Many tasks and projects have a natural order, and it makes sense to follow that order. We even have proverbs to that effect:
- Don’t put the cart before the horse.
- Don’t count your chickens until they’ve hatched.
My logical mind therefore wants to read a series of books in order, and it annoys me if I accidentally buy Book #3 in a series without realising it is a series
(I’ve actually just finished a romance like that: I bought the book on a Kindle sale, knowing it was part of a series, but thinking that each story would stand alone. The romance element stood alone, but the book was clearly part of a longer series with an overarching plot arc.
As a result, the beginning of the book was confusing, as it introduced a dozen people in close succession, and it felt like the first day at a new job. And the end of the story felt incomplete, as while the main couple in the story got their happy-ever-after romantic ending, the background plot was nowhere near being resolved.)
Anyway, back to the question of the week: when I buy a box set of a series of books, I read from beginning to end:
- Whether I buy the series in paper or ebook.
- Whether the series is sold as a 4-in-1 volume or an actual box set of separate books.
- Whether it is a single-author series or a multi-author series.
If it is a series, I will do my best to read every book, and I will read in order.
There have been series where I’ve deliberately bought the second or third book because I didn’t think I was interested in the earlier books. If I enjoy the book I bought, I invariably end up buying those earlier books so I can read the series again in order.
However, some multi-author box sets aren’t a series
They are merely a group of unrelated titles in the same genre. In these cases, I will read the ebook in order (because they are invariably sold in ebook format and it’s harder to skip around in an ebook than in a paperback), but I won’t necessarily read all the books in the set.
