Happy Monday and welcome to February!
The choice between stand alone novels or series is one that has come up quite a bit lately in conversations between friends and at work.
Quite overwhelmingly, my kids at work seem to prefer series against a stand along book and I can’t quite understand it based on the reasons I hear from people who prefer stand-alone novels.
For example, I have a friend who will purposely NOT read a series until the series is completed. It drove her nuts that she binged the Selection series only for the Heir books to happen—doesn’t matter that those can be read separately since the first series is completed and doesn’t have a cliffhanger to the next series.
Me, on the other hand, I’ll read a series as it releases and maybe I re-read before the next installment or maybe I don’t—but there is NO way that I could just wait for the entire thing to be done.
However, my kids at work are similar to my friend. I recently did a huge order at the library and several students just couldn’t handle having to wait for the next book in several series. The worst was when the next book released after I’d ordered and they couldn’t understand how school library ordering works and that I couldn’t just up and order the next one from Amazon.
In closing…
Truthfully, I read both- that’s kind of obvious around here, but I can absolutely see both sides of the argument. Sometimes you want more and sometimes the wait is just too agonizing with a cliffhanger.
I think this .gif pretty much sums up this endless debate…
the painful failure obviously being a cruel, cruel cliffhanger 🙂
SO which do YOU prefer?
-Melanie
HAH! I love your gif – it really does explain this very well. I don’t mind reading a series as they come out, but I find that I tend to get behind. I’ll read the first book and then even as the next ones come out, I just don’t get around to them because I have all these other books to read. Therefore, most series I read these days are finished or almost finished. But yeah, I don’t mind either! I can see how younger kids would hate the wait though.
-Lauren
They get SO mad when the series isn’t done yet. I can’t stand waiting on the next book, but not nearly as much as I hate being behind and having to hear about the hype