A weekly prompt from the Boston Bibliophile. Today’s question: Series. Do you collect any series? Do you read series books? Fantasy? Mystery? Science fiction? Religious? Other genre? Do you use the series feature in LT to help you find new books or figure out what you might be missing from a series?
I don’t “collect” any series books; that is, I don’t go out of my way to find a particular book to complete a collection. If I read a book that I know is part of a series I’ll start with book one, so that if I decide to continue the series I’m reading it in the order the author intended.
I haven’t used the LT CK: Series feature to see what books I might need to complete a series. I just changed the display of My Library to get this information (change the style of one of the columns in your display to CK: Series; you can gather info, then change it back to your previous display if you don’t intend to keep CK: Series showing all the time. Or, just edit a different style, there are 5 – A, B, C, D and E to play with)
So, series in my library include:
- Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
- The Mitford Series by Jan Karon
- Harry Bosch/Mickey Haller by Michael Connelly
- Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield
- Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
- Don’t Know Much About by Kenneth C. Davis
- Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
- Cliff Notes (I’m being very bold to admit this! I have the Cliff Notes for Homer’s Odyssey!)
- Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor
- The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams
- Raggedy Ann by Johnny Gruelle (mine from childhood; wish I still had the others!)
- Time and Again by Jack Finney
- The Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire
- Zagat Surveys
Now, if we were to look at the bookshelves in my house, we’d see all kinds of children’s series books: Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, Clique, The Berenstain Bears, The Magic School Bus, Goosebumps, Arthur, etc.
OK, do you forgive me for the bad pun in the title of this post?!
So, you don’t feel compelled to continue on in a series? I always feel like I want to know more, the characters have done more and I have to know what it is.
Oh, I forgot about The Mitford Series – I love those books! I’m going to be checking out the LT series feature soon.
I loved the title!
I really thought I wasn’t a collector of anything until I cleaned out my office this weekend. Not series book, but I do collect paranormal, X-File type nonfiction. I was surprised at how many I have.
I’ve read Angela’s Ashes too but I didn’t know LT considered it a series the same way, say, the Twilight books are. Ah well. A difference of opinion!
I had no idea that Angela’s Ashes was a series. And thanks for the tip on how to make the series appear in LT!
I start an author’s series at the beginning, too. It probably won’t be the best as far as the writing goes, but there’s normally enough there to help me make the decision of whether or not I wish to continue. Thanks for stopping by my Mailbox Monday, Dawn. One of the reasons why I joined Paperback Swap is because I refuse to have piles of books on the floor, so things were getting to critical mass here! LOL
Michele – yes, I finish a series if it grabs my attention. What I meant was that I don’t need to *own* the entire series.
Shelly – thanks for forgiving my bad pun
J. Kaye – are we talking non-book collections? We’ve got a bunch of odd things around here … plastic gift cards (“credit cards” for the little ones), rocks of course, magazine renewal inserts (“postcards” for the little ones), *special* pencils! Argh! I’m getting itchy thinking about the kid clutter!
marie – “a difference of opinion” – exactly. CK is like a wiki, right, so coudn’t someone else come along and “un-series” it? That CK column is tricky, not universally agreed upon, like title, author, publisher would be!
swapna – once again, this week I learned something new from Marie’s question. I always go in to LT and poke around before I come up with my answer! Glad it helped you find the series info.
Cathy – I read a magazine article that said your bookshelves should have 1/3 “free” space. Huh? Mine are like apartments with squatters everywhere!
Oh yes – I forgot about the Mitford series and Nancy Drew!
http://wendisbookcorner.blogspot.com/2008/10/tuesday-thingers.html
Wendi
I was suprised to see Angela’s Ashes on the list too.
Thanks for pointing out how to find the series info on LT – I had no idea it existed
I have always used Fantastic Fiction for that type of info.
[...] My answer included Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) as a series in my library. It’s listed this way in the Common Knowledge section of the LibraryThing database. Common Knowledge is user-extended and edited, like a Wikipedia entry (in other words, there’s opportunity for error, but if users agree on the data listed, it stands). “Common knowledge is not so common” and all that! [...]
Wendi – welcome to the wonderful world of Tuesday Thingers
Shana – this has become an interesting topic – do two books or more make a series? Does time have to pass in the books, or can it be a “static” series?
Joanne – and now, I’m off to investigate Fantastic Fiction!
[...] have a postscript to last week’s question about series. In a separate post I asked what is a series? and got quite a variety of answers. I turned to [...]