I haven't got anything to add to the conversation, but I really like this post and have been greatly enjoying the comments. I'm in the "read in chronological order" camp, for the simple reason that my set came with numbers on the spines and I obeyed. It wasn't under comparatively recently that I even realized there was a different publication order, and I haven't read the books in years and years, so now I kind of want to reread them that way.