The version that was being published in America when I first read it circa 1980 was TLTWATW, Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, Silver Chair, Horse and His Boy, Magician's Nephew, Last Battle. Which I think is publication order.

Interesting choice! I know I read TLTWATW as a stand-alone, but then a while after that I got hold of the whole series, in a different edition (with lovely front cover illustrations! Lovely!) and that had TMN as book 1. I was aware even then (although I don't know how I'd come by the knowledge) that CSL had written TMN after TLTWATW - but I still really enjoyed TMN.

Poor Susan. I always felt bad for her, being punished for reaching puberty and developing an interest in lipstick and boys.

(Oh, God. And I had such the crush on James MacAvoy's Mr Tumnus, in the recent movie. God. Suddenly I was all over the notion of Lucy/Mr Tumnus like a rash. [Not Wee!Lucy, obviously. But, you know - she grows up. Even in that fist book, she grows up.])

I have to admit that I haven't finished LOTR -- I got 2/3 of the way through The Two Towers, left my copy at a friend's house, and waited too long to get another copy and jump back in. It feels richer and heavier and slower going to me than Lewis's books: very rewarding, but in a very different way, despite their both being fantasies by two writers who were contemporaries and close friends (in fact, a small part of the genesis of the Narnia books was Lewis feeling a gush of sloppy fanboy love for Tolkien's stately and magnificent worldbuilding -- which resulted in a slapdash everything-but-the-kitchen-sink world that Tolkien found skin-crawlingly amateurish and embarrassing).

Even as a kid, I loved reading the Narnia books in publication order, even though the timeline jumped around, because of the way the girl characters got deeper and stronger and more active as the author got older and wiser and less trapped in his men-only monkish academic world. The Silver Chair was always a little cool and silvery and bleak, but oh how I loved Jill Pole.

also, that way we got live-action Legolas and Aragorn and Borimir and Farimir and Eomer and NOMNOMNOM.

God, yes. Yes. That scene with Aragorn shoving open the doors to Theoden's hall...gah.

thunk

(Also, without the movies there would be no LotRiPS. And I would be very sad to dwell in a world which lacked the smoking hotness of Calico's LotRiPS.)

That scene with Aragorn shoving open the doors to Theoden's hall...gah.

And THEN! Legolas (theyaresomarried) coming over and simply saying, "You're late" and his eyes saying so. much. more.

Ahem.

and I was a Gustie (the LEAST religious school in the MIAC).

Gotcha! I always felt Augsburg was pretty low on the religion focus, but after being kicked out of a fundamental Baptist college, I was kind of all for that.

Don't shoot me. I just cannot get into Lord of the Rings. At all. I've tried. it's just not my thing--books or movies.

No plague pills. New pain pills, though. Although, I'm selfish and won't share...

This is an annoying Plague because I can't tell if it's coming from (white-fonted for medical TMI) bug or spider bites, allergies, or something else entirely. I just know that I have these red, itchy bumps in two places on my chest/shoulder, and they've been driving me craxy for DAYS. I want to scratch my skin off my body, seriously. I've treated them with Cortizone, which helps a bit, but they are taking forever to heal and go away. I look like a freak! Thus endeth my Plague angst.

Sad to say, but P-C is me. I read the series fresh out of undergrad.

Oh, see, I read them when I was in elementary school or junior high.

Getting all the way through Tolkien was a chore.

I loved TLotR books, but I must admit that I missed out a great chunk of Return of the King. Because, see, I was nine, and I'd ploughed my way through the first two honking big books, and I'd been in floods of tears at the tragic awfulness of the Sam'n'Frodo plotline at the end of The Two Towers, and then as soon as you start Book 3 it's all Aragorn and the grownups. (Yes, I know that Frodo is old. Shut up. He was my height.) So pretty damn quick I was all "Okay, screw you guys - what is happening to my boys????"

...I don't think this was to do with naked tortured Frodo and devoted Sam. Um. I'm fairly sure it was just empathy. Um.

Anyway, yes - this meant that when the movies came out and I reread the books, I had the weird experience of having some lines carved into my heart, and other chunks of text (most of the Eowyn stuff) be brand spanking new. Odd. But lovely.

Poor Susan. I always felt bad for her, being punished for reaching puberty and developing an interest in lipstick and boys.

Well, not to re-open another patented Buffista neverending argument, but...ah, what the hell. I always felt like she was punished less for the lipstick and boys than for the lipstick and boys to the exclusion of anything else, including her past as a Queen of Narnia, and actively denying their past -- airily dismissing everyone's memories as "those games we used to play when we were kids."

IIRC, the reality of childhood experiences was a *huge* thing for Lewis; his mother's death when he was six was a trauma that hung over him well into adulthood, and he had a wretched school experience with an abusive and clinically insane teacher that he never told his father about because he felt absolutely certain he wouldn't be believed. He saw dismissing the raw truth of children's experiences as exaggerations or outright fantasies as a massive betrayal. I know it's dangerous to read too much meta into anything, but I do think that fed a great deal into what he saw as Susan's sin.

t points at JZ's post and nods