Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm curious whether those who say only and always published order would be willing to make an exception for books based on real events, as with the Sharpe and Hornblower books. My own position is that in that case, each method has its defects.
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It (based on real events) honestly wouldn't have any effect on my personal published order policy. With no indepth knowledge of the real historical events, I wouldn't be able to trust fact from fiction anyway (not that THAT is a deterrent to me reading such material in the first place), so the "real" chronology wouldn't be issue for me. HAVING indepth knowledge of the real historical events would mean I already know the actual chronology. So events presented in a non-linear fashion for narrative effect wouldn't bother me there either.
The only time I can think of where such a thing would bother me is if the author were trying to
alter the chronology of real historical events (with no disclaimer that it was being done) I'm intimately familiar with (or if they just didn't know the real chronology of the events they were using as a backdrop). But in such a case, reading order would be the least of my concerns. I probably wouldn't be able to continue reading such a series at all.
Truth be told: if a series has enough books in it that reading order becomes a polarizing issue among fans, it's probably not something I'm going to enjoy anyway. If enough people feel the urge to reorder a series of books, it tells me that the attempt to use a non-linear narrative technique probably wasn't handled all that well. It's not my job to "fix" an author's narrative by rearranging the chronology. Be it with paragraphs, chapters, or entire books.