On Reading Book Series in the Wrong Order

[james_davis_nicoll]

 On Reading Book Series in the Wrong Order 

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[mindstalk]

I think I knew "in media res" before I was 10. Practiced it a lot too.

My city library had _Raphael_ by R A MacAvoy. The back cover mentioned a Damiano. Since my names include Damien and Raphael, of course I had to read. Never mind that it's the third book... it's actually pretty standalone anyway. I didn't find the first two until years later.

My first Vlad Taltos book was _Phoenix_, again because of the title. The Vlad series doesn't really have a tight reading order anyway, but this 5th book is kind of the sequel to the 3rd book. Still hooked me.

My first Bujold was probably Falling Free but my first Miles book was Mirror Dance. Which IMO works pretty well as a single-volume introduction to most of Miles's universe at the time. Like Pratchett and Brust, Bujold tries to write standalones even in her series.

My first "Buffy" episodes were the second season local maximum of "Surprise" and "Innocence". I may have needed some clues from friends, but it still hooked me. I managed to get another friend ("You're watching *what*?") to come try the finale, "Becoming", which hooked her. We then borrowed someone's tapes to catch up.

I've been watching the Railgun anime series. There are a lot of references to Index material, but if you don't mind not getting everything, the main story holds up fine on its own.

Horse and His Boy might have been my first Narnia book. I started Harry Potter with book #4.

I accidentally started reading Farseer 3 after Farseer 1, which was confusing ("wow, this is a massive time skip being recapped"), but I realized and found #2.