Do you remember this terrific Sesame Street song?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnoJwfnzmqA

“Every story has a beginning, middle, and an end…”

Words to live by… except nowadays, when just about every other book I pick up is part of a series. Seriously? Whatever happened to starting and ending a story within the covers of a single book?

It’s frustrating beyond words, especially when you don’t know what you’re getting into from the outset. I remember picking up a copy of The Hunger Games when it first came out, and wondering, as I approached the end, how the author could possibly wrap things up with so few pages left to go. The answer, of course, is that she didn’t. Yes, I’ve since read and loved the entire trilogy, but I wish I’d read the reviews more carefully ahead of time so I wouldn’t have been taken by surprise. Same thing happened to me just a couple of years ago when I read Haters by David Moody. I absolutely had no idea that the story wasn’t complete in one book until I saw those dreaded words on the last page: “to be continued”.

Why so many series, trilogies, sequels? One cynical answer is that there’s more money to be made from three books than one. I especially wonder when I look at the young adult fiction shelves: does every story need so many parts? Or is this an after-effect of the Twilight phenomenon, which proved that teens (and adults) will get hooked on a story and then buy more, more, and more?

And then there are the series that just never seem to end. Charlaine Harris has announced that next year’s Sookie Stackhouse novel will be the last… but in my opinion, this is a series that passed its sell-by date a few years ago. Whether the blame lies with the publisher, the marketing team, the agents, or someone else entirely, it’s hard to see the stretching out of this series as anything other than good business sense. You’d be hard-pressed to claim that these books still have much to offer in terms of plot or character development; in fact, in the most recent few installments, I firmly believe that if the author had cut all the pages devoted to Sookie’s daily beauty routines, we might have been able to condense it all into one decent book instead of three or four mediocre ones.

Even when the writing is excellent and I’m immediately engrossed in the plot, it’s the year or so of waiting in between installments that really drives me nuts. And at my “advanced” age, who knows if I’ll even remember what happened in book one by the time book two comes out?

My new resolution, which I’m trying to keep without too much waffling, is to begin a new series only if I know that the entire series has already been published. A friend had been after me to read Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series for quite some time, knowing how much I enjoy the Dresden Files books. I resisted and resisted – “I don’t need another series in my life!!” – but when I heard that the sixth and final book had been released, I started from #1 and read all the way through the series, barely coming up for breath in between. And you know what? It was fantastic! I enjoyed the books, and I loved being able to follow the characters along their varied trajectories in a seamless journey, without losing the thread of the plotlines due to the long intervals in the publishing schedule.

The same friend has been urging me to read Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles. I’m sure I’ll love the books… but for now, I’ve declined my friend’s entreaties. My response so far: “Tell me when there’s a publication date for the third book in the trilogy, and then we can talk.”

Not to say that I don’t have series that I faithfully follow and adore. Give me a never-ending supply of Outlander novels by Diana Gabaldon, and I’ll be happy as a clam. (So what if Claire and Jamie are in their 90s? I bet they’ll still be one hot couple!) Likewise, I’ll wait as long as it takes until George R. R. Martin publishes books six and seven in the amazing A Song of Ice and Fire series.

But picking up a new series at this point? I think I’ll pass. Give me a beginning, middle, and an end, all in one tidy volume, and I’m yours.