Continuing My Hardy Boys Journey

I have been publishing new series book reviews on average at least one or two times per week for over five years.  One of you mentioned my volume of reviews on Facebook, and I had not considered exactly how many I have done and that I may have reviewed more vintage series books on the Internet than any other person.

It's strange considering how many reviews I have completed that some readers and followers would rather discourage me.  As I was reading the higher-numbered Hardy Boys books that only come in 20-chapter texts, I was advised to stick to the original text books and not read the revised text books.

Really?

If I want to read the books, then why discourage me?  It's another example of the behavior I mentioned in my post, "Readers with Strong Opinions."  I don't understand why some readers wish to discourage others from reading certain books.  I grew up reading only revised text Nancy Drew books.  I loved those books.  While not all of them held up that well when I read them again a few years ago, I still enjoyed them.  They have flaws, but I have always been a fan of the revised text books.

That may be hard for those readers who grew up on the original text books to understand, but it's the truth.  Once I realized that I was enjoying the Hardy Boys original text books more than I expected, I decided to read the higher-numbered books.  I then decided to read the revised text books that were significantly rewritten.  I ended up greatly enjoying many of them.  I am not surprised that I did, since I enjoyed the Nancy Drew revised text books as a child.

I never intended to read any Hardy Boys books past the original 58, but I enjoyed them enough that I decided to take my journey further into the Hardy Boys Digest books.  Has anyone reviewed the complete run of both the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series?  If not, it looks like I'm headed in that direction.

I can only review books for this blog when I want to do it.  The motivation comes completely from within.  I get very little feedback from readers and followers, so the motivation has to come from within.  If I were to depend on comments and followers hitting the "like" button on Facebook, I would have quit long ago.

I have noticed that what little feedback I get from my followers has dropped as I have read the boys' series and has dropped further as I have published Hardy Boys reviews.  It's apparent that most of my existing followers are not very interested in the Hardy Boys reviews, which is logical since this blog is titled "Series Books for Girls."  That's okay.  I want to do the reviews, and I really like having these reviews handy for future times when I need to figure out which books I liked the best.  So it's all good.

The bottom line is that if I were to get my motivation from others, I'd never read anything nor review any books.  If I were to listen to those who would discourage me, I would miss out on many excellent books.  And even more importantly, I must ignore my own preconceived ideas and be open to trying books that I think I won't like.

As I mentioned, I recently finished reading the revised text versions of the early Hardy Boys books.  I tried a few Hardy Boys Wanderer books and enjoyed them.  In fact, I enjoyed those few books more than I did the average Nancy Drew Wanderer book, which tore apart my theory that I would not like the Hardy Boys Wanderer books.

My overall opinion of the Hardy Boys series will come at a future time, but I'll give you a hint.  Reading the Hardy Boys books is almost exactly like reading the Nancy Drew books from the same era, except in the case of the Wanderer books, where I (so far) like the Hardy Boys books better.