mifuneral

Finished Magician's Nephew a week or two ago and I gotta say, wtf is everyone talking about. How is it wrong to read it in the chronological order? Digory is a child in MN, he's an old man in LW&W. errr......how is that wrong?

Does it spoil anything? Who cares if you know where the witch came from. Who cares if you know where the wardrobe came from? That in no way spoils anything in the other books. The attitude going around that it's somehow "wrong" to read them in chronological order is extremely snobbish, not to mention illogical.

adamblast

Aw, they're just opinions, yaknow? The little smiley was to indicate I don't take it that seriously. But here's my rationale:

The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is the *original* book, and the rest are sequels. The reason sequels get written is because the original has something special--and the follow-up books, by definition, are offshoots. And just like Star Wars, *originals* deserve a special place: first and foremost. The creative genesis. Not some middle work, whose meaning is now modified by all that comes before and after. Particularly when the original was written as a stand-alone, with the sequels only concieved years later. As a kid, it was a thrill to read the Chronicles and let the puzzle peices fall together. So *that's* why the Professor was so cool! So *that's* why the wardrobe led to another world!

Since it's the publishers who have done this, I can hardly blame anyone for reading them chronologically, but I'll always be grateful that I came from an era before all this revisionism.

Josh H

No, but I might check it out if the movie gets me interested.

benedict

I think adamblast puts the argument very well. But, yes, these are only opinions.

I'm racking my brains for other prequels/sequels that might serve as illustrations but will have to get back to you all on that!

benedict

BANNED

Fincher Fan

Anyone have a complete list of the books in the series? Offhand, I remember having read The Lion, Witch & The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian and The Magician's Nephew. All great and imaginative books.

dhmac

Has anyone listened to the unabridged AudioBook version of The Chronicles of Narnia? (The one with Kenneth Branagh as one of the readers)

milo bloom

My box set has them in internal chrono order, though I agree that original publication order is better

The Magician's Nephew
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle

I don't have the pub order handy.

------------------------------------------------

As for Star Wars, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6 is the most interesting.

Fincher Fan

Thanks, milo!

grim_tales

Sorry for coming in late, but if Magicians Nephew is not the true first book, what is? I have a 1988 TV (BBC) tie in version of TL,TWATW and in the front it has "The Narnia books in reading order" and TMN comes first.
But saying that I read TL, TWATW first

Ginwen

I deliberately bought the old versions at a few used bookstores, so I have them in the order I grew up with
1. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
2. Prince Caspian
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. The Silver Chair
5. The Horse and his Boy
6. The Magician's Nephew
7. The Last Battle

I think most of the objections people have to the reordering have to do with book 6, the Magicians Nephew (Horse is chronologically between Lion and Prince, but it is more of a side-story). Chronologically, it's first, but it's pretty cool when you've read all the books and then learn where a lot of things in the other books started ("aha, that's where that came from" or "that's who that is"). If you read Magician's Nephew first, some of the stuff just wouldn't be nearly as resonant.

The Bus

I got about 10 pages into a Wrinkle of Time and could not stand it. I really wanted to like it, but I just could NOT read it. It was awful (to me).

I realize I am in the minority, but that's what I thought.

The Bus

I am on crack.

Someone told me that that book WAS the beginning of this series. A Wrinkle in Time was so bad I never wanted to read these.

Now they'll get a second chance.

(Wow, I'm really dumb).

grim_tales

Chronologically The Silver Chair was book 6 right?

I think the BBC showed them in this order from 1988-90:

2: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
3 Voyage of the Dawn Trader
4. Prince Caspian
6: Silver Chair

I think. Silver Chair must be after Caspian because one of the signs Aslan gives to Jill is "Greet an old friend you see in Narnia" - and she misses it because they dont realise he is Eustace's friend Prince Caspian, who has now become an old man.

mifuneral

Someone told you that A Wrinkle in Time was the beginning of the Chronicles of Narnia?

Incidentally, AWIT is the beginning of another short series, though I don't believe that series has an actual name. It's mostly just a collection of loosely related books but I don't think they have an overlying story.

fumanstan

It's no different from telling people to watch Star Wars 4-6 first and then 1-3.

The Bus

This was well over a decade ago when I was in middle school. Someone told me that AWT had to do with Narnia and I hated AWT SO much that it has stopped me from EVER being interested in Narnia, until now.

That's an idea of how bad I thought the beginning of AWT was.

mifuneral

Um, no, sorry, horrible comparison.

Absolutely no plot development hinges on where the White Witch or the Wardrobe came from. They are interesting details and nothing more.

GoVegan

I think it's a fair comparison. Most of us weren't introduced to the world of Star Wars by meeting a little kid with lots of midiclorians in his blood - We met this breathy, bad-ass in a black armor suit. We were introduced to the characters, became interested in them and are now learning how they got to be they way they were at the point in their lives when we first learned of them. Essentially, though, how Anakin ended up in the suit is just an interesting detail. In the original trilogy, we didn't need that information.

mifuneral

So what in that comparison makes it more "correct" to start with episode 4 for SW or LW&W for Narnia? That's what I'm trying to understand. There is nothing vital that makes it truly "incorrect" to start with Magician's Nephew. In essense, it's just a bunch of snobbery that causes people to look down upon that reading order.

However, there is one difference that you didn't relate in the comparison. The SW prequels tended to sorta over explain some things, possibly ruining the mystique of the original. Is that so with the case of Magician's Nephew? Personally, I don't think so. Yes, we know about the wardrobe. But, we have no real knowledge of the magic that Uncle Andrew used or its actual origins. Yes, we know about the White Witch. But we have no real knowledge of Charn. And in fact Charn is a non-issue ever after the events in Magician's Nephew. To my knowledge those are the only two continuing factors in the Narnia series and though they did give some explanation in MN, they still left plenty of mystery and speculation.

milo bloom

I guess it's just a type of storytelling. Some folks enjoy bouncing around a timeline, some like it all laid out for them.

Personally, I prefer SW slightly out of order. The tone and feel of Ep 4 feels most like the beginning of a story to me. Ep 5 rachets up the danger level, then finishes off with the big reveal. You go back to the beginning and see this little kid grow up into a brat and finally get sucked into a spiral of hell. When you see Ep 6, you see that Vader wasn't always a badass, and there was good in him. Before the prequels, there was a large tonal shift from 5 to 6, where some folks didn't understand how Luke could see good in this officer choking, hand slicing killer.
You keep the big reveal in Ep 5 and the Yoda reveal, but you also get the background that makes the ending better.

I haven't read Narnia in a while, and the last time I did was when I bought the box mentioned above which is in "internal" order. I don't remember all the details of it being in that order, except that The Magician's Nephew didn't feel right being first. You may have just inspired a re-read.

Michael Corvin

Josh, you need to check it out. Like I mentioned, it is only about 80 (standard) pages long. I looks thicker in stores because of huge margins and large type faces, but it is a quick easy read. I'd recommend before the film, not after.

Josh H

I'm just burnt out on fantasy at the moment. I re-read the whole RA Salvatore dark elf series last year, just finished up the Silmarillion, The Hobbit (2nd time) and LOTR (3rd time) and am currently re-reading the Harry Potter books before reading the new one.

Ginwen

It's not really the end of the world either way, and you should read it how you want. It's just a little irritating to me that some publisher decided to reorder after I grew up with them a certain way. You don't need to agree, and I've never really tried to read it the other way, so the new order could be great for all I know.

I do know that, when I first read the series (starting with Lion), and I got to The Magicians Nephew, I got the thrill of discovery from finding out how everything tied in. Maybe you get that anyway reading it in the new order--there's no way I'll ever know since I already know all the details.

Scarecrow

It's sometimes called The Time Quartet (or the Murray Family Series). L'Engle also has many other books which were off shoots of The Time Quartet.