Confessions of a Serial Reader – Step 1: admitting it

I’m in the middle of reading East of Eden and absolutely loving it, but it’ll be a few days yet before I finish it and post something here.

In the meantime it’s time to debut a new occasional feature I'm calling "Confessions of a Serial Reader". I’ve known for years that I love reading series books, but I didn’t realize just how many series I was currently reading until I started looking at my 2009 reading. 57 of the books I read last year were part of a series. I read at least one book from 44 different series, 12 of those were the first book in a new series for me so clearly I’m not showing any signs of slowing that down soon.

Now I don’t see my apparent series addiction as a problem any more than I see my book and reading addiction as a problem. I don’t read exclusively series. Those 57 books last year were just a wee bit over half of my reading. I plan to use this “Confessions of a Serial Reader” topic to periodically highlight a series, author or some other discussion of reading series books. I’m not committing to a posting schedule, just whenever the whimpulse strikes.

Some of my earliest reading memories include series books. Once I got old enough to choose my own books from the public or school library I read many series. I remember loving the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle series and of course, Beverly Cleary’s books, as well as the Little House books.

These days, most of the series I read are mysteries. That genre lends itself well to series with a main character or small group of recurring characters I get to know over several books while the particular story is different with every book. OK, with some authors even the story is pretty much the same book to book, but if it’s a fun or enjoyable series I don’t really care. Not all my current series are mysteries, though. I’ve got a few that are just nice reading with a place or characters that become like old friends after a few books.

How do I approach series? I have a few ‘rules’
1. I never ever read a series out of order unless it’s by mistake. I know that many times it doesn’t matter, but it matters to me. The Hubster will tell you that I also read the newspaper in order. I have to read section A, then section B, and so on. I’m not OCD about very many things but when it comes to book series and the newspaper I am.

2. Book or audio; pick one and stick with it. I rarely mix media when it comes to series. If I start it on audio, I’ll stick with audio (unless I can’t get a particular one from the library). It works the same the other way too. Once I start reading a series I’m unlikely to switch to audio. I don’t like to get the voices as my brain creates them mixed up with the voices as the reader creates them. Even the Harry Potter series I had to finish reading as books before I started re-reading the series as audio last month.

3. Back to back doesn’t work well for me. I’ve learned over the years that I don’t like to read books in any one series back to back. I like to jump around genres, styles and moods too much with my reading. It seems that when I’ve tried reading more than two books in a series back to back, I’ve ended up abandoning the series. Because of this I tend to read just a few books in any series within a span of a year. The Sookie Stackhouse Reading Challenge is an exception but even that is at a less than a book a month pace.

That’s probably enough babbling for one day from me. What about you? Do you like series books or not? What are your favorite series? Are you a read them all at once or space them out series reader? Are you a "read in order person" or a "it doesn't matter person"?