How to read…

A handy cut out and keep list of the series you need to read, in the order you need to read them. How ace is that?

I hope you are like me and when setting off on a series of books, like to read them in the intended order. Often tricky if you come to the series after the first few have been published. Of course, each author would say that it doesn’t really matter if you read them in order or one here and one there – but it does.

Sometimes, the published order isn’t the books chronological order – I’m thinking of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series for one and there are still competing theories as to in which order they should be read. For the record, it’s The Magician’s Nephew first…

Some series have helpfully the book number written on them, usually the front. If you’re lucky. However, even then it can be problematical. Take the Sphere series of Conan The Barbarian. They (the first 12 were the first published as a series way back in the 1970s), have the numbers 1 -12 printed on the back – but that order is wrong chronologically. The only way of getting them in the order, is to look in the books, and, for the stories written in their entirety, or finished off by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, they do mostly say which story they follow on from. The Conan stories written entirely by other authors, are a law unto themselves.

So, here I have put together the series I have plowed through – and (mostly) reviewed – in the order you should read them. They are primarily for series which don’t have the reading order printed on them.