Movies & Books

I need to state up front that I Love books. Thats Love with a capital ‘L’. In my mind there is no better form of escapism than immersion into a great story. You truly can forget completely about your own life while you are reading.

Now that I have made that clear, there are some authors that really piss me off. When I am reading a really good story, I usually don’t want to stop reading, so when the end of the book arrives, I put it down with a heavy heart. Nothing would please me more than to pick up the next book in the series and just keep reading.

Notice how I just made the assumption that there was a series of books. Why don’t authors write stand-alone novels anymore? If a book has a clearly defined ending, I can put it away feeling satisfied rather than eager for more. Unfortunately, this seems to be falling out of favour. Nowadays it seems to be perceived that more is better. A good series is a series that can be completed in three books or less.

Before you think I am afraid of long stories, I should clear up that this is not the case. If the story is good, then the longer the better. The problem is that most authors can not make a book in a week. It usually takes them a really long time. If you are in the unfortunate situation of having ‘caught up’ then you must wait. If you are like me, you just pick up another story and then another, until the next book comes along. Because I read a lot, I end up loosing the general feel of the story after that long away from it, so it is hard to start the next book.

I try to not start a series until all the books are written, but that is not always practical, and sometimes I just screw up and think it is finished when it really isn’t. I can handle this for a few books, but then you get some authors that write series of 12 books, or 25 books. Come on. Enough is enough. Does the story really NEED to be that long? When asked, some authors admit that they will keep writing in that series until the ideas dry up. If they think they are being thorough, they are sadly mistaken.

I view it as bad form. When the author starts a book, he or she should be doing somewhat of an outline and have a general idea of where the story is going and how long it should take to get there. When the first one or two books prove successful, it is easy to believe that the author can get seduced by the success, and want to extend it. To ride the wave for as long as possible. I realize that this can just as easily be attributed to the publisher. When you have a winner, you want to go with it for as long as possible. That’s why there are so many movie sequels out there (but don’t even get me started on that subject).

I guess what I am trying to say is that the publishers and authors should remember that they are holding their audience hostage. It is one thing to have more than one series in the same world. It is quite another to cram all the books into one series that has no definable end.