Depending on your point of view, adding books in series to your private library can be one of the most joyful experiences of your life, or one of the most frustrating.
It often is surprising to new collectors just how many books are published as part of a series of books. If you collect romance fiction, science fiction, mysteries, action-adventure, children's books, cookbooks, travel books or classics, you almost certainly are going to encounter any number of titles that are published as part of a series.
A series may be chronological, requiring that each book in the series be read in its proper order in order to fully appreciate it (or a particular work of fiction may be so large that it takes multiple volumes--each of which must be read in sequence-- to tell the full story):
Or a series may have recurring characters, but individual titles in the series do not generally refer back to previous titles in the series, so it does not matter in which order any particular book in the series is read:
Some books in series are a series only because a publisher decided to publish a bunch of books in an identical format and cover (one often finds classical works, as well as canonical works, receiving this treatment):
Books in series can be a goldmine for publishers, because of book collectors' well-known penchant for completeness. We will examine this phenomenon in more detail over the next few posts....
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