Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Top Ten Tuesday: Series I Have Given Up On

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're looking to series we've tasted and decided not to go back for a second helping of. I don't do a ton of series reading, to be honest, but here are ten books that didn't do it well enough for me to pick up sequels.



Crazy Rich Asians: This series is usually pitched as a frothy delight, and for me, it was a little too frothy. I didn't care enough about any of the characters to feel compelled to continue to follow them.

The Hangman's Daughter: I'm convinced it must have been poor translation that made this book such a dud, because it's got a bunch of sequels and there was nothing I read that made me feel like even one was necessary.

The Paper Magician: This book was fine and made good airplane reading (engaging enough to keep you reading along, but not threatening to make you actually think) but it didn't have the spark that made me want to re-immerse myself in its world.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: I read and loved the original trilogy, but I'm generally not into the idea of a new writer picking up where another left off...and nothing I've read about the quality of the continuation makes me feel any particular regret about this.

Divergent: I thought the first one was alright, but the second one was definitely not good. The final entry was widely panned, so I will be a-okay if I never read it.

The Giver: One of my favorite books as a teenager, I think it told such a good story that the idea of continuing on doesn't feel remotely necessary.

Eragon: I read and really liked the first one when it came out, and then when the second one came out I read like 100 pages and never picked it back up again and can't muster up an interest in getting back into it.

Dune: I know there are people who just can't get enough of this world since there are approximately a billion sequels, but the first one was more than enough for me.

Wicked: I've re-read this book probably a dozen times, I like it that much, and I've liked other work by Maguire, but the idea of reading the sequels has like zero appeal.

Uglies: I read the first and second one and enjoyed them both and then just lost interest entirely.

8 comments:

  1. People just need to know when to stop with sequels! I liked the first two Eragon books but couldn't bring myself to start a third one somehow. And I can never deal with it when a new writer takes up a series - there's always something off about at least one of the characters.

    My ttt: https://basedonthebook.blogspot.com/2018/06/top-ten-tuesday-series-i-gave-up-on.html

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    1. Yeah I've never been down on a new author for a series (which is why I need the next two A Song of Ice and Fire books to come out because I can't imagine someone else finishing that one!)

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  2. I want to read The Paper Magician this year, but I have lot of series starters on my must-read list, so I don't know how many of them I'm actually going to continue with once I read them!

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    1. The Paper Magician was perfectly fine for me, but didn't give me enough to really suck me in so I wanted to keep reading...maybe it'll be different for you!

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  3. Great list! So many of the books on your list are ones I've started and given up on - Eragon, Divergent, Uglies, Wicked (although I would like to give this one another try. I don't have much interest in reading Crazy Rich Asians, I've seen enough reviews to know it's probably not for me, but I do think the film adaptation looks so fun. Thanks for bringing The Hangman's Daughter to my attention, that's definitely one I want to check out!

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    1. I DO think the movie of Crazy Rich Asians will be a delightful movie! The fashion is going to be much more fun to see than to read about!

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  4. The further the Dune books went, the more they lost the spark that made that first one so amazing. :( Sometimes it really is okay to have one wonderful book and then *stop there*! I wish more publishers would go for that, instead of trying to order a trilogy out of a one-book idea.

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    1. SO AGREE! I get so annoyed with books that are just designed to set up a sequel. Tell a complete story and if there's more to it, great! Sequels! But reading a book that I can tell is just prepping to launch more books is becoming a very real pet peeve.

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