I’m curious to know the answer to this question because I noticed my own behavior has changed as I got older.
When I was younger, I used to read a series all in one go: after I finished the first book, if there was a second, I would grab that one, and so on and so forth.
Nowadays though, I don’t like doing that anymore. Even when I like book one, I will not pick up the second book of the series until after a long while. I still haven’t finished the Annihilation trilogy (2/3) or the Earthsea pentalogy (3/5) or the hatching trilogy (1/3), just to give some examples. And I like the books, mind you.
I feel that one reason for this change is that I don’t like to keep reading the same flavor of book again and again anymore. I like to shift things around, pick up a new genre, get a fresh perspective… and then, when I feel the longing, I grab the book from a series I was reading to see what’s going on there. It feels like getting in touch with an old friend, and remembering why you were such good friends in the first place.
So, what about you? What’s your style? Binge-reading the series or taking your sweet sweet time?
I read multiple books at a time, usually. If one gets stale or I get frustrated with it, I have another to go to. They are usually different genres so there is no confusing them and I get a bit of a refresher for pacing and narrative. For instance, I was reading Mrs. Dalloway (Woolf), Borne (also by Vandermeer), and I am picking away at Brother’s Karamazov (Dostoevsky). There is no mixing those up and they are vastly different lol. Then, I randomly decided I HAD to read What Moves the Dead (Kingfisher) and finished that in a day! If the second was out, I would have immediately read it as well. It really depends. Are we talking the Wheel of Time? Because I had to tap out at book three or something and give myself a break! Then again, I devoured The Winternight Trilogy (Arden) in one go.