Today’s Book Blogger Hop question is: When reading a series, do you re-read the previous book/s before reading the newly released book?
Sometimes yes. It depends on how much I like a series and how recently I’ve read the earlier books. Often if I don’t reread earlier books before reading the newly released one, I end up realizing that I’ve forgotten great swathes of things (like, say, the main character’s best friend. Or the twist ending of the last book revealing the villain is actually a good guy. It’s happened.) So in general I probably should reread the previous book(s) before reading a new one, but it really only happens if I enjoyed the previous book enough to want to read it again.
For a while I was doing an annual reread of at least some of Catherynne Valente’s Fairyland series, each autumn when a new one came out. Because those are amazing. I reread all the previous four when the fifth one came out and it was awesome. I should reread those, come to think of it…
When I reread series, I pretty much always read the entire series. So some, like Anne of Green Gables (eight books!) become a rather lengthy process. But it just feels incomplete to only read part, and very strange to just jump to the middle somewhere. Although I can think of a few series (the Oz books, the Bloody Jack series) where the quality is uneven, and I may only reread my favorites next time I revisit. It would be a shift in habits, though!
What do you do when a new book in a series comes out? Rereading, or just diving into the new part of the story?
It does depend on how long it’s been since the previous one came out. My memory is not what it used to be. Generally I haven’t got time to reread series, though, so I struggle on, hoping I’ll get a lightbulb moment for something I appear to have missed. With one series the author then gave a flashback to something that I thought I’d missed, but in fact had happened between books, so to speak, which irritated me… I think she could have warned us we weren’t losing our minds.
In one of my books I gave a brief history of the books to date, since it was relevant to some business within the book. On later ones I try to give all but the main characters a bit of setting to remind the reader what they were involved with before…. But there was one best seller that gave the whole history of the world in a large pre-chapter – for just the third book! I gave up half-way through.
Which is why my scifi series is stopping at three books. Really. Just because I love the characters is no excuse….