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Plot Summaries
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Geoffrey
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Jul 15, 2016 06:57AM
I imagine that you, like me, read books in this category at an alarming rate. I find the biggest problem is simply recalling the backstories and plots of earlier books when I start a new book in a long series. It may be a year or more since reading the previous book and in the interim I may have read 30 or 40 others by different authors. Finding plot summaries is really hard. The blurb rarely tells me enough to remind me of all the detail. So the question is - am I the only one who has this problem? If not, how do you deal with it?
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Read the reviews. The longer ones tend to recap the plot.
Geoffrey wrote: "I imagine that you, like me, read books in this category at an alarming rate. I find the biggest problem is simply recalling the backstories and plots of earlier books when I start a new book in a ..."Geoffrey, I too have this problem and have often thought it would be nice to have a website (maybe as an adjunct to FictFact, which tracks series) where series readers could find not just plot summaries, but those stray hints which turn up along the line.
A retirement project, perhaps?
I keep a book journal in which I record the author, title and date published. I give myself a brief summary, a rating, and whether it's a debut or what # it is in the series. This helps a lot.
Faith wrote: "Read the reviews. The longer ones tend to recap the plot."I do read reviews but they usually avoid too much detail so as not to be spoilers. What would be handy is the sort of plot summary you can find on Wiki or the like for the old classics.
Annette wrote: "I keep a book journal in which I record the author, title and date published. I give myself a brief summary, a rating, and whether it's a debut or what # it is in the series. This helps a lot."That is a good idea - perhaps you could share some of them for those of us who didn't do it in the past :)
Deborah wrote: "Geoffrey wrote: "I imagine that you, like me, read books in this category at an alarming rate. I find the biggest problem is simply recalling the backstories and plots of earlier books when I start..."Regrettably I have a retirement project which seems to occupy me more than working ever did! But a great idea.
Thanks for the suggestion. Why didn't I ever think of that? :>
My wife sometimes rereads a portion of the previous book.
Interesting question. I think I just try not to worry about the previous books. Once I get into a story, the next in a series, say, it sort of starts to come back to me; what's gone on in the past books. I now tend to add a pretty good review of books I've read, on Goodreads, but, as you mention earlier, I try not to spoiler too much in the review, so that probably doesn't help much.
