Readers and viewers will differ about what's totally standalone, what's totally serially dependent, and what's merely enriched by reading/viewing in a particular order.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Reading is a free practice. I think the readers are free to begin by the books where they want to. They don't have to be led in their reading.
Reading is a huge effort for many people, a bore for others, and, believe it or not, many people prefer watching TV.
Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.
I'm an avid reader myself, and what any one reader accesses at any one time is very powerful and personal to them. Clearly you can't even begin to touch that. A novel is a singular vision, and then a myriad of readers have their own experience of that.
Reading takes me to a different place than my everyday life. I usually get fully involved in what I'm reading about, so it's a great escape.
If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed.
I'm not being naive; I realise there's no such thing as a pure reading. But I'd rather keep myself as far out of it as I can.
When I have a book I enjoy, I'm partly in the book. I'm not just observing it.
When I read, I'm purely a reader.
There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer - reading is so much a part of it.