My biggest problem with fiction books is that it is hard to build suspense when I can clearly see I have another 100 pages to go or if I know that it's a series. After I realized that in my late teens fiction was very difficult to keep at consistently.

Some books I read to step foot into the life and head of some other person, to know what it is to be another gender or age or in a different culture and time period. We can only experience a small slice of what it is to be human in one lifetime. I guess one might get some of this from documentary work or autobiography.

And sometimes it’s just affirming to read an author describe a character thinking the same thoughts one has or the same situation one finds oneself in.

I think modern series tend to be better at that. Lots of author kill people you wouldn't expect them to kill early on so that you know that this is a universe where even if the protagonists must survive for plot reasons, there is still plenty of suspension about who else survives.

I will also say that to me there is a massive difference between how much effort it takes to read one type of fiction versus another. I was reading Master and Margarita and I stopped because they simply kept introducing new characters and doing jumps for no reason. I'm sure I will get a bunch of well-read people telling me it's because I'm a poor reader or whatever, but I think that's bad writing.

Hmm. I can't say it's ever been a problem for me. Especially it shouldn't matter much if it's a series or not. Depending on the author, the main characters may not even have a plot armor.

  2 episodes left before next season!