Friday, April 29, 2011

TGIF: Series vs. Standalone Novels


Today at GReads! it is TGIF time. Have an opinion about today's question? Go to her site and link up to take part!

Today's question is: Standalone vs. Series: What's your stance?

Honestly, it depends on the book and the series. I'm completely fine with a book being a series, but it is true that it's hard to find the standalone novel right now. I love those as well, and it's nice to know that authors won't go changing things on you after you finish a story, especially if you loved it. Also especially if you were only lukewarm about it.

That's one of the biggest problems for me with it. If I liked a book okay and then find out there is another one after it, I might feel obligated to read it to see what happens. It makes it more tedious for me, knowing that I have ANOTHER book I feel like I should read. It's like an auto-add to your TBR and I'm not always okay with that.

Another problem I ran into recently is I received ARCs from a publisher only to discover two of them were later books in series. So now I have to go out and get the first books both series in order to read these ones I was sent!

I appreciate series and enjoy following the lives of characters I like, but right now it's overkill. I don't want every single book I read to be part of a series, and I wish there were more standalone novels out there right now.

3 comments:

  1. I agree with you there. Series are good sometimes, but I do prefer if they really are a series of different, connected stories rather than one plotline spread over multiple volumes. I haven't always the concentration span for more than one book, and I don't like when it seems like the author is writing two or three books where one would be enough.

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  2. I hate when the ARC is books into a series. It means either I have to read all the previous books or simply not read the ARC. Sometimes I just don't have time to read all the previous books and I hate not reviewing an ARC.

    Great points!

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  3. I don't mind a series if there is truly enough of a plotline to stretch over multiple books. Some "trilogies" should have been duologies.

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