Could you make it so that when series are sorted alphabetically, that it ignores the leading article word (e.g. "the", "a") site wide? So not just on the reading list, but also in the novel listing.
It's not really a remove, but more of an ignore. Libraries and bookstores usually ignore the leading article word when sorting, regardless of "importance." It's just a convention. I think you can see the problems it might cause when searching for a book alphabetically if one forgets the book title starts with an article, or when searching the "A" section to find more than half of it are all just titles that start with "A" and "An".