@PrincessFiona60 - I have done this a few times with books in the past. Grabbed second or third book in series/trilogy and then had to revisit. As it happened with the Malazan books, I was given the 2nd/3rd/4th books in the trilogy but not the first one... as it turned out, I really liked though, but then really couldn't get into the second one, so the rest remain unread. Also the second book fell apart on me now, so may pick up a copy on the Kindle so reading it isn't a pain...
@Fantasy Moon - I hate having to make these decisions. I will be honest: too often in the past I've bought books I could've loaned out, and these now take up lots of room, so much so I have to shift them into storage/get rid of them soon. You could save yourself the pain of having to sort through which books get 'the chop' by using the library... or ebooks I guess if you have a reader.