RealAlHazred
Frumious Flumph (Your Grace/Your Eminence)
So, a kid wrote to CS Lewis to ask what order he should read the books in: chronologically (as he thought), or in publication order (as his mother suggested)? CS Lewis wrote back to tell him that his preferred method was chronological, but he didn't think it really mattered. And fans have spent the decades since then using the response to justify their preferred reading method: the chronologists because he says that's his preferred method, and publicationists because he says the actual order doesn't matter.
Now, all that said, CS Lewis was wrong. If you read them chronologically, you'll read The Magician's Nephew (the second-to-last published) first. And The Magician's Nephew categorically ties up loose ends and answers questions Lewis first poised in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (the first published, and the second chronologically). In Wardrobe, you get all these wonderful, charming mysteries:
- What is a satyr doing, carrying brown-paper parcels, standing under a streetlight in the middle of a fantasy woodland?
- Why does a wardrobe in an old English country estate lead to a fantasyland?
- Where does Jadis, the White Witch, come from?
When you look at a painting, do you look at one edge first and then cast your gaze across the canvas? No, you see a focal point that draws you in, and then you slowly take in the whole. Wardrobe is a focal point, and a good one. Don't start at the edge.
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