Tuesday, December 28, 2010

How to Choose, or the Jane Allen College Series

How I choose a series to collect and read:


1. Jennifer's website has made eBay, ABE, and Amazon a lot of money off of me. That, and a post on her blog influenced a lot of my early purchases. Considering how much harder/more expensive a series can get when she first adds one (see Barbara Ann), I suspect I'm not alone.


2. I'll go down this list, looking for books with copyrights in the 1920s and 30s, particularly those published by Grosset and Dunlap, Cupples and Leon, or A.L. Burt.


3. Once I find an author I love, I'll seek out her other books. See: Adventure Girls, all my Pemberton Ginther titles, Mildred Wirt's many series.


4. I'll sometimes preview a series I'm not sure about on Project Gutenberg or Google Books. See: Polly Brewster.


5. Browse eBay under Books->Antiquarian and Collectible->Children's Books->Series Books. Or if I buy a book from a seller, and they have an unfamiliar title, too, I may add it to my order.


6. Ads for other series in a series that I already have probably won't make me purchase on their own but may make me investigate futher.


The Jane Allen College Series falls under many of these categories. I originally came across it on the Girls Series Books 1840-1991  site but had reservations. While published by Cupples and Leon, I didn't know the author, the timeframe was slightly early (1917-1922), and the theme seemed to be sports. I also incorrectly assumed it was a high school series, which I can take or leave.


Then I randomly purchased a copy of Patsy Carroll under Southern Skies from Jennifer (#5, pt 2). On the back was an ad for what I now learned was the Jane Allen College Series. Automatically, I was more interested--I love college girl books. Googling found Mary Crosson's page on the series, complete with excerpt, and several ebooks. So I spent my day off work reading the entire series. I'll give you my thoughts in a separate post.

4 comments:

  1. are all of the books ebooked? i own the first two, but don't feel like buying the rest right now...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, all of the books are available online as free ebooks. After the first couple, the characters change pretty significantly and the plotlines are a bit odd, so I think you might well want to preview them online before purchasing.

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  3. They sound interesting looks like I might be tracking down some more ebooks.
    I tend to love mysteries -Beverly Gray is my absolute favorite. But since I'm waiting for my prized Worlds fair to arrive in the mail ( the only book in the series I still have to read) I started again with the series at the very beginning ( half way through Senior) and now it's got me interested in reading more college books.
    On my website www.amyaction.com I created a directory of series mystery books in the Girls era search I use that as a guide to myself as to what to track down and try so I get to see what I like. Now I'm thinking I should do a college list as well, except it will delay my boys era search list I've been meaning
    to start.
    I must say I do still love a real book to hold over an ebook though, part because I'm on a computer a lot for work so feel I need a break and second I love artwork, I love a great dust jacket artwork on a book and any inside illustrations.
    I have a few Trixie Belden original cover artworks on my wall I love.
    Thinking I might have to look at some of the Beverly Gray pics though and create my own artwork when I get some time too as I can't imagine I could ever track down original Beverly artwork.

    ReplyDelete

 
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