Musing Monday...To Series or Not To Series, That is the Question.

Do I have a Muse? Sure I do!
We sure to check out the others talking part at  Should Be Reading...

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Musing Mondays asks you to muse about one of the following each week…
• Describe one of your reading habits.
• Tell us what book(s) you recently bought for yourself or someone else, and why you chose that/those book(s).
• What book are you currently desperate to get your hands on? Tell us about it!
• Tell us what you’re reading right now — what you think of it, so far; why you chose it; what you are (or, aren’t) enjoying it.
• Do you have a bookish rant? Something about books or reading (or the industry) that gets your ire up? Share it with us!
• Instead of the above questions, maybe you just want to ramble on about something else pertaining to books — let’s hear it, then!

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I will admit it..I love a good mystery series.
In fact, I tend to get a little caught up in them sometimes.
Karin Slaughter..I read all 12 books she had written at that time, one after the other, over a couple of weeks.
Then there was Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks series. I was a bit less compulsive about that one, reading 12 of them..on my, 12 again...but interspersed with a few other books.
My latest is Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries. You may not believe this, but I just started the 12th book of that series too. That number 12 again, but in this case, I still have almost another 12 to go.
Still, in all these cases, in order to have what I think is the best reading experience, I have read the books in order.

There is the question. How do you feel about series..especially BIG series...and about reading them in order?

If you are taking about a series of two or three or four books, it is not that much of an issue.
But for a series that has a dozen or more books...well, to start that is a commitment!
So what is an author and the reader to do?

We readers like series, at least in part, because we get to know the setting and the characters and we care about them. But an author that creates strong, interesting characters, with interesting lives, with things going on in their lives, writes a book that is hard to read as a stand-alone.
I am thinking of the example of Susan Hill's  Simon Serrailler series. My, so much has happened to Simon, people in his life getting killed, people dying, people leaving, that you really have to start at the beginning to understand what is going on.
Sure, the author can try to fill us in with the relevant facts about the character's past to the degree necessary but honestly, sometimes that can get confusing. Or they can make the characters personal lives not that important or not that interesting, but that takes something away from the books too, doesn't it?

Does an author who keeps writing book in a series at a certain point, maybe after the first few books, just discourage new readers?

Oh My...What to do?
Hey, I have to get back to reading! I have like another 12 Leon books to read!

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