How Do You Retain Important Facts When Reading a Book in a Series?

Here’s my conundrum:

When I am reading a book in a series as each book gets published, I forget details – important details. This is especially true when most follow-up books are released a year apart. With a year between books and me reading lots of books in that time frame, I’m bound to forget all kinds of stuff.

Last month, I was getting ready to read Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick. I started to read it but realized that I needed a Hush, Hush refresher. So I did what I normally do not do: I re-read Hush, Hush. In the end, I’m glad I did. There was so much that I had forgotten in one year’s time. Today, I am finding myself in the same predicament; I was getting ready to read Unraveled by Gena Showalter and I realized that I don’t remember a whole lot of what happened in Intertwined. Thanks to Page at One Book At A Time, I know have a good understanding of what took place in Intertwined and will not have to re-read it.

The ideal scenario would be to wait until the complete series has been written (or close to) before starting to read it. That way, all (or most) of the books are out and you can read them back to back and retain the necessary information needed in order to follow the storyline. But let’s face it, that ain’t always going to happen. Especially when it’s a series we’re in love with and/or there’s a killer cliffhanger that has you biting your nails.

Sometimes (though not all the time) the author is good about refreshing the reader a bit along the way. Case in point: Kate Kaynak. She did a wonderful job of filling in the reader with the important details from each previous book in her Ganzfield series. She did it in form of an introduction and called it “previously at Ganzfield”. I was ever so grateful for her doing this.

Then there’s re-reading. But I can’t go back and re-read every single time. I am not a fan of re-reading (that’s a whole ‘nother discussion for another day).

 

What do you do to keep the important information instilled in your memory? Do you do a “re-read session” before reading the latest book to catch up? Do you take notes and look back at them before reading the next book? If so, do you keep notes in a notebook/journal? Or do you keep notes on your computer or online somewhere? Or do you have a different trick you use?

ETA: Shortly after I posted this, I discovered a section in Goodreads called ‘Private Notes’ where you can write whatever you want and no one else would see it. I thought that this would be a great place to put important information about a book (that would most likely be a SPOILER for others) so I decided to use it. Then I discovered that you’re only allowed 513 characters. While that may be enough in some cases, it surely won’t be enough in most. So I still want to pick your brains to see how you retain important information when reading a book in a series. Ready? Set. Go!