On reading in Narnia

As a fan of Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia (I prefer the separate volumes, not a fan of massive one-volume bricks), it is humorous to me to see the different ways people will choose to read the books. The way you order your reading of the travels in Narnia seem to say a lot about you (or me). My wife and I have had this discussion several times as I grew up with a different order than she did. Even now, as we read and reread the books to our kids, we find that we often read them in a different order still.

When the books were first published, beginning in 1950, the following sequence was how they came into being.
1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)
2. Prince Caspian(1951)
3. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
4. The Silver Chair (1953)
5. The Horse and His Boy (1954)
6. The Magicians Nephew(1955)
7. The Last Battle (1956)

This is the order I grew up with. I read The Magician's Nephew before reading The Last Battle, for instance. To others, this would be an offense of great magnitude. The Magician's Nephew should be read first, they argue. It seems modern publishers agree with them. Newer editions of the books, like those found here, order the books as follows:
1. The Magicians Nephew
2. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
3. The Horse and His Boy
4. Prince Caspian
5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
6. The Silver Chair
7. The Last Battle

Lewis, himself, seems to have weighed in on the argument in 1957. He wrote to a child who reported the argument his mother and he had been having about what order the books should be read. He stated,

 I think I agree with your [chronological] order for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last, but I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published. C.S. Lewis -  Letters to Children

Those who choose one of the orders listed above tend to be invested in the narrative Lewis is unveiling and wish to revisit that narrative in a certain way each time. This could be a nostalgia-thing or it could be a purist way of viewing story.

Then again, there could be something else at work as some I know tend to make up their own sequence based on what they perceive to be important about the Narnia narrative. Some in my family refuse to read The Magician's Nephew first and also insist that the Last Battle be read at the very end. I personally liked the idea of going back to the very beginning of the whole tale to hear how it "really" began before reading the way it all ended. My own order of the novels would be the same as the published order listed first in this post. I find it interesting that there is debate at all here, but also find it invigorating that there is room for debate here among all those who like to visit Narnia from time to time.