I've put off reading my third volume of the Robert E. Howard Conans because I figure, once I'm done reading that, I won't be reading any more Conan stories, unless I re-read the Howard ones because I have this "purist" thing.

I've toyed with getting a complete Ian Fleming collection of the Bond novels and once again, buying/reading no more Bond books beyond that.

But then I think about how I have no problem reading Spider-Man comics that aren't written by Stan Lee. And I definitely have no problem reading copious Conan comics written by Roy Thomas or Kurt Busiek.

Whaddya you guys think about reading continuations of book series by other authors?

Hard to say. I wouldn't want more Middle Earth stories not by Tolkien, or Hitchhikers Guide stories not by Adams, for instance. I can't think of too many series that are "known" for one primary writer that have gone on by other authors that I have read. I'm sure there are several out there. The Bond books, obviously, as you mentioned, but I've only read two of those, and preferred the one that wasn't Fleming!

It's very subjective with me. Basically I tend to feel that the more original and distinctive a work is, the less justification there is in someone else's continuing it. I'm not really into reading series that just go on and on and on forever anyway, unless we're talking about all-ages (or originally all-ages) characters like the classic superheroes or Scooby Doo or Nancy Drew. Those are static status-quo characters who have self-contained adventures. There's no reason why their basic formulas can't be repeated ad infinitum.

If, on the other hand, a character is supposed to be a believable person who undergoes a real character arc, then one can only write so many adventures before it gets hard to sustain. Even original authors burn out when they prolong a series character's run too long. The later Sherlock Holmes stories make a good case in point. Admittedly Holmes is kind of a special case--he has become something of an archetype and has been around long enough that an occasional later pastiche can actually have something interesting to say (such as "The Seven Percent Solution"). Even there, though, most Holmes pastiches aren't very interesting.