The Comfort of Reading a Series by Lynne Benton

I wasn’t at all sure whether I would manage to come up with anything for this month’s blog, but I’ll do my best.  The reason for this is that my husband and I are still recovering from the dreaded Covid, which has gone on far longer than either of us had anticipated.  We’d both been double-jabbed, and were always careful re face masks etc., but still we managed to catch it – and I don’t recommend it!  In my case it started with a horrendous cough that went on all day and all night for about a week, combined with total exhaustion, and although it’s now four weeks since I caught it and the cough has more or less gone, the exhaustion remains.  I appreciate that we have both been really lucky not to have been hospitalised, like so many others, but it’s still been a difficult time.

However, and this is writing-related, you’ll be glad to know, what kept me going was reading, in particular series reads.  Normally when I’ve read one book I like to read something quite different next, but for some reason, while I was feeling so rubbish, all I wanted to do was to read a whole series, one after the other, in the right order.  (Which I could do, thanks to my wonderful Kindle!)  Maybe it was the comfort of feeling I knew the main characters, so didn’t have to start each book working out who was who and whether they could be trusted or not.  Reading more and more stories about my favourite characters was remarkably relaxing.  The series I started with and enjoyed most was the “Doctor Ruth Galloway” series by Elly Griffiths (recommended to me by fellow-blogger Sue Purkiss). 

                                                                           

I was delighted to see that there were thirteen books in the series, and read them all avidly, obsessively, even – until I got to the end of the 13^th and discovered to my dismay that the next one won’t be published until February!

After that I began on a series by Ann Granger (The Mitchell and Markby series) which I also enjoyed.

Yes, we did watch some television, but that proved to be quite tiring – except for watching the David Suchet “Poirot” films, (yes, another series when we knew the characters!) which really helped to take our minds off how we were feeling.

So yet again, more stories, more series…

And I remembered that, when I was a child, how much I'd enjoyed reading series books – most especially L. M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” series and Malcolm Saville’s “Lone Pine” series.  Though of course in those days there was little chance of reading them in the right order – it depended which books the library happened to have in at the time!  I still loved them, though, and eventually read both complete series.

So maybe when we’re ill we automatically revert to the comfort of remembered childhood pleasures.  Whatever it was, stories, in particular series stories, gave me a lot of pleasure at the time when I could do little else.

Now I must get back to writing stories too - maybe I should write a series…

Website: www.lynnebenton.com