IT’S ALL JUST FUN, EVERYONE.

It’s no secret that I have and will read a book series out of order. Why? Well, I explain that in the link just given. This blog post is just a short fun, silly list of the different types of out of order reading. Some of these are just slight variations of each other.

Non-Purposeful

The Missing Library Book—starting out

You’re at the library, either physically or digitally. Browsing through their catalogue, you stumble upon a great-sounding book. But it’s #2 in the series, with #1 nowhere to be found. And it turns out that they won’t be able to get the first book in until quite some time (for whatever reason). Oh well, might as well just start where you can.

The Missing Library Book—in the middle

Everything above is still true, but you were able to start with the first book in the series. The problem now is that #2 is missing, but they have the third one available. Looks like you’ll be reading book number three next instead.

The Assigned Book for Class

The teacher or professor has assigned a handful of books for this particular class you’re taking. One of them happens to be book 3 of a series. “It’s okay,” they tell you, “You might miss a few references here and there, but the themes of this book will still make sense and are relevant to this class.”

The Mystery Spine/Cover

Wow! This book looks great! You don’t see anything about it being a part of a series on the spine or the cover. You read it, and everything is fine. Maybe the book hints at things that’ve happened in the past, but that could just be because the author is establishing that these characters exist beyond just the page (in a way). But then you go to add the book to your log and discover that, oh no…you read the second book in a series first!

Purposeful

How did we get here?—The Backwards

In a series of 4 books, you start with the 4th book, then read the rest in descending order. You know the ending, how everything wraps up. What you don’t know is how things got there. And that’s part of the fun.

The Circle of Life

Let’s use a 5-book series for this example, though it could still work with as small as a trilogy. For this you start with a book in the middle of the series. Afterwards, you read in ascending order, then circle back around to the beginning and read in ascending order until you’re back at your original starting point. With this method, you in a way make it so that the first section of reading is the main series, while the second section is a sort of prequel series. Or if it’s a trilogy, the second section (book 1) is a prequel book.

Peaking at the End—Then Returning to the Start

So you did start out reading the first book. But you just got so curious about the ending of the series that you skipped straight to the final book. With this method (and some of the others mentioned in this list), you can more easily recognize callbacks to the first book. After you’ve read the final book, you continue on with book 2 and read chronologically.

Peaking at the End—Then Continuing Backwards

This is similar to the above method. However, instead of returning to the beginning, you just continue to read in backwards order.

Peaking at the Beginning—Then Returning to the End

Here, instead of starting with the first book, you start with the last book and jump to the first one right after. Then you return to the end and read the series backwards.

Peaking at the Beginning—Then Continuing Chronologically

Same thing as above, just this time you continue the series in chronological order.

The Chaos

You just randomly choose a book in the series to read. Who cares? 1, 3, 2, 5, 4? Sure, go for it! It’s all just chaos anyway.

What is Order, Anyway?

The Discworld—aka, “Start anywhere but the beginning.”

If you’ve ever been interested in reading the Discworld books, you may have come across fans or articles that vehemently tell you to not start with the first book. They’re only trying to look out for you because perhaps book one might turn you off from the series. Instead, they offer multiple other starting points. So you’re not reading the entire series in order but only because you were suggested not to. While this is a sentiment I’ve seen most commonly with Discworld, I’m sure there must be other series where this applies, too.

The Series of Standalones

It’s true. Some book series are more just companion novels. Yes, technically there might be little easter egg references here and there. But the author intended each book to stand on its own with no expectation that readers must read the books in any certain order.

The Chronological Timeline

Technically, you are reading the books in order—just not in publication order. Some series aren’t written in a chronological time order. Maybe book one actually takes place at the end of the timeline. With this method, you forego publication order in favor of the series’ in-world timeline.

I think I’ll stop here. There are doubtless other out of order reading methods that I haven’t mentioned, but I think this list is sizeable enough.