Simukka: "As Red As Blood" (the first entry) was so incredibly good that it made me HUNGRY for more, but the story felt like it had wrapped itself so nicely that I just didn't see the point on continue onwards after reading what the second and third book were about. It felt like the overarching plot was going on a vacation and just wanted to bring you along for the company. Likewise, the Redwall series captured my imagination a lot as a young lad, but I just couldn't read more than the first few entries both because of how seemingly impossible it is to find the right chronological order to read them in (which is, in itself, a hotly-debated topic on fan communities) and also because it expands upon many other characters that don't really seem related to the plot, at least not directly. It kind of drove me insane, if I'm being honest.

With all of that said, I HAVE found a couple of book series that I just loved going through and felt very rewarding: Sir Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" is somehow guilty of the very things I was roasting Redwall for, yet delivered so spectacularly that I never felt like I had lost the plot. Laurie Faria Stolarz' "Blue Is For Nightmares" also kept a good line throughout that made it easy to follow, despite wildly tossing and turning throughout the series.

I guess it really depends on how skilfully the author can weave the series together. Expanding upon the core plot while also keeping it from becoming aimless must be one hell of a tough job, and not one I think I'd be able to master, either.

What about you, though? Do you find it easy to go through a series you enjoy or do you just pick the few entries that personally excite you?

Animorphs. A good chunk in the middle is filler though. Not bad filler, more episodic really. The Chronicles and Megamorphs books are great too. Those are both canon to the main books. The reason there's filler volumes in the first place is because the writer had a kid around the start of writing the first volume and after volume 20 or so she had to take a break for a while and raise her kid. Ghost writers took over for another 20-30 volumes while she came back once in a while to write a Chronicles or Megamorphs book here n there. Then she came back again for the last handful of volumes to finish off the series on a ridiculous cliffhanger. She then went on to write an even darker series called Remnants about the end of the world and only a small group of people escaping into outer space and all the weird stuff they encounter along the way as they just try to survive. There's a small preview of it at the end of the final volume of Animorphs. Good scifi stuff. Heavily overlooked because people couldn't get past the weird covers of Animorphs and most people never heard of Remnants.

Another series I got into was Harry Potter before the big controversy about the writer. The first few books i couldn't really enjoy because they were book reports that had a deadline for school. But Prisoner of Azkaban onward i was able to read with no rush and actually soaked it all in. It was a time travel story too so that got me hooked. A little scifi mixed with fantasy doesn't hurt.

Speaking of scifi mixed with fantasy, there's the Shannara series of books where it starts off like Lord of The Rings but then takes a sharp turn into science fiction with it actually taking place in the far future where mankind had to restart and there's ancient weapons and technology. This was written back in the 70s like a lot of other scifi books and movies and tv shows. But yeah, that's the explanation behind the dwarves, the elves, ect. A war wiped out and separated humanity and they all evolved differently.

Finally there's Dragonlance which has TONS of books. Pure fantasy all the way.

 

[qw90700]

It depends. If I like the idea of the book it would be the reason for me to read the first book, then if I like the first book I would read rest of the books. However if I sense that the writer writes just to make money and the books are not fun anymore then I leave the series.

 

[Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka Redwall Muzyczka's icon]

It depends. If I like the idea of the book it would be the reason for me to read the first book, then if I like the first book I would read rest of the books. However if I sense that the writer writes just to make money and the books are not fun anymore then I leave the series.

That's a good, healthy approach to have... And not entirely unheard-of, either. So many of my favorite series started feeling soulless after becoming mainstream that I just about could picture the editor demanding more entries.

Another series I got into was Harry Potter before the big controversy about the writer. The first few books i couldn't really enjoy because they were book reports that had a deadline for school. But Prisoner of Azkaban onward i was able to read with no rush and actually soaked it all in. It was a time travel story too so that got me hooked. A little scifi mixed with fantasy doesn't hurt.

I'm amazed that I forgot about Harry Potter, but yeah... I got into it because my (former) friend was nuts about it and just wanted someone to nerd out with, which I was happy to oblige to -- and then I found that it was actually really good and kept on going. I specially liked the ones featuring Luna, probably the only character in the entire series to react to magic like a real person would.

 

[jon2]

I've had Tom Clancy's Ryanverse from the '80s up to 2003, read them all as well. Also had his Red Storm Rising and his military non-fiction and "commanders" series (sadly, many of the books are now gone, due to flooding and termites)

Also had Robert Greene's books (if you can call 'em a series); read them as well.

If I had the sources to complete the MTG novel series back then, I would have read them all by now...

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

I did read a whole Omnibus of Boogiepop Vol 1 and 2 which 6 light Novels of Boogiepop Series.

 

[rugal]

i read alot and i find it easy to read a whole book series in 2 weeks
for me its relaxing reading books. its like meditation
when i read i just relax and enter a fantasy world

here are just some of the good books series i have read
temerarie by naomi novik
septimus heap magyk
the wardstone chronicles of spook's
angelique
ranger's aprentice
the wheel of time by robert jordan

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

Nope, I hatred the commitment as a kid, waiting for a series to continue or lacking the funds or more accurately the reach to some books in a series (thus I never read those famous series like Harry Potter or Hunger Games) so I just would refuse to read anything with a series. I could sometimes be fooled into a reading a series if I happened to pick up a book in the middle by accident. I'm tempted to give Mercedes Lackey's a try but only if what I read is true that she has anthologies of short stories within her world to avoid a whole line of novels. Now with a working schedule it's hard to commit to even short stories at times and now can only retain nonfiction books for a time and then dumped after done.

 

[bjork]

As kid, I was made to read this series of Little House on the Prairie books. I hated them but my mom insisted that I go through them. I couldn't wait to get to the last book, but only because it was thinner than the others.

As an adult, if I read an entire series it's probably a manga, so nothing as deep as heavy literature.

 

[RustySK]

I rarely read books that are part of a series, but when I do I usually either want to finish them or feel a compulsive need to because some part of me thinks that I gotta see all there is to it - you started it, you have to finish it, that kind of thing.
Last series that happened with was Steven King's Dark Tower series.

Generally I'm not a huge fan of the series format.
In my experience the quality of the writing inevitably starts to drop at some point or characters start to morph into something different or plot points get muddled and so on.
I'm sure there are exceptions to this and I just don't know them! Still, feels counterproductive to me. Give me a nice, finished and complete one-shot over that any day.

Things like the Discworld do it best, I think - a series of (mostly) disconnected one-shots in the same setting works much better to me. That said, I've only read a handful of those.

 

[Aziamuth]

I believe the only time I did this was with a Spanish series called "Crónicas de la Torre" (Chronicles of the Tower), because it was 4 books and was invested in its world, and with Enyd Blyton books, particularly the Secret Seven Society and The Famous Five, because my sister bought all of them for me for no discernible reason.