I hate when this happens!

So at the end of last summer, I stopped at a yard sale (a great place to pick up books cheap) and I bought a whole stack of books from Christine Freehan's Dark Secrets series. I've had plenty of other stuff to read and whatnot the past few months, but today I decided to see which ones of the series I had, hoping that I could start reading them soon.

Well I went on Wikipedia, to get a list of her books in order and boy was I surprised to find that there are 19 books in the series, so far! Number 20 comes out in September. But anyways, back to my point. My plan to begin reading was largely derailed quit quickly...

I not only have 8 out of the 19, but they aren't even in order! Gah! lol. These are the one's I have:
Dark Desire (2)
Dark Magic (4)
Dark Fire (6)
Dark Legend (8)
Dark Guardian (9)
Dark Destiny (13)
Dark Secret (15)
Dark Demon (16)

You guys would not believe the look on my face when I realized, not only do I not have the books in order, but that I didn't even have half of them! Don't you just hate when that happens?

I hate reading books out of order, I always feel like I've missed something by not reading the first book. But right now I am reading Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce and I didn't read Terrier. I'm still in the first couple of chapters, but I get it for the most part. I just think I missed out on some back story and some details by not reading Terrier. But it's for a review, so I can't really put it off and go find, buy, and read Terrier at the moment, so I am just going to read Bloodhound and be happy! :)

Well anyways, now that I have officailly ranted a bit, I want to pose a question to you guys!

Do you prefer to read books in series order, or does that not make a difference?