Sunday Discussion: Book Series

Sunday Discussion is something new I'm trying out to get myself more into blogging.  Every Sunday, I'll try to find a new topic to talk about.  Any ideas for a discussion post?  Just leave a comment or send me an email at christinathebookreader@gmail.com

So today I feel like I'm talking about something that gets discussed a lot in the bookish community.  Reading a book series vs. standalone books.

So to start off, I would like to say that I am currently in the middle of more series than I can even remember.  Either I started the series and decided not to finish it, or I started it and haven't gotten around to the rest of the books, or the rest of the books haven't come out yet.  It can get really confusing sometimes.  

Yesterday, I just finished the second book of The Remnant Chronicles by Mary E. Pearson.  I finished reading The Kiss of Deception in early January.  I have literally read 100 books since then.  So some of these characters... Well I was a bit confused.  I'm still a bit confused for some of them.  Was Ulrix one of the Vendans that was travelling through the Cam Lanteux?  I can't remember him.  But the way he's spoken of, it seems likely.

Looking to my left at my small bookcase (just two shelves) I will list the series on there that I haven't finished:

• Firewalker Series by Josephine Angelini
• Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
• Modern Faerie Tale series by Holly Black
• Morganville Vampires by Rachel Caine
• Graceling series by Kristin Cashore
• The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

This is on just TWO shelves of physical books (keep in mind I have three bookcases and a bunch of ebooks).  So what's my point?  My point is that how can one person remember everything from all these series once they get to the next book?  The wait for The Heart of Betrayal was long and terrible and so worth it.  But by the time I got it in the mail, I didn't have time to go back and reread The Kiss of Deception.  So I was left slightly lost at some details I just couldn't remember.  And while I obviously love reading series, I would like to take this time to share why I wish more authors would write as standalone novels.

1. The wait - Oh my gosh.  The Mirror King is finally available for pre-order.  But it won't be out until next April.  I think I might just die if I don't get it in my hands in like the next month.  
1. Okay, this is really a good marketing scheme.  Publishers want us to wait for the books and go crazy because omg there are ARCs and omg other people have the book already and omg where are these reviews coming from?!  And it makes people pre-order their books.  I'm guilty.  I pre-order all the time.  But what it also does is make us forget about the last book we read.  I pre-ordered Winter months ago.  But honestly at this point, I have hardly any recollection of how much I liked Cress or even why, so I don't even know if I'll pick it up right away when it comes in.  If at all.  I might just cancel my pre-order.
2. So many books! - Most YA novels aren't guilty of making me read more than I really want to on a topic.  The Mortal Instruments series definitely is though.  It's soooo many books.  And I just don't love them enough to really be excited about finishing six books.  The other series that is extremely guilty of this (not YA) is A Song of Ice and Fire.  I set the fifth book down when I was about 150 pages in.  I just couldn't do it anymore.  Over 4000 pages of size 8 font single spaced writing and I just couldn't do it anymore.
3. That awesome feeling - You know that awesome feeling you get when you finish a book?  Or even better when you finish a series (and it doesn't make you want to die)?  I get that feeling far more often from standalone novels, simply because I feel like I've truly finished something.  Even if I don't plan on finishing a series, I feel kind of empty.  Like I'm betraying the books because I don't want to read them even though I started them.  So that happy feeling is just the world to me.  And then I can move on to something else without the next book looming over me. 

So I walked away while writing this and forgot what I was writing lol.

I understand that some stories are longer and need more than one book to finish them.  But sometimes the wait is not worth it.  The next book was not good.  And I wish I could have just not read the series to begin with.  Series have become very popular lately.  And I think that's part of the problem.  Publishers seem to buy series over standalones (I know authors write them dammit) because they do well.  But they frustrate me to no end.  I like duologies the best.  They aren't very popular at the moment, and there is only one book that I will need to wait for.

What about you?  How do you feel about book series?