> That makes absolutely no sense. What on earth is the benefit of doing it that way, other than you get to be a book behind everyone else, and still have to wait at least a year between reading books in the series?

Yeah, the logical end of the idea, given a long enough series, doesn't work out, although when it ends, I'll be able to read the last two books in closer succession than a year.

The idea is that when I started reading Harry Potter, book four was already out. Rather than read one, two, three, and four all at once and wait however long for book five, I've spread out my reading of the first four books with about six months between each. The hope was that by the time I caught up, books five and six would be out already, and then by the time I had read those, with six months between each, the last would be out. Then Rowling took three years to write book five and screwed me all up.

So when the delay of book five became apparent, it became a matter of *where* in the series do I want to wait? Book three ends fairly conclusively, but I understood that book four ends less so, maybe not quite a cliffhanger but along those lines. So why read that one right away and do my waiting with outstanding plot threads going on?

When I read book five could depend a lot on how loud Leen's outcry is when she reaches the end. (Nobody hates cliffhanger endings or "to be continued"s more than Leen.) I might not wait all the way to book six's publication. But it wouldn't be within a week of reading book five no matter what. I don't like reading series books back to back. I'll always want several weeks if not months, and some other reading, in between each volume. It gives me a chance to let each book digest in my head. If I read series books all in a row, they get all jumbled together in my memory, and, of course, they don't last as long either.