SOS: Serious Overload of Series discussion

IMWTK: Which books lived up to they hype?
No publication date requirement. If it was hyped here, there and everywhere, you read it and thought it was worth all that, share!

I'm trying to find worth-the-hype books in series that started long enough ago that 2+ books have been published by now. But, I'm always looking for a great, new series so I'd never restrict your suggestions 😊

I won't be joining in to this discussion because I never pay attention to the hype. In fact, I basically am never exposed to the hype. I will be interested in what you all say, though

I hated Gone Girl also. And I read it because of the hype. They kept throwing the hype at me until it sunk in through my apathy towards any kind of marketing.

Really, what are these authors thinking? Let's just conceal what's going on with all the characters until a reveal in the last 10% shows they are all liars???? Talk about unreliable narrators!!!

If a book says it is for people who loved Gone Girl, I avoid it like the plague!

Zoi wrote: "A friend described it perfectly imo, “…an entire book of horrible people being horrible to each other”."

LOL!!!!!!! exactly

😆

By hype I meant those you see everyone reading and raving about, a book that seems to be everywhere at once/pushed on seller and rec sites, etc.

I typically avoid a book by an unknown author when I see it blasted everywhere. The rare times I haven’t, I’ve gone in with my hopes too high and been disappointed. Instead I’ve waited a year or more to see if the enthusiasm around it has remained and may check it out then.

👍🏼😊

Smart ... it's like we've fallen into the upside down 🙄

So I read
in July 2012 a year after it came out and really started to be pushed by readers. I loved it and usually avoid the YA dystopian type book but this was great. A friend in real life had to recommend it before I listened to the hype though.
, I was recommended this several times and it is really out of my normal genre as it is YA contemporary romancy kind of. Several of my GR friends in Fantasy group were recommending it and I was like, nope, not my thing. Can you stick to something that is in my many listed genres of recommending please but... after a third person in a recommend challenge recommended it, I read it and loved it.
, was all over the place the year it came out and really wasn't a book that again would be my my genre, historical fiction from the 50-60s not in my genre but might be interesting. Still it wasn't on my radar to read until a family member recommended it. Loved it too.

None of these is series which was in the second part of what you were looking for though.

Amyiw wrote: "So I read…"

Thanks for the recs 😊

RE: Ready Player One & Lessons in Chemistry - I watched the movie and the TV show. The movie was okay. I loved the TV show. Sadly, if I watch fiction-to-screen before reading it I tend not to read it. I’d rather read new2me. Only instance, if you can believe it, I started HP only after watching all the movies.

RE: Making Faces 😆 gotta love those GR friends who keep pushing till we’ll read & agree they were right. I had something similar happen with Robb’s ‘In Death’, which I only started last year after years of friendly pushes from SOSers to start it. I’ve put this one on my KU wanna-read list.

RE: Ready Player One & Lessons in Chemistry - I watched the movie and the TV show. The movie was okay. I loved the T..."

OK, you need to read these books as the movie is way way different. There are things that are the same but... way different. I appreciated the movie only because it didn't try todo even 1/3 of the things that happen.
And Lessons in Chemistry... well they changed that up totally too. Read the book. I kind of liked the TV show but... They put the friend protestor in and took so much out. There was not any of the racial social justice stuff in the book. It has enough women's social justice of the era to go around. The woman who came over was an older woman that at first criticize and then helped her with her daughter as she had so many first mom/single mom issues, money issues, and job issues to deal with. I think the friend's fight was a great part of the TV show but it didn't happen in the book at all. So really parts were the same but the book had a lot more in it.

I'm glad I read those before the Movie/TV shows as I am like you and end up not reading the books though I always think I'm going to. There are exceptions like Persuasion of Jane Austen. I watched the 1995 Amanda Root version several times and finally read the book. The movie I think did it justice. The new TV show, not so much.


Zoi wrote: "Making Faces is SO good! I loved it. Read it multiple times at this point.

Me too. I got my husband to listen to it with me on a car trip and he ended up finishing it on his own. It is so far out of his normal genre it is not funny but he really liked it.

I have bought the physical copy for several friends, gifted the audible to another and rereaded several times. I have it in trade paperback, ebook, and Audible.

Thanks, Amyiw, I might.

😆 @ husband book-Interruptus

Zoi wrote: "Persuasion is my favorite Austen. ❤️

My husband only reads non-fiction. :/. I like that he reads, but he doesn’t read fiction, so he doesn’t get how annoying interruptions are when you’re really i..."

Persuasion is my 2nd favorite. I think it is because Pride was the first book I read by her (or movie/series) and I can reread the note, the refusal the last walk over and over. Read the book maybe 3 times completely, maybe 4,(review say 4 to 5 as a guess) hard to remember and it is before GR. Took me forever to get to Persuasion but the note is killer there too.

My husband is a big SF fan but not the slapstick kind, military (which I don't love), and anything not in the Hitckhiker's venue, which is a favorite for me. He just liked it. He is also loves fantasy like Drizzt which meh, for me not so great, also read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series which Jordan was still writing it. My son likes stuff of both us, he loved Drizzt. Murderbot works for all of us. Bobiverse. And a few others. We did Project Hail Mary together. Hubby does read UF but has to be low on the sex, Kate Daniels worked as the sex didn't come until he was invested. Mercy he liked for a while but fell off at 7 or 8. He read all the Iron Druid along with my son.

Iron Duke was funny as he and I were listening to one of the novellas in the car on the way somewhere and I was laughing out loud at so many things and he was like..."huh?" and where he would find it fun, not so much me. We have completely different funny bones. Both my son, brother, and I read the Imp series by Dunbar and my husband did a couple and quit. He did not find it fun. LOL. So Alex Verus was listened through from beginning to end by him. I'm stuck in the middle but only because it wasn't finished when I started it.

I got my husband to read non-fiction but it isn't his favorite. Got him to read The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism and How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

I know many that think that fiction is a waste of time but it is my enjoyment and that is never a waste of time. I definitely don't enjoy non-fiction even close to my UF/PNR.

I think Hail Mary is in the works also as a Movie.

I used to be a book seller and I discovered that a lot of the "hype" books are meant to get non readers to read. Or for the people that read a few books a year when they're on vacation, and the people that are big readers all go "I don't get it"


That being said, what do you like to read? What are some of your past favorite series? And what are you in the mood for?

Zoi wrote: "Hail Mary was disappointing for me. It lacked the humor of The Martian."

I really liked Hail Mary but ended up a 4 rather than 5 (view spoiler)[ I just could not imagine being fine living on that wildly different planet with wildly different species and being content, in what essential is a cage, for the rest of life. Also I really wanted an epilogue to what happened on Earth. (hide spoiler)]. I haven't read The Martian, probably because I watched the movie and then the book doesn't pull anymore though I know that they can be so so different.

Ashley wrote: "I used to be a book seller and I discovered that a lot of the "hype" books are meant to get non readers to read. Or for the people that read a few books a year when they're on vacation, and the peo..."

That being said, what do you like to read? What are some of your past favorite series? And what are you in the mood for?

You know me and that answer would be to long for a post, 'favorite series', and mood. I've been reading a bunch of SF and HR lately though there is my favorite UF sprinkled in too.

I found this to be a hoot, though one of my GR friends only gave it a 4, gave it a big 5 and reread it only 6 weeks after my first read. I have been looking at Murderbot and thinking of doing a reread there too as it is a favorite reread.

I think Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series is living up to the hype... I can see it becoming a movie or series. Kind of like Divergent with more fantasy elements and dragons.

Zoi wrote: "I’d heard not great things about Onyx Storm, have any of you read it yet?

Yes, if you like Young Adult series where the inexperienced underdog heroine and her sidekicks are the only ones that can save the world type of books... This one is okay, I am enjoying the journey so far. Even though it feels and reads as a YA book, its has more adult scenes, situations, and content. At a certain age they can choose the dangerous path of Dragon Riders or the path to become a Scribe. The heroines deceased father was a well known Scribe and her mother, sister, and deceased brother, Dragon riders. She is smart but frail and still pushed into the Dragon rider path. Lots of death during the cadet training, secrets, dangerous enemies, etc...

I agree, Lis. That's actually the series that got me on my hunt for "worth the hype" books. I've read all three so far, too, and my ratings have decreased .5-star with each book (Book 1 5-star read), but I still enjoy it a lot and will stick till the end.

Zoi wrote: "... So, it could go either way…"

So true. I was a outlier and didn't really like the 1st book there. I didn't read on.

Steph wrote: "I agree, Lis. That's actually the series that got me on my hunt for "worth the hype" books...."

I agree, there is a bit of decline for me in the latest sequel. It feels like its hard to top the reveals and shocks in the earlier two.

Lis wrote: "It feels like its hard to top the reveals and shocks in the earlier two."

yeah, I’m hopeful book 4 brings back all that made book 1 so good 🤞🏼

Zoi wrote: "And, they’re $15 a piece, for a Kindle book. That seems outrageous to me. For a hardback, sure, but Kindle? Nope. Maybe if you’ve hooked me and I LOVE your series, like Mercy, or Kate, but book one..."

That's what libraries are for. They've become essential as my 250 books per year at and average of $10 would be $2,500/yr! and $1,250 if I could get it to 1/2 that at $5. I still spend hundreds on books but libraries are my friend.

Zoi wrote: "I’m weird. Libraries gross me out. Basically, people are savages, and idk what the last person was doing while they read that book…😳🤢

😆 That's what ebooks from libraries are for 😏

I 💕 my library!

Amyiw wrote: "That's what libraries are for. They've become essential as my 250 books per year at and average of $10 would be $2,500/yr!"

Yeah, but the libraries download through Amazon-or at least mine does

Libby offers reading on Libby app and/or kindle. Shame it’s not open to other readers.

Boox eReaders are Android with Google Play but also has a native eReader too "Neo" which is their home screen really. You can go to the app screen and open Libby and read right there on a eInk backlit screen. You also can read Hoopla books though I think of Hoopla as audio though really it isn't true, it has plenty of eBooks and you can read them on the Hoopla app too. I have read a couple of Hoopla now once on my iPad mini as that is all I had at the time. And one on my Boox Color go 7". I have bought both the Boox Page (which is the one I would recommend) and the Boox Color. My SIL has the Page and likes it now that she has figured out its settings. I used it for a couple of days (week) and think it is slightly snapper and easier to adjust the lighting well. The Color is not ready for prime time but it is decent enough that it has become my main reader.

Reading through the apps is not as smooth as the functions all take longer than the native reader "Neo" which is snappy but you have to have DRM free files with Neo. Also the page turn buttons don't seem to work right in some of the apps even when set to page turn. There is a Kindle app that you can install too and get your KU if you have that.

I forgot what this thread was about. So to go back to the theme.

IMWTK: Which books lived up to they hype?

, I didn't watch the movie but the book was great.

Amyiw wrote: "I forgot what this thread was about. So to go back to the theme.

IMWTK: Which books lived up to they hype?"

😆 Thanks, Amyiw

My Dad loved that movie. I haven't read or watched, so maybe.

Haven't watched the film so cannot say. Maybe I'll look for it.