Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Does the internet ruin finishing a series?

So recently my mom read Divergent,  She loved it.  The movie was coming out so she was interested in seeing what it was all about.  She and I were texting back and forth about it and I told her that I didn't really care for the ending in Allegiant.  All of a sudden I get a text from her saying she went ahead and looked on wikipedia for what happens in the rest of the series.


This discussion with my mom got me thinking... do we now not finish books that we think could be bad because of the help of the internet?  I wonder that if prior to the internet and being able to find story endings would my mom actually have read the whole series?  There are even a few series I don't want to bother finishing because ... hey I can just google it.  Sometimes a series just get so boring or off that I just don't want to finish it but still would like to know what happens to the characters. 


Honestly the internet has really made us be able to not sit through mediocre entertainment.  Movies, books, even yes video games! (For me at least.. I google when I am stuck on a game). There is even an amazing blog called the Recaptains that summarize series for us readers.  I do like this... sometimes it takes so long for series to come out anymore and I just don't want to re-read the whole thing when a new book is released.  I just can't remember everything that happens and need to get a recap (Game of Thrones anyone????).

It's hard to decide.  Does the internet save us from reading a boring or slow series?  Or does it cause us to miss the journey of reading books?