Today’s topic came to me via Booking Through Thursday, a site that poses a book-related question once a week. Today’s topic is:
Series or Stand-alone?
I would say I tend much more heavily towards series – and I think I always have. Starting with Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books and continuing on to series’ like Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie, and the Nancy Drew mysteries, I grew up reading book after book about the same characters, which trained me to get attached – I need to know more of what happens to them. If a stand-alone book has compelling characters that I really love, I am always sad to put them back on the shelf without any more of their story.
I do have one gripe about series books, however – often, they get to a point when they’ve outgrown what the author originally intended, but keep going on and on because they’re popular. Two series I’ve been reading for years – Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books, and Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels – are at (well, past) that point, but I still can’t quite give up the characters. Which, I suppose, contributes to the problem.
What about you? Singles or series?
Singleton. Then I only stay up one night to devour it. I enjoy enjoy a series, but I don’t pace myself well and sacrifice too much sleep…not good.
I’m a stand-alone reader. Even if I have several books by the same author on my “shelf” at the same time, I mix up reading them because I find the events, characters, and problem solving become too much the same and often predictable.