Friday, August 17, 2012

I'm Addicted to Series Books More Than I Knew


If you take a look at the book market, you notice there are a lot of books that are part of a series. For myself, I tend to shy away from as many of them as I can. A lot of the premises tend to be the same, and certain genres have started to annoy me with the ridiculousness of their similarities to each other and other book series already out there. So I honestly avoid a few of them like the plague.

However, I decided to take a look into how many of them I am not only into at the moment but also am interested in. My first stop was my bookshelf. I was… surprised… by the results. But what I own is not everything I’ve read or plan to read. I had to dig deeper.

And dig deeper I did. (Say that three times fast.)

I went through my Goodreads series shelf, alphabetically by author, and began to chart different things. What I discovered was, highly exasperating. My results were quite insane. I am going to share them with you.

Bear in mind, these are just approximate numbers/percentages. It took me hours (over three separate days) of compiling the data and staring at a screen and remembering which check marks I made where. It is very likely I missed a few books or possibly double check marked a couple times. So, like I said, approximate, but, it’s still close enough. *

~*~

TOTAL OF SERIES **: 173
DIFFERENT AUTHORS: 144
SEPARATE BOOKS *** : 684
TOTAL OF SERIES I OWN: 60
SEPARATE BOOKS I OWN: 128


~ 87% YOUNG ADULT ~ 5% ADULT ~ 8% CHILDRENS ~



~ 32% READ ~ 68% HAVEN’T READ ~



~ 9% FINISHED ~ 15% WILL NOT CONTINUE ~
~ 76% TO BE FINISHED/STARTED ~



~ 20% INDIE ~ 80% TRADITIONAL ~


~ 61% PARANORMAL & DYSTOPIAN ~
~ 39% CONTEMPORARY ~

~ 42% STARTED ~ 58% NOT STARTED ~


~ 35% OWNED ~ 65% NOT OWNED ~


~ 19% OWNED ~ 81% NOT OWNED ~


~ 54% OWNED ~ 46% TO BE PURCHASED ~


~ 41% READ ~ 59% UNREAD ~

~*~

It makes me truly realize how far behind I am. And how many series I really, REALLY need to get to. I would like to have the percentages to at least half of the series started, also more series completed. It just seems so ridiculous how many series I have taken on.

Ah, the life of an avid book reader.

Not that I suggest calculating the perilous evil of the above for any of you, but where do you think you stand? Are you diligent about finishing series that you’ve started or do you start so many that you barely have enough time to read the next book when it comes out? Or do you try to read more standalones because series books drive you nuts to keep up with?

I would love to hear your thoughts!
 

~Jessica

* For the sake of making it look neat and orderly, I have adjusted the percentages to whole numbers instead of decimals.
** Including ones I have started, finished, won’t finish, and haven’t started yet.
*** Not including ones from the childhood series I am no longer reading (i.e. series with hundreds of books like The Baby Sitter’s Club, Sweet Valley Twins, ETC. which really throw the percentages way off base)

PS: For the sake of clarity as to the reasons why I subjected myself to the above, I decided to make a pie chart for that as well.


Note: All pie charts in this post were made on this website. Check it out, it was actually fun. ;)

13 comments:

  1. Ha! I seriously love you, you have no idea. This was a big undertaking! The thought of going through my GoodReads lists makes me want to vomit because I have over a thousand books in my TBR alone.

    I'm one of those people who starts a series and then moves on and it might be years before I carry on. It's ridiculous because by then I've forgotten a lot of what's happened, but I keep doing it over and over. I think the only series I've started and finished close together were Harry Potter (although that's not really true because I read them as they came out and there were sometimes long waits in between, but when I've reread them I've done it back to back), Twilight, The Hunger Games, the Stephanie Plum books, and the Passport to Peril series...oh, and any of Nora Roberts series/trilogies.

    I don't think I'd be exaggerating if I said I've started a couple dozen series and never made it past the first book. It's rare that I don't want to continue with a series, it's just that there are SO MANY FREAKING BOOKS TO READ and only so much time. Plus I do love standalones, and since contemporary is my favourite genre and most of those are standalones, it's hard. PLUS I think maybe what got me into the habit of not carrying on with series was the fact that I hated reading the first book then having to wait a year for the next and another year for the next, and so on. Now a lot of the series I read are older ones so that most, if not all, the books are already out and I don't have to wait. But yeah...that might be a project for next year - carrying on with the series I've already started.

    I love your pie charts...particularly your last one...I guess all I can say to sum up is take comfort in knowing you're not alone with the crazy lol ;-)

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    1. Holy long comment Batman lol...sorry...it's after 1am and I'm getting punchy which often leads to me rambling lol

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    2. Oh Marie! I don't mind long comments. I love em!

      That's what I've been thinking--not reading the next book until years later and being lost. Unless I read these books round the clock, I'll never get anywhere or remember the story.

      There ARE so many freaking books!! It's ridiculous. I adore standalones, but these series are just overtaking them. It's a frustration... I actually don't mind so much waiting a year for the next book in a series, mostly because I have so many other books I really want to catch up on! Ha! Maybe the two of us can pick out a series we're both reading and haven't finished and plan on reading it together next year. Or just read a few of the books in different series to get a little caught up. ;)

      I am always happy to hear I share the crazy with great friends! :D

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    3. Yay! :-D

      I love your idea of picking a series we're both reading and finishing it - that would be so much fun! I always love having someone to discuss books with. It's nice to have the blog as an outlet and have people who enjoy the same books, but it seems rare to actually get discussions going and carry them on. I could talk books 24/7.

      Before I started the blog and started reading YA, it seemed like almost every book I picked up in the library was part of a series...and so few of them say which # they are in the series, so I wouldn't pick them because I didn't want to read the series out of order, so it really narrowed down my selection. Now I find the same is true with YA except that I usually know what I'm going for or I've heard of the books and know which comes first. Still...series are talking over!

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    4. It would be SO much fun to do. And it is fun to have back and forth discussions about a book. We definitely need to do that. :)

      I accidentally read a sequel before the original, and even though it was a sequel, I enjoyed it a lot. When I picked up the first book, it wasn't as good, lol. :P

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  2. Wow. That's a lot of pie charts. I tried the nifty graph-maker on my own collection and ...
    At a quick glance, my fantasy books take up around 75% of my bookshelf space. With a half of the remainder going to Science Fantasy, then a split between Sci-fi and Historical. And a sliver for paranormals.

    I knew I'd a ton of fantasy, but that's scary.

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    1. It is scary, isn't it? You don't realize how much you have of certain types of books until you sit down and look. I used to think I liked standalones more, but my calculations were an eye opener!

      I love that you checked your books too. You're awesome for that! :D

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  3. Lol! I love it and completely understand. I'm in the middle of a million series, I swear. and there's tons more I haven't even started. I wish there were more YA stand alones though. I won't finish a series if I didn't like the first book.

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    1. I agree--standalones for the win! At least I can knock a few of them off the list when I don't like the first book, lol. :P

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  4. I'm too scared to look at my stats because I'd probably end up falling over. Though I do know off the top of my head that I have bought many a first book in a series, didn't finish reading it and have no plans to continue with the series. The problem with stand alones is that if they're really amazing, you totally want it to be part of a series!

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    1. Yes, exactly! I'm always wishing my favorite standalones would at the very least get a sequel or a novella. That way I can live in that world just a LITTLE bit longer. :)

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  5. I bet my stats would be somewhere along the lines of yours. I sort of hate that EVERYTHING is a series these days, because not everything needs to be a series. And I have so many series I want to get to that I buy books for, so I keep up to date, and I haven't even cracked open the first book.

    The last pie chart is perfect :D

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    1. Right, they don't all need to be. For some, it works; others, it's just because. I've done the same--I have most of the Kathy Reichs books in my possession, but I've only read the first, lol.

      I'm glad you liked it! ;)

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Thank you for commenting and happy reading!