Series vs Stand Alone Books

If you are familiar with my blog you will notice I have been writing a piece each day having to do with books or blogging or authors. Anything book related. Today I want to talk about series vs. stand alone.

After not being able to read for 14 years, I had the series craze hit me from out of no where. My first taste of a series was "A Series of Unfortunate Event" by Lemony Snicket. I remember finishing the first one (by than five had been out) and then I went through all of the first five and was DYING to know what was next. This happened each time a new book came out. It was kind of fun building suspense but on the other hand, the waiting was awful. Then I was not reading and when I finally came back to it, everything was a series! I brought some stand alone books and honestly I found a lot of series books can be stand alone books, which is nice. For me, I love suspense. I am waiting now for some part 2's of books to come out and am distracting myself by reading other books. But I have found out the books I pick to read wind up being a part of a series anyway. There is almost no getting around it these days. It is a trend and one I see continuing for a while. I am trying some stand alone books now. So to sum up the series is great. I know a lot of people who know a certain author they like and when that author writes a series, the person will just wait until all three or four or however many books the series is before they start reading. They buy them all together so they can read them back to back. Not a bad idea. But you are still waiting.

The stand alone. The best part about the stand alone is when it is done, it is done. No craving the next book no waiting and watching for the date of the next book in the series to come out. That is the part I love. It is one book and you got all of your questions answered and you are done. Some of them I do wish they went a little further with the book but mostly the stand alone's are great. No craziness, no waiting, it is all there like self serve.

So which do I prefer? It is hard to say. They each have their good points and their bad points. I think I a more a stand alone girl. I just like my story to be done and that is it. As I say this I am reading a two part series of books. But they are tour books and I did not know I had to read both books. But it is okay.

So what type of reader are you? Stand alone or series? I would love to know so let me know by commenting below. I would love some insight by some other readers on this subject.