Today’s Booking Through Thursday question asks:
If you read series, do you ever find a series “jumping the shark?” How do you feel about that? And, do you keep reading anyway?
I love reading series – I feel that you really become invested in the characters and am always sad to see a series end. I tend to be very anal about series – I need to start at the beginning and if I do happen to pick up a book in the middle of a series, will often stop reading it until I can read the ones that came before…I just feel that in series, you get a better feel for the development of characters and their relationships if you start at the beginning. I even found a great site, FictFact that allows you to track the series you are reading and let’s you know the order of the series and when the next one will be out.
I tend to read a lot of series: James Patterson’s Alex Cross, The Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett; Laura Child’s Tea Shop Mysteries and Scrapbooking Mysteries; Iris Johansen’s Eve Duncan Forensics; Catherine Coulter’s FBI series; Stieg Larsson’s Millenium series; Debbie Macomber’s Blossom Street series and Cedar Cove series; and countless series/trilogies by Nora Roberts – most recently her Bridal Quartet series.
I have enjoyed/continue to enjoy every one of these series. I’ve rarely come across a book within these series where the author has “jumped the shark.” The only one that comes to mind as being close to “jumping the shark” is the last Eve Duncan book I read, Blood Game – I felt that this book had a little too much paranormal to it and didn’t really focus on Eve’s forensic sculpting, which is my favorite part of the series. I did hear that in the coming books, the focus moves back to that, so I will continue reading.
What about you?
It's nice to hear that I am not the only one who stops reading a novel when it is not the first book of the series. 🙂 It's irritating sometimes, but that's how I read it. So know the sequence of stuff.
Thanks for the website suggesting. Checking on it now. Here's my BTT for this week.
Greyz – my family thinks I'm nuts when I do that. Let me know what you think of the website – I love it, especially the new release calendar!
That website looks fascinating–I'm bookmarking it for further investigation. Enjoy your series!
Great site…thank you for sharing.
CMash
Thanks for sharing the website. I have bookmarked it.
I am still not sure if I completely understand the phrase 'jumping the shark' But, I do stop reading a book or series if it bores me. I read to be entertained not bored to sleep.
There is only one series I didn't mind it being out of order and it's Sherrilyn Kenyon series.
I like to read series in order also. I feel you get the whole story that way. Thanks for the link to that site. I am going to go sign up.
I have to read a series in order. Just like I don't believe in reading the ending of books first. Thanks for sharing the link to the site.
My BTT is up: pageflippinaddict.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/booking-through-thursday-series/
I completely agree with everything you said 🙂 I love series books and I read them in order. Sure, there may sometimes be a bad one in the bunch, but it doesn't stop me from reading the next one.