August 02, 2005

• I read them in Lewis's order as a kid, and I loved them, so that's my recommendation.
• I agree, I would read them in the publication order. You just can't beat that sense of wonder when you read the "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" and the whole world of Narnia opens before you. Chronological order really isn't necessary.
• I would read them in no order at all.
• 1: Drink about half of a fifth of Gin (Bombay Sapphire) 2: Read them. Order does not matter. 3: If anything makes sense, is entertaining, or isn't a miserable allegory about Christianity, take another drink. 4: Drink the other half of the Gin. 5: Sleep it off. It's heavy-handed, moralizing and annoying. I really dislike allegory. Narnia is better than Spencer and certainly better than Lewis' "Sci-Fi" series, but worse that Piers Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant. Only read it if you really like someone beating you over the head every few pages with his religious beliefs.
• If you read them as an adult, you'll pick up on all sorts of Christian winks that you might not have seen as a kid. Hope I didn't ruin it for you. All of the books are still great fun to read.
• I haven't reread them as an adult, but I enjoyed them in the publication order as a kid.
• Skip the last battle, that's my only advice. I really didn't like that one. Read Out of the Silent Planet instead.
• The order is not chronological, I remember reading them in chronological order as a kid. I think it starts with 6 then jumps to 4...ahh I dont remember now..
• I opted to read them in the order published, but later came across the following: http://members.lycos.co.uk/Jonathan_Gregory76/faq.htm?#Read Lewis' writing is good enough that I can forgive the forced Christianity. For me, it felt like reading '50s sci-fi where you can laugh at the mispredicted futurism, while still greatly enjoying the story.
• Why would anyone read "Chronicles of Narnia"? If I want to read goofy Christian theology I can Google up a zillion hits in 2 seconds flat, with no filler that's supposed to be fiction. Speaking of which: Unity.
• I never read them, exactly, but I had them read to me lots of times as a kid. I say go with publication order. Don't listen to the grumpy folks; they're great books.
• I say go with chronological, not publication order. Start with The Magician's Nephew (I think the best of the lot), anyway, and read the three featuring Caspian in the correct order. It doesn't matter much if you read The horse and his boy out of sequence - chronologically it strictly occurs within the period covered by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I'm a bit inclined to agree with calimehtar about the Last Battle(unrelentingly depressing), but I expect you'll want to read it just for completeness.
• Personally I found the Christian theology to be not nearly as present in the books as in people's impressions of the books. I sure wasn't raised Christian, I read and loved the books and it simply never occured to me until later that they carried that message. Surely it is in there, sometimes very obviously, and maybe that'll reduce (or enhance?) your enjoyment of them. I don't know. I suspect that if you don't go out of your way to get upset about the 'miserable allegories' they won't go out of their way to upset you. Similarly, if you are particularly Christian and looking for, well, a particularly Christian book, this probably isn't it. Regardless, I agree with the folks who say read them in publication order.
• I have to chime in with publication order reading too. There's some great 'aha!' moments that occur later (book 5, if I remember right, it's been an awfully long time), that you'll never get to experience if you read them in story order. As for the allegory, I was reared areligiously, and was distinctly pissed when I realized as a teenager what C.S. Lewis was doing. Then I got a little older and now think, "Meh, BFD." Being exposed to Christian allegory certainly didn't prevent me from embracing rationalism.
• I got through the first three or four when I was a kid. I don't remember them being specifically xtian. In any case I find it ironic that christians would probably (are?) denouncing him for promoting "magic" and witches.
• Take 19 hits of acid and read them starting at the last page and working backwards. Also, turn the page upside down and read it in a mirror. How about reading it from beginning to end and to hell with the fans?
• Against Plegmund's wishes, I'd suggest that you read The Magician's Nephew later. Lion is to my mind the only one you can start with; Nephew is a good book but out of keeping with the others and most importantly spoils a bit of the storyline.
• Oooh, I wouldn't read these insidious "christian" books, meredithea! You might catch teh jesusism - you know how these so-called "books" pervert your natural inclinations and make it impossible to think for yourself! Don't read that fucking Dante guy either, or you'll starta speakinga like-a an Italiano! Scuzzi - pizza? Si, molto bene!
• I agree with everybody who says read them in the order in which they were published. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was written to be your introduction to the world of Narnia--trust the author and read it first. Also, I agree with the quidnunc kid. Or, more precisely, I agree with the truth he was conveying by sarcastically stating its opposite. (There must be a word that would express that more elegantly. "I sarcgree with him"?) I read the Narnia books when I was too young to pick up on the Christian allegory and found them to be absolutely wonderful. When I got old enough to realize they were Christian allegories, I felt a little... I dunno... tricked, I guess, kind of like I had just eaten a delicious cake and then found out it was actually made of vegetables. Now that I'm older, I've come to understand that good artists should make art that reflects their most important and passionately-held beliefs, whether or not I happen to share those beliefs. In any case, Lewis's Christianity is the Christianity of somebody who has actually read the words of Christ--it's thoughtful, tolerant, and loving. Those all seem like good qualities to bring to a work of literature.
• I actually think the theology, what there is of it, is quite interesting - it doesn't seem at all orthodox to me, but strongly tinged with neoplatonic gnosticism, like all of Lewis (and for that matter, Tolkien). The stuff that cloys is the reverential bits (again like Tolkien, going on endlessly about how wonderful the elves are, and how the divine light of Iluvatar shines out of their small but pefectly formed fundaments), but there isn't too much, IMO. It's true that reading in date order will highlight some inconsistencies. You will find, for example, that Aslan has been suddenly demoted to the second rank in TLTWATW, in favour of someone called 'The Emperor', who then never gets mentioned again. But I still say, chronological!
• Monkeyfilter: The divine light of Iluvatar shines out of their small but pefectly formed fundaments.
• I didn't plan on speaking up again (because once you rain on a parade it's usually not worth it to keep it up), but I want to clarify my point a bit. There's nothing wrong with Christianity in literature, but allegorical *anything* is full of suckage. You'd run out of literature pretty quickly if Christianity kept you from reading things. I try to give most work the benefit of the doubt; I'd rather not see something as simple allegory if I don't have to. For me, It's a lot of fun to consider religious themes in The Old Man and The Sea, but it's a whole lot of no fun to have a single "X is Y" mapping. It's insultingly shallow and makes for a dull read. Narnia is dull and insulting times 7. So feel free to ding me for not seeing the beauty of the allegorical form, but the shots about kneejerk anti-Christianism aren't really on target.
• I was just having fun, MCroft.
• Lewis himself favoured chronological order. Well, mildly, anyway. The series was not planned, particularly, and publication order does not necessarily even correspond to the order in which the books were written.
• ... and yes, I do realise I've just re-posted the original link. You need to read it again!!! So there.
• Published order. The only one that is important there is is The Lion. Definitely start there. And skip Last Battle entirely. Stupid, stupid, STUPID hunk of tripe. An insult to an otherwise delightful series. I'm not a huge fan of Silver Chair, either. Of course, it's been many years
• I love the part where the Leon meets with the machines and make a deal to kill Agent Smith to end the war. Riveting!
• I must throw my hat in with Plegmund. I didn't read them that way as a child, but I did as an adult, and I liked going through it chronologically. I think you'll enjoy most of them, though a couple are crap. If you do like them overall, then I'd check out the space trilogy.
• I want to throw in my hat with all those people telling you not to read books they didn't like. Remember, meredithea, there are only so many words you can read before your eyes fall out - and you wouldn't want to waste your precious ocular-juice on something we rule to be substandard. OBEY US OR SUFFER SPONTANEOUS AUTO-EYEBALL-EJECTION.
• I've read them and reread them throughout my childhood and adulthood. I didn't pick up on the Christian thread as a child, and even as an non-christian adult it doesn't bother me that much. The Narnian Chronicles are just an incredibly wonderful fairy tale based loosely on a set of quasi-historical events that were also blown into a fairy tale. Seconding many others- Start with LWW and read HHB at any point in the cycle. You only have to read the Last Battle once.
• I read them in the number they had on the side of the books whatever order that was. I'm guessing that was the order they were published in because when I read them back in 6th grade I remember being confused as to why one of the later books was takling about the origin when OBVIOUSLY Narnia already existed! So if you are in 6th grade I would read them in chronological order. If I were to read them again, which i've been meaning to do, I would do it in the order published.
• I want to throw my hat in with those who are currently plotting to break into quidnunc's house tonight, steal his stuffed albino armadillo, and pelt him with Triscuits.
• "Triscuts" eh? The biscuit of the trinity, no doubt! Well well well middleclasstool, you and your endless allegorical snackfoods! Every comment from you is all like "Mmm I could sure go for a transubstantiation burger right now" or "Hey guys why don't we all chow down on some immaculate con carne?". Well I am not interested in being BRAINWASHED by your Jesus-food buddy, so stick your "salsa of salvation" up-a you ASS.
• YOU WILL SUBMIT TO THE SON OF MANCHOWDER OR DIE.
• Never! I subsist on Shiva Kebabs, Kali-Mari and Krishna Kremes, and also on other allegorical foodstuffs of the Hin-doos!
• I've always believed that quidnunc's posts should be read in chronological order (there are those who say they shouldn't be read at all), but it turns out there is a special ordering encoded into them by means of acrostics and other cunning devices. Read according to this hidden order, they turn out to be a long but rather repetitive poem, all about how the author wishes Francesca da Rimini was his girlfriend. Or something. To be honest, I haven't bothered to check.
• My vote is for reading quidnunc's posts in reverse, for the delicious satanic messages contained therein.
• Having read them for the first time as an adult, in the past few months, I would say that they're mostly good. The preachy allegorical stuff isn't there through the entire series. In most of it, it seemed like Lewis borrowed some christian themes and worked them into his fairy tale world, which is fine, and much better than presenting bible stories with a thin allegorical mask. The nephew book was preachy and condescending, but in the rest of the books it wasn't so bad. I read LWW first, then Nephew, and then cautiously approached the third book, planning on putting it down if it was as bad. I think if I started with Nephew, I wouldn't have read any more.
• .dneirflrig a dah i hsiw i natas ho
• Actually, the Narnia books are a savage satire of Christianity. This is because they replicate certain biblical events, but in a magical "fairytale" world, leading the reader to understand that either (1) the bible is also a fairy-tale; or (2) the orthodox biblical narrative is somehow deficient and can be improved by such treatment. Either conclusion is blasphemous, but Lewis' point is that it would be as ludicrous to treat the scriptures as "true" as it would be to treat Narnia as "real". This then was his heresy, an attempt to take the central documents of Christianity that believers considered to be inspired by the holy spirit and reduce them to mere literature (worse - Children's literature). Imagine if someone had proceeded similarly with the Holy Koran!
• If only somebody had told me that you only can read so many words before SPONTANEOUS AUTO-EYEBALL-EJECTION! The daisy_may thread could have been the last words I ever read!
• I read a couple but didn't really like them. Sorry.
• Thanks so much for the advice, monkeys! I'm thinking right now I'll read them in publication order. I'll start as soon as I'm finished with Monkey Business. Think it'll be an odd jump? (hee) I've read some of Lewis' non-fiction, and I don't *think* that the allegorical stuff will bother me. I do self-identify as Christian (although as a left wing, pro-choice, "I'm-a-fan-of-Jesus-but-not-a-fan-of-many-of-his-fans" recovering Baptist.) I saw the vein of tolerance and neo-Platonism in his work and liked it (Didn't Lewis start as an atheist philosopher and then find religion later in life? I should know this, one of the top Lewis scholars, Bruce Edwards, is here at my university)
• Yes, he was an atheist through pretty much all of his youth. He became a Christian as a young man embraced atheism during a motorcycle ride, IIRC.
• I say read them in publication order.
• Wow. Should really read my comments before I post them. Should read: "He became a Christian as a young man, embraced THEISM during a motorcycle ride."
• I am afraid of lions
• And loins, too, like all good christains
• How do I get this christain off of my trousers?
• I thought he embraced teh Zen while reading a book on motorcycle maintenance.
• I read them as a kid in publication order but I think I would do it in chronological now. With the caveat that when I did go back to reread them as an adult, I didn't like them at all. I loved them as a kid - especially The Silver Chair and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, with Prince Caspian as my third favorite. I tried to read them to my then 11 year old son starting with TLTW&TW - and about halfway through he said "Is this about JESUS?! Because it's really boring" and that was that.
• And lions, too, like all tasty christians.
• "Is this about JESUS?! Because it's really boring" I can't tell if you told him it was about Jesus and he was surprised at how boring it was, or if he found it so boring that it must be about Jesus.
• They're not very good. Read them if you are curious, by all means, but then move on to more rewarding works for children!
• I would read them as they were written. These were some of my very favorite books as a kid; The Horse and His Boy was definitely my favorite!
• Err, having read the link, I guess I meant "the order they were first published".
• I read Lion first and then read it it chronological order. I personally didn't notice the religious allegory until The Last Battle (which is a piece of shit, anyway), but I'm not religious and was raised in a non-religious household. All the stuff about Aslan-as-Christ passed me by, and just looked like standard fantasy stuff. Horse and His Boy is, for my money, the best in the series. It and Lion are the least overtly didactic, IMO; The Magician's Nephew is the most adult in tone. Dawn Treader and Silver Chair are the most "childish" in tone, and suffer a bit from talking down to the audience, but are none the less enjoyable. The Last Battle is crap, and has Lewis' most ugly mysogyny, racism, and religious bigotry on show. You'd lose nothing by never reading it. Magician's Nephew is quite overtly didactic as well, but the nastier aspects of Lewis' personalit don't shine through so much.
• The Last Battle is crap, and has Lewis' most ugly mysogyny, racism, and religious bigotry on show. Would you care to elaborate on this? I've never read The Last Battle, but am interested to know what you're referring to. (If you reply, make sure to announce any spoilers )
• It's kind of hard to elaborate without spoilers, techsmith, but as much as I can: 1/ The bad guys are Ottoman Empire-ish Moslems. 2/ The resolution of who the bad guys are actually worshipping is, um, pretty insulting seen in that light. Hell, I'm pretty rude about religion, and I haven't said anything that rude about any religion. 3/ At least one of the female characters from the earlier books is condemned to hell (in effect) at the end of the novel for becoming an adult female of the sort Lewis didn't like (ie wearing lipstick and stockings). That's not really spoilerish, but much more detail would be.
• techsmith, for what it's worth, I'd disagree a little with rodgerd's analysis of The Last Battle. It isn't quite as simplistic as he puts it, at least not in my reading of it. The bad guys are the Calormen, as in The Horse and his Boy [may have spelled that name incorrectly, it's been a while], but Lewis makes it clear partway through the book that they aren't to be condemned for doing what they believe is right. The "resolution" that rodgerd is referring to is the result of the fact that Lewis was a Christian, and thus a monotheist... but it's as liberal and inclusive a resolution as a monotheist can have towards people who don't believe in their religion. The last point, I think, is less about "wearing lipstick and stockings" than "dismissing Narnia as imaginary and worthless," more an allegory for renouncing one's faith than anything. The Last Battle definitely has a lot more Christian allegory than the rest of the books [even Aslan's resurrection in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe], but I actually didn't find it to be all that bad. It certainly seemed to fit in with Lewis' vision, and although it was obviously religious, I didn't find it offensively so.
• There is clearly some truth in what you say, rogerd, but are you sure about the fate of the lipstick/nylons character? It seems to me she doesn't go to Hell, she just lives out her life in the normal world without being a 'friend of Narnia'.
• I have no words capable of expressing my disdain for the Narnia books.
• therefore you must live out life in the normal world without being a 'friend of narnia'.
• And you cannot play with the rest of us here "in the closet".
• Wardrobe, I mean.
• You could finish off the series by reading the 'Eighth chronicle of Narnia', How the Dead Live by Will Self. Alright, it's not the eighth chronicle of Narnia, but it has got the Wood Between Worlds in it.
• But what happened to the guniea pig? The poor thing, stuck in the woods by itself... forever...
• Ok, even though this thread is pretty muuch dead by now I'm gonna chime in w/ my two bits. Start with "Over Sea and Under Stone", then "the Dark is Rising," "The Greenwich," "The Grey King," and "Silver on the Tree." That's probably the best way to read the Narnia series. All kidding aside, I started reading them in the order they were published, and lost interest after about 3 books.
• Lost interest in the Narnia books, that is. They were pretty good, but about then I discovered BB guns, girls, computers and pot.
• are you sure about the fate of thelipstick/nylons character? It seems to me she doesn't go to Hell, she just lives out her life in the normal world without being a 'friend of Narnia'. This is correct. At the end of The Last Battle, all the characters instead of Susan get to Aslan's country - Polly, Digory, Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and their parents, plus Eustace and Jill (who went to Narnia first) because they were killed in a train accident in "our" world. Eighteen-year-old Susan would have been the only remaining member of her family left alive. I adored these books as a kid, though I have to admit they aren't the best children's literature. I found the religious stuff pretty easy to ignore. Hell, it has plenty of Roman and Greek mythological characters in it too, as well as Santa Claus, and I don't hear anyone complaining about that.
• Haha... yeah, as Stomper says, try that Susan Cooper series, too. I like good YA/older-kids' fantasy. Middleclasstool, the more popular story (I don't know if it's necessarily accurate) is that Lewis's Christianity coalesced after a long late-night conversation with Tolkien, but that they later fell out a little partly because of Tolkien's Catholicism. That may be a vast oversimplification, and I don't really know what bits of it are true. I do know that Tolkien's wife sometimes resented the amount of time he spent with Lewis in, like, the late 1920s. I would read the books in order of publication, because that's what I did (and never finished The Last Battle). I recall really liking The Silver Chair (to answer some of the comments people have made about it), but it's been over 20 years, and I was 8, and I certainly can't vouch for it. I also recall thinking The Magician's Nephew was deliciously creepy.
• I always feel a bit weird reading The Magician's Nephew (I reread the series on a semi-regular basis). I think I first read it when horribly sick as a child, and even now I get an echo of that when I read it.
• IFAIK they didn't fall out over Tolkien's catholicism, they fell out because Tolkien had shared some of his drafts for LotR with Lewis, and then when the latter started writing Lion, Witch, Wardrobe, Tolkien felt that he was "having a go himself" and never forgave him. At least that's what I remember reading somewhere.
• Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. Prince Caspian kills Gandalf in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe.
• My favourite books: 1. The Bible 2. Pilgrim's Progress 3. There is no #3. But I ain't no Goddamned Christ-fucking Jeebus do-gooder (though there's nothing wrong with that).
• Aslan the Jesu-lion killed rock radio.
• Wedge is a cheeky monkey.
• I read publication order first, than chronological order, over and over and over again. That always seemed a good way to do it. (Including reading Horse and his Boy inbetween the second last and last chapter of Lion. I was anal as a child.) Magician's Nephew will spoil The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; it is better read as a prequel.