Bookish Questions – Favorite series?
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What is your favorite series?
Picking a favorite series is almost as hard as picking a favorite book. Almost, but not quite. I have two series that I genuinely love for what they meant to me as a child. The first is Nancy Drew, a series about a brilliant girl detective who always solves her mystery. In school all the books were about boys and their dogs. You know the ones I’m talking about- Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, and the like; so having books at home about girls who saved the day was great. I still read that series to this day, an have a lovely collection of the novels.
But the most important series in my life will probably always be Harry Potter. I grew up with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I watched them fight the darkness, and win. I can’t think of a better lesson in life than that dragons can be slain. And as an adult, I continue to go back to this series. I reread the books every couple of years, and hoard beautiful copies. It’s probably the only set of books I really wish I could read again for the first time.
Do you have a favorite series? What made you fall in love with it?
As you say, the question is Which?
I have loved the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout ever since I first ran across it in the seventies. I love the atmosphere, the byplay, the excellent cooking, and Wolfe’s impossible irascibility. Stout started the series in 1934 and wrote until his death in the 1970s.
For children’s books, I love (and wish I had access to) Poppy Ott and Jerry Todd, sort of 1930s Hardy Boys. None of them have turned up on Gutenberg yet, worse luck. You can find the Bobbsey Twins there, but not Todd, or Ott, or the Honeybunch books (from the same publisher!) and only one of the Maida series: Maida’s Little Shop.
At last I am reading the Maigret novels by Georges Simenon, known merely as “Simenon” among those who speak French. I’ve seen the whole TV series of featurelength films starring Bruno Cremer and love them because they are so faithful to the time and the novels even though they were filmed in the Czech Republic (seein’ as how Paris is altered out of all 1950s recognition!).
The series I most go back to these days (or rather nights, as I do most of my reading between the hours of 9.30 PM and 6 AM), as you know, is Phryne Fisher. Kerry Greenwood does such a good job of evoking 1928 Melbourne; I was horribly disappointed in her modern-day “Corrina Chapman” series. I’ve tried the Royal Spyness novels and Daisy Dalrymple and Dandy Gilver, but they are pale copies at best.
I guess what sells a series for me is its memorability (is that a word? If it wasn’t, it is now) and the author’s skill at evoking a time, a place, an atmosphere.
These are great reasons to love a series! I may have to look into a couple of these you have mentioned.