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Originally posted by kstar
Actually Lewis said to read them in writing order, as they won't make much sense if you don't. As the Magician's Nephew (written next to last) refers back to the books written previously.
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How does it refer back to the other books. It gives you the background to the story (who the professor is, where the wardrobe came from and why it is connected to Narnia, where the White Witch came from, why animals talk, etc). Some of the middle ones would not make as much sense if you read them out of chronological order (Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Silver Chair), however you can actually read them in any order you want.
According to Lewis himself:
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Lewis expressed a mild preference for this second, chronological order. In a letter written in 1957 to an American boy named Laurence, he wrote the following:
'I think I agree with your order {i.e. chronological} 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 as 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.
Quoted in "Letters to Children"
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Sarah