Getting Out of Sequence...

[rhythmaning]

Elsewhere in my little book-enclosed universe, frankie_ecap and coughingbear and, apparently, many others have been surprised by my attitude to book series.

I have just read Jasper Fforde's “The Well of Lost Plots”. I was reaing it out of sequence: I had read “The Eyre Affair” before, and picked up the Well of Lost Plots because my brother had a duplicate and I had just finished a rather hard going novel set in post-revolutionary Siberia. (If I hadn't known the author a while back – well, twenty five years ago – I might have given up.) I needed light relief, and I knew that Jasper Fforde would entertain and revive me.

I wasn't wrong. I really enjoyed the book, reading it quickly, and laughing a lot.

So frankie_ecap and coughingbear were very surprised - shocked, even - that I had no wish to immediately read the prequel and sequels to it.

There are many reasons for this. Mostly, it comes down to my liking variety, I think. I go out of my way to vary the books I read – I tend to follow a novel by a work of non-fiction and if not, I will not read a book of one genre and immediately pick up a book of the same genre: instead, I will go out of my way to read a completely different work, to mix it up, to broaden rather than limit my experience.

I think I do the same in lots of different ways: what I cook, what I watch when I go to the movies (though I now go so infrequently that it isn't really apparent), what music I will listen to both live and recorded (though this is mediated much more by mood and feeling, and what is available on the radio, too).

There is also something about not using up the resource: if I like a book or its author, I will “save” the sequel or similar work until I know I will appreciate it, a bit like building up credit to get the most out of the experience. By relishing the diversity of books, I appreciate them more.

Comments

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

I am sure you are a very nice man (although not as nice as H), but your planet is a very peculiar place.

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Not at all - Planet Rhythmaning is as it has always been, and as it should be, and a very fulfilling place!

[widgetfox.livejournal.com]

It's all those tongues.

[white_hart]

I don't like reading series out of order, but as long as it's a series where the books are complete novels in their own right rather than one long novel in several volumes I never read the next book straight after the first. I'm like you: I always tend to try to make each book I read as different from the last as possible. I like the variety and there's less possibility of making unfavourable comparison about how authors treat the same subjects. So now, for instance, I've just finished the second of Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books, having read the first last autumn, and am about to start something by Jonathan Coe (who I also last read something by last autumn).

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

How can you not want to know what happens next?!?