I've been trying to get a handle on that myself. Charlaine Harris recaps a lot in her Sookie Stackhouse series, on which True Blood is loosely based. Reading a few of her books in short succession, though, I found the recapping was getting to me a bit, but I think that's because I was catching up all at once. I think that if I had read the books as published, with let's say, a year between them, I wouldn't have noticed it as much because I wouldn't have remembered as much.

Recently I started listening to an audiobook version of Christopher Moore's "You Suck" and then realized that I should have read "Bloodsucking Fiends" first. So, I stopped, got the audiobook for BF, and listened to that. I thought he handled it well because I didn't even realize I was getting information from a previous book, though I did wonder why he wasn't going into more detail about those characters ;-)

Yes, keep us informed! I'm curious.