Now playing catch-up, I’ve started reading the HP books, from a borrowed set. The first and second are obvious, but what is the order for 3 and 4?
Three comes before four.
Seriously, the order is as follows:
Sorcerer’s Stone (originally Philosopher’s Stone)
Chamber of Secrets
Prisoner of Azkaban
Goblet of Fire
Order of the Phoenix
Happy reading. You’ll enjoy them, I’m sure.
Prisoner of Azkaban is year three at Hogwarts, and book three.
Goblet of Fire is year four at Hogwarts, and book four.
Is that what you were asking?
I’ll probably be skewered for this, but I am reading HP aloud to my kids and I find it excruciating. I hate all the creepy Wartmughoggle type names. The writing style (she turned around slowly, picked up her wand, straightened the curtain, looked from Harry to Ron… GET TO THE POINT) is cumbersome and too drawn out and all I see when I read it is the next movie, with all the kids at Hogwarts, jaws dropped at the latest special effect. oooh. ahh.
I’ll take Tolkien any day.
Considering that the first 4 books were written before the first movie came out… (and the first one written before she was even sure it’d get published)…
There’s a certain style to some writing where the pacing, especially the sort we’re used to in film and television, is dictated by the length of the sentences and paragraphs. Comic timing, suspense, joy, can all be manipulated into more relatable believability if you pace out the sentence structure just so.
The HP books have a goodly chunk of that in them, most likely because JKR is as influenced by movies and TV as we are.
Smartass 
Thanks, PRNYouth and BuckleberryFerry; that’s what I was after.
Not to point out the obvious, but all the books I’ve seen have the year/series number on the spine. With the possible exception of the mass market editions of 1 and 2.
Of couse, you could get Jim Dale to do the reading for you. 
Get Stephen Fry to do it, forget Jim Dale.
Oh yeah, Tolkien didn’t have any hard to pronounce names and he moved the plot distinctly forward with every sentence.