Why I Stop Reading a Series

After viewing 31 seasons of the TV show “Chopped”, I recently dropped it from my list of shows to watch. That’s over 400 episodes of chefs creating appetizers, entrees and desserts from some of the oddest combination of ingredients you’ll ever see.

I stopped watching it because it dawned on my I wasn’t enjoying the show anymore. That I was watching it because I always had. That was quite a revelation for me. You see, I’m the kind of person who must see every episode of shows I consider worth watching. I can get quite obsessed about it.

That goes for books I read as well. If a mystery series captures my attention, I’ll generally read every book in it. Sometimes long after, shall we say, its expiration date.

This got me thinking about why I stop reading a mystery series and if there’s such a thing as the perfect length for one. I had a discussion with an avid mystery reader about the latter at a library event once. After some thought, he decided 7 books was the right number for a series. He felt the books after that didn’t match up to the first seven.

This interests me now in particular because I recently signed a contract for books 4, 5, and 6 in my Aurora Anderson mystery series. I have lots of ideas for these three books, but whether or not I’ll have ideas for ones past that, I don’t know. That’s a bridge that I’ll cross a few years from now.

Back to thinking about mystery series in general. I’ve read some where only 3 books were published and I felt there should be more. And others where 3 books were published and I thought that was too many. Then there’s the Aunt Dimity series. I’m 17 books in and still loving them. Sure, there are ones I enjoy more than others, but I love the characters and settings so much I don’t envision dropping it from my mental TBR pile.

After some thought, here’s my list of reasons why I stop reading a series:

I no longer care about the characters. I don’t necessarily have to like the characters to enjoy a series, but I at least have to find them interesting. Once I feel ho hum about what happens to them, that’s it for me.

The main character is too much of a wimp. I don’t expect the main character of a series to be Wonder Woman or Batman. Everybody has their wimpy moments and that’s okay. I’m pretty much a wimp myself. I also know there are professions where the customer is king and you’d better kowtow to them or you’ll be out of a job. I don’t count those in this. But there is a point that I find it hard to define where a character crosses once too often into Wimpville for me. That’s when I’m apt to not even finish the book and immediately cross the series off my reading list.

Situations have become too preposterous. I’m pretty easy going when it comes to books, especially amateur sleuths. Situations and reasons for investigating only have to be marginally believable for me. But sometimes, after many books, things become a little too preposterous even for me. This hasn’t happened very often. Maybe it has more do with the next item below than anything else.

I’ve grown tired of the main character. Sometimes a character I enjoyed at the beginning of a series no longer appeals to me. Maybe they’ve grown too far away from what I liked about them in the first place or maybe I’ve grown tired of their quirks.

I’m no longer enjoying the books. And then there’s the revelation I talked about at the beginning of this post. Nothing’s changed about the series. I just don’t enjoy the books anymore. Maybe this has to do with growing older and really realizing there’s limited reading time and I don’t want to waste it on something that’s just okay.

That's my list. Type M readers, why do you stop reading a mystery series? Do you think there's a perfect length for one?