Friday, June 10, 2016

Reading Order

Chronological vs. Publication Order
So, I've been thinking about reading order of books lately. One of my favorite series EVER has the core group of books - six stories - and the prequels - three stories, so far. There are two recommended reading orders: chronological and publish order.

(I read these in publish order, mostly because the first book published sounded quirky and odd and nothing about the first chronological book jumped out at me at the time.)

I've also come across other - usually long-running, often sci-fi - series that do this. There will be the original published order and the chronological order where the author came back later and filled in some of the backstory.

Honestly, when this comes up, I never quite sure which order to read them in. My immediate response is published order - but about eighty percent of the time, the reviewers say that the author gets better later. So, am I doing them - or me! - a disservice?

What do you think: chronological or publication order?


Multi-Series Worlds
What about a series that takes place in a world of lots of series? I can't think of many examples of this, but I know I've been involved in at least one. I actually bought the first book in the series YEARS ago, long before I ever discovered Goodreads, so I had no idea that it wasn't a 'standalone series'.

So, I'm never sure if I should start with the first series in this world - or if I'll be confused if I don't! Or, should I just pick the series that sounds the best. (Of course, this doesn't take into consideration the fact that all the series' might sound good.)

Usually, with these type of books, there isn't a 'recommended/suggested reading order' from the author, but it would seriously be helpful! Also, there's the books that start a new series but they're actually a continuation of an older series - and that just leaves me dreadfully confused!

How do you handle 'multi-series worlds'?


Standalone 'Series' Books
Finally, probably the easiest reading order conundrum: Books that are loosely part of a series, but also function as a standalone.

Usually these books seem to be mostly romance - but they do create their own problem. You see, if the series concept sounds good, I'll probably start at the beginning. Of course, if one of the couples/stories appeals to me more, I'll skip forward to that one. And that occasionally causes me to skip back to the first stories in the series. Doing that is especially problematic if the couples from previous books show up in the sequels - and then you can be left going 'who in the world are all these people?' (And it can drive me nuts if the people don't age though the series takes place over YEARS!)

Do you read these type of books in order, or tend to skip around?

Comments (4)

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Reading order is a continual dilemma. I tend to stick to publishing order for long series where books have come out all over the place just because that's the way other readers have read it and in my mind the books will have been written to best fit into the fact they were published out of order. I view it as I view Star Wars, I would never tell anyone to watch the prequel trilogy before the original trilogy as you don't want to watch in chronological order as you'd never make it through. You need the original trilogy to set the landscape for you and then you can go and see what happened before that.

As for romances and their loosely connected stories, I am a stickler for starting at the beginning. I very rarely read out of order just because it feels wrong to do that somehow. Not that that makes much sense.
1 reply · active 447 weeks ago
I know what you mean. I usually think that publish order is the way to go, but I'm always so worried when people say how the author's later work gets better that the early book/s would be enough to turn me off their work completely and I might miss something really great. (Though, if I disliked their early stuff that much to begin with, their later work probably wouldn't improve that much...) You make a really good point, too, about how they were written. Definitely food for my thought.

For the more loosely connected series, I do like starting at the beginning, usually, but sometimes I find myself skipping around quite happily. These are all reasons that I tend to love simple trilogies (or this fairly new fad of duologies) because there is absolutely no question to me where the 'right' place to start is.
I'm generally a chronological kind of girl; but when it is a big series that covers many different time periods, I don't care if I read the whole thing in order or not.
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1 reply · active 446 weeks ago
That makes sense. Most series that are truly huge (like Discworld) doesn't really matter what order you read them in. Thankfully enough, because if I had to start at the beginning with some of those 20+ book series', I think I'd go nuts.

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