Resetting my Series-ous Reading 2.0

I started this new year of reading with a rather ambitious literary plan; to read Stephen King's entire Dark Tower series(except for the prequel The Wind in the Keyhole) and another Outlander book to boot. After my prior successful year of Series-ous Reading, where I caught up on a couple of book series that had been languishing on my TBR piles, my confidence level was quite high.

However, this time out, the Dark Tower titles have become more of a chore than a challenge and the one thing about my reading goals that I've always tried to hold true to is that it should be both fun and fulfilling. Halfway through the third book (The Wastelands), it became clear to me that I needed to make a new game plan.

This isn't the fault of the book themselves, it's more like the timing for this particular bookish mountain climb is not right. I do have other options here and with the rest of the reading year now in reset, pages should start turning in a more agreeable direction:

POLDARK: While I also put aside Voyager(just too late in the year to tackle that), I felt that the Poldark saga was well within my reach and have already begun with Warleggan, which highlights that dreadful nemesis of Ross Poldark and his various schemes.

After I get though with that, The Black Moon is next and with any luck, both books will be finished by the time the next season of the show premieres on PBS this fall. Perhaps I might save TBM for that time frame, we shall see.

I did enjoy reading Jeremy Poldark earlier this year and happy to head back to Cornwall,where plots may be a-brewing but those who stand against them stay right on course:

MURDER MOST FOODIE: A new interest of mine lately is food themed mysteries and since many of them turn into series, why not fully embrace that?

As a tasting sample, Ellie Alexander's Meet Your Baker is now on the Series-ous Reading list as it is the first of her Bakeshop Mystery books. Our leading lady detective is Juliet Capshaw, who returns to her small Oregon town to help her mother out at their family bakery known as Torte.

At the local Shakespeare festival, a  new board member is found dead under unusual circumstances and Juliet's high school flame Thomas is the lead investigator on the case. Not only is this a chance to use her bakery brain power, Juliet also has a fair shot at rekindling an old love. There's plenty of literary riffs to be expected here, which should make this introductory read extra entertaining indeed.

One foodie mystery series that I've developed an appetite for is Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen books, having devoured the first two(as well as skipped ahead to a Christmas themed tale) murderous morsels with true delight.

I plan to continue with the third(Blueberry Muffin Murder) and on to the fourth(Lemon Meringue Pie Murder). I do have the next couple of books after that but don't want to gobble down something this sweetly amusing right away.

There's just something about Hannah and her small town bakery called The Cookie Jar, along with her quirky family and friends(not to mention two almost boyfriends!) that relax my spirits as well as spark my inquisitive imagination. Fluke does have a flair for sinister sweetness with a warm from the oven goodness that's hard to resist:

THE SPYING GAME: If I have any time left before the end of the year for this challenge, I hope to squeeze another of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation books.

The Temptation of the Night Jasmine is the fifth title in the series,which I skipped over last year and really should make proper amends for. The Regency era heroine of this tale is Lady Charlotte, a young women who is more comfortable reading her favorite thrillers than looking for a potential husband in a ballroom.

Her cousin, Robert, the Duke of Dovedale, is home from India and while her own formidable grandmother is making marriage plans for him, Charlotte still has a crush on him yet based on her reading material, is wondering if Robert is a member of the infamous spy ring in their midst. With my rereading of Northanger Abbey these days, my appreciation for young ladies dealing with the influence of a literary inspired imagination is rather keen:

So, that is my new set of plans for Series-ous Reading for the rest of 2018. While I have some regrets about abandoning my original goals, I think that it's for the best to do this. Why persist in reading something that is not keeping me engaged? It's unfair to myself and the books in question, if you think about it.

Perhaps in the future, I can walk down that Dark Tower road again and continue to it's conclusion. Time will tell and anyway, the books will be ready for me when I am for them. In the meanwhile, it's good to forge on ahead with new reads instead of constantly looking back.

Don't get me wrong, folks, rereading earlier books in a series can be fun and useful to update yourself for the next installment. With this reset,however, I have some ground to regain here, so onward I go!: