The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion

25.1 - Wendy MA's Task - And the Story Continues...
September, October, and November are the 9th, 10th and 11th months of the year. For this task, read two books (totaling to at least 400 pages) that are either the ninth, tenth, or eleventh books in a series. For example in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child- One Shot is number 9, The Hard Way is number 10, and Bad Luck and Trouble is number 11. In the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris Dead and Gone is 9, Touch of Dead is 10, and Dead in the Family is 11. Books may be read in series order or by publication date. You do not have to read the same author for both books. Enjoy!!

Some suggested prolific authors are John McDonald, Robert Parker, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Janet Evanovich, Charlaine Harris, Lee Child, Dick Francis, Agatha Christie, Bill Pronzini, Lilian Jackson Braun, Loren Estelman, Linda Fairstein, Elizabeth George, Tony Hillerman, Jonathan Kellerman, Faye Kellerman, Stuart Kaminsky. Wikipedia lists the series books in order when you search an author.

Also:
Piers Anthony's Xanth novels (can be read out of sequence)
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (I don't believe these go in any particular order, but I could be wrong)
Orson Scott Card's Ender series
P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves series

Lots of children's authors have long series--The Babysitter's Club, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Redwall, etc.

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Wendy, will you accept graphic novels for this, too?

Sherrilyn Kenyon has at least 14 books out in her dark hunters series; Kresey Cole's 9th book in her IAD series just came out; i'll take a look through my paranormal lists and see what i can find...

oh - JD Robb's In Death series...like 35 out right now...

fantasticfiction.co.uk is also a good website...you can search by author and it lists books in order, as is fictfact.com (you can track different series you are reading and it lets you know when new ones come out)

What other authors have books in series that you can read out of order? Do the ones listed as suggestions in your message, Wendy, qualify for not needing to read previous books in the series? I have a REALLY hard time not reading things consecutively & haven't read any series that would allow me to move on to the 9, 10, or 11.
Suggestions? . . . Please? :)

Wendy, how do you define "series"? Do all the books have to be about the same central character (like, say the Hercule Poirot books?) Or can they be about the same place - I'm thinking of things like the Mercedes Lackey Valdemar books or the Anne McCaffrey Pern books. Plenty more than 11 books, but they tend to cover long periods of the history of the planet, so don't have common characters necessarily.

Also, assuming these are acceptable, to determine numbers 9, 10 and 11, do we go in order of publication date, or in order of the chronology of time in the series?

Liz wrote: "What other authors have books in series that you can read out of order? Do the ones listed as suggestions in your message, Wendy, qualify for not needing to read previous books in the series? I hav..."

Definitely not Orson Scott Card's Ender series.

I've read them all numberous times and would NEVER read them out of order (much as I love Speaker for the Dead).

John McDonald and Tony Hillerman are okay out of order, I guess.

OMG Wendy now I have to find a long series that I can tuck all the first 8 into other tasks and I already am tucking in about 4 other shorter series. (I am really OCD about reading books in order.)

pj...what kind of genres do you like? then I can see what I can think of that you can maybe read out of order...

pjreads wrote: "Liz wrote: "What other authors have books in series that you can read out of order? Do the ones listed as suggestions in your message, Wendy, qualify for not needing to read previous books in the s..."

Liz wrote: "What other authors have books in series that you can read out of order? Do the ones listed as suggestions in your message, Wendy, qualify for not needing to read previous books in the series? I hav..."

Agatha Christie books don't need to be read in any order nor do John D. MacDonald books - there really isn't any back story to speak of in his Travis McGee series. I wouldn't want to read Janet Evanovich or Charlaine Harris out of order - there's too much you'd miss, I think, by not having read the earlier books.

If you like mysteries, Ngaio Marsh is another one who could be read in any order.

Oh man, this'll be an interesting task, mainly because the only series I own enough of to complete it is Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, and I've only ever read the first book and about 45 pages of the second.

Any old dead guys whose works are in the public domain have a long series I could get for free from Project Gutenberg or similar?

Lillian Jackson Bruan doesn't necessarily have to be read in order. The Hannah Swenson Mysteries would work I think. I have read them out of order before.

pjreads wrote: "Liz wrote: "What other authors have books in series that you can read out of order? Do the ones listed as suggestions in your message, Wendy, qualify for not needing to read previous books in the s..."

That's true about the Ender books. You'd need to have at least a working familiarity with the concept to read 9/10/11 of A Series of Unfortunate Events, too. You could probably read the last of the Little House on the Prairie books, The First Four Years (Little House, #9), without missing much. Everything you'd need to know, just about, is in the book or on the back cover.

Do Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon novels need to be read in order?

Sandy -- the Agatha Christie Miss Marple & Hercule Poirot books aren't a series. They are just books that have the same main character. They don't have the things that offer continuity to a series (setting, similar characters, situations that can carry from book to book)

Honestly, this might just be a task I skip. I too am seriously OCD about reading a series in order. Plus, most of the time it's too hard to start that far into a traditional series without being completely lost. Most series that have that many books in them truly have characters and stories that build that you can't miss the first novels.

so i'm planning on reading Loyalty in Death and Witness in Death because i'm slowly working my way through the series and just finished up 7.5 tonight, so I can knock out book 8 before the end of the month and be ready for 9 and 10 early next month! yay!!

For the sake of this task, would Miss Marple or Hercule Poiroit books be seen as a series?

Or perhaps give people a chance to start a series, or continue a series by not being restricted to the 9th, 10th, or 11th books? I started a few series a long time ago & would be on book 3 in each of them - it would be a good excuse to continue, but I hate to jump ahead & miss something. ???, crosses fingers . . .
If the answer is no, then I'll just suck it up. :)

UPDATE Never mind this message!

It wouldn't be so bad if there was an option to, say, read the final book of two different trilogies (hehe, not that I'd drop a hint) or quartets. With so many people reading the Hunger Games and Millennium trilogies right now that would be a fairly reasonable thing, and it's much easier for those who don't have any trilogies going or have only read the first book, it's within reach and reason to fit the unread books into other tasks or do a quick read of them beforehand. Just my two cents, you can ignore me if you'd like.

EDIT: To add on, since people would have to read less books to GET to the last books of those series, perhaps the number of pages between the two books could be raised to 600 or something.

Oh goodness, my OCD just stopped my heart reading this. I really can't read a traditional series out of order.

Could we get clarification on things like Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot books? Jeeves and Wooster? Nero Wolff would fall into that category too, I think. So I guess my question is: what about books that might be a numbered series, but where the author writes about the same character doing the same sort of thing, over time?

Thanks!

The Benni Harper books by Earlene Fowler are, I think, easy to read out of order because she usually explains so much of the back story in each one. But then, I'm not real compulsive about reading in order.
9, Steps to the Altar
10.Sunshine and Shadow
11. Broken Dishes

the in death series isn't too hard to read out of order....each one is a separate case...all that you really miss is the relationship between Eve and Rourke

I've read Little House, JD Robb, Mercedes Lackey, Laurell K. Hamilton, Babysitter's Club 9/10/11 books already. Not sure if I want to dive into Discworld out of order. Hmm.

Would Nancy Drew count? I *THINK* that can be read out of sequence.

The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle is the 9th in the Sherlock Holmes series.

Measuring a Meridian, The Fur Country, and Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne are 9th, 10th and 11th in his 'Voyages Extraordinaires' series.

if you don't mind paranormal you could check out Sherrilyn Kenyon...they have an overlapping arch, but you can read each separately because they feature different main characters

Tanja wrote: "I've read Little House, JD Robb, Mercedes Lackey, Laurell K. Hamilton, Babysitter's Club 9/10/11 books already. Not sure if I want to dive into Discworld out of order. Hmm.

Would Nancy Drew coun..."

Nevermind. Nancy Drew books are too short to make the 400 page count. Hrm.

Tanja wrote: "I've read Little House, JD Robb, Mercedes Lackey, Laurell K. Hamilton, Babysitter's Club 9/10/11 books already. Not sure if I want to dive into Discworld out of order. Hmm.

Would Nancy Drew coun..."

I'm not sure it matters what order you read Discworld in. Some people go by one of the several reading order charts that can be found online, others go by publication order, and still others just read them in whatever order they feel like reading them. If I have to I may try to acquire and two of the 9th, 10th, and 11th books in publication order and just use those.

Tanja wrote: "Nevermind. Nancy Drew books are too short to make the 400 page count. Hrm."

They would if you used different editions >_>

Rhea, thanks!!! I didn't realize Verne's books were part of a series. I had a look on Wikipedia and there are 55 books considered part of this series!
Thanks!

I could definitely read one of Verne's books.
Rhea, where did you find the list for Sherlock Holmes - I thought he only had a few novels & the rest were short stories???

I got it from Wikipedia; I've been reading through them and I was considering the short stories books as books in the series.

-A Study in Scarlet (1887)
-The Sign of Four (1890)
-The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
-The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
-The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
-The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
-The Valley of Fear (1915)
-His Last Bow (1917)
-The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

There's also James Bond:
9 - Thunderball
10 - The Spy Who Loved Me
11 - On Her Majesty's Secret Service

The Burning Wire is the 9th book of the Lincoln Rhyme series. They can be read out of order, only missing out on the build up of the relationship between Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs.

Rhea wrote: "The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle is the 9th in the Sherlock Holmes series.

Measuring a Meridian, The Fur Country, and..."

Thanks for the info about Verne! I have the audio of Jim Dale narrating Around the World in 80 Days and I'm sure it's amazing.

IF , and I know it's a big if, Agatha Christie's get approved, these look to be the 9/10/11th books:

Poirot:
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The ABC Murders

Miss Marple:
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram's Hotel
Nemesis

Ms Anderson -- Yeah I know but the ones at the library or by Kindle are too short. Ahahaha.

Would this series count? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students...

If not, maybe I should look into the TV book series like CSI or Star Trek.

Tanja wrote: "Ms Anderson -- Yeah I know but the ones at the library or by Kindle are too short. Ahahaha.

Would this series count? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students...

If not, maybe..."

Ah...hmm...

If that series you linked to works, maybe the Dear America and My Name Is... and Royal Diaries ones would work, too.

Could it be 3 books? I was going to read two of one series and another of another series.

If it does, then the Once Upon a Time series works too. It's just these series are written by different authors but still is a series. At least that's how wikipedia and Amazon defined the Once Upon series. Gosh did that sound confusing? :P

I just saw that the Miss Marple books won an Anthony award for "Best Series of the Century", so hopefully they will fit. I just confirmed that I already own A Caribbean Mystery, so fingers crossed.

Yay for speculating! I guess we'll just need to wait for Wendy to define it for us >_>

Christine US wrote: "Do Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon novels need to be read in order?

Sandy -- the Agatha Christie Miss Marple & Hercule Poirot books aren't a series. They are just books that have the same main cha..."

Agatha Christie was listed by Wendy as "a suggested prolific author" in post 2.

I have read all of Donna Leon's Inspector Brunetti's books in order but you really don't have to.

There are 11 #1 Ladies Detective Agency books, best in order but again you don't have to.

If Jules Verne's series is accepted for this, I am totally going to use two of those books, since they are much easier to access than books not in the public domain. They have books 10 and 11 on Project Gutenberg.

Kerry Greenwood has written about 15 or 16 Phryne Fisher mysteries that are really good. It's nice to read them in order but each is a mystery in its own right so it's not essential.

There's a resource that might help- Fiction DB
It lists all the series books- you will have to click on the series to see how many books there are in the series, but they are all together and you can sort them by plot order or publications order (when Wendy clarifies)

So grab an author: ex. Albert, Susan Wittig, click on a series ex. China Bayles, and it shows the 20 books in the series

I would recommend double-checking at another resource since I can't attest to the site's accuracy- but it seems pretty good.
(I am completely OCD about series)

There are now 10 Sookie Stackhouse books so those would work for anyone who has read the others.

Dead and Gone #9
Dead in the Family #10

My daughter has decided I need to read the 39 Clues series. I don't think they are very long, but she says there are 10 of them at this point, so maybe one of those plus a longer book = 400 pages? I believe they are aimed at, maybe, middle school? Like 4-8 grade? I'll have to check and report back, because I know that there are those who don't like stuff aimed at younger readers (hee!).

Of course I need to find a way to fit in the other 8 books!! Ack!! LOL.

Wendy,

I LOVE THIS TASK. I am fitting in the last 8 books of the Sword of Truth Series and all 11 of Donna Andrew's Meg Lanslow series into this challenge so this is awesome for me.

Ms Anderson wrote: "Also:
Piers Anthony's Xanth novels (can be read out of sequence)
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels (I don't believe these go in any particular order, but I could be wrong)
Orson Scott Card's Ende..."
Graphic novels are fine if they meet the page requirements!