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Thursday, December 15, 2011

Book Chat: Series vs. Stand-Alone Books

This week's Book Chat is on Series vs. Stand-alone books.  Feel free to weigh in on your preferences, or post about your favorite series and/or stand-alones, and then link up on the linky below so everyone can see what you think!

NEXT WEEK: 2012 Wishlists - new releases for the coming year that you just can't wait to get your hands on (apocalypse or no...).



BOOKS MENTIONED:
The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce
Sweetly by Jackson Pearce
Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
Sunshine by Robin McKinley
The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff
The Space Between by Brenna Yovanoff
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Oh, and everything by Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steel and John Grisham!


3 comments:

  1. I definitely prefer stand alone books, but at the same time, some of my favorites are series. :/ I feel like I'm starting to avoid lots of books if I find out there's a sequel coming next year. The story feels diluted. Standalone books are becoming so rare.

    A huge peeve of mine is when the first book of a series is just a 300 page first chapter. UGH! It drives me crazy. Born Wicked was one of those.

    Then you get those series that are like 50 books long. Like the Sookie Stackhouse books, they just get weirder and weirder and next thing you know you're 15 books away from where you started and you're barely reading the same story anymore. That drives me insane, too.

    I definitely find that the heavier, harder hitting books are standalones. Things like Jellicoe Road, Without Tess, Smack, 13 Reasons Why, The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Those books would have made horrible series.

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  2. I like reading series but I do prefer to read them once all of the books are released. Generally, it helps to lessen the anticipation for the next book. I guess I am totally one of those suckers that is the target audience of a publishing house, though, because I also rarely like to read a series unless it already has two or more books released and I tend to buy multiple books in a series, even if I haven't read it yet.

    I do find it a shame that stand-alone books are becoming rarer and rarer and it is ABSOLUTELY a huge pet peeve of mine when a single book leaves a cliffhanger ending. If a book leaves way too much to be revealed in future sequels, I generally end up hating it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have very mixed feelings about series v stand alone. I want to say I like stand alone better, and for the most part I do. But like others there are some series that I love. There are some stand alone books that are left kind of open ended and that is not always that satisfying. On the polar opposite of that is when I read If I Stay by Gayle Foreman. I had no idea that there was going to be a second book, and when I found out I was actually really angry. I didn't understand why she needed to mess with, in my opinion, the perfection of If I Stay. Where she went ended up being a really good book, and I was happy with it, but it couldn't touch the first one.

    I am totally with Bekka and those series that just need to end. As much as I loved Blue Bloods, I am kind of relieved it is ending, in actuality, it should have ended 3 books ago. And don't even get me started on the House of Night books. That series really needs to end. Nothing drives me more insane than a useless filler book in a series.

    I have a tendency to read each book in a series as it comes out. Which leads to another issue I have, and that is not remembering what happened in the book before. I don't have time to go back and read these book, and often times I am really struggling to remember what is going on in the new book.

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