OK, so maybe I won’t really give you a dollar, but you’ll at least have earned my unyeilding and eternal respect.
Having spent a few weeks lurking on the boards, and an afternoon conversing with some exceedingly benevolent (and patient) Dopers in the chat room, I thought I’d emerge from behind my cloak of invisibility and introduce myself.
Hello.
What mundane and pointless stuff to share about myself? Hmmm…therein lies my dilemma. Here goes:
Single, celebrating the first anniversary of my 29th birthday, hetero, share my abode with one whacked Siamese cat (isn’t it nice of her to let me live in her house??).
I hate socks. I don’t eat sugar. I ride a Kona mountain bike.
Last book read in full: Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card
Books currently in progress: The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde, The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass (don’t know how to make that danged umlaut over the “u”), Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, Mansfield Park by Jane Austin
If there’s anything else mundane or pointless that you care to know about me, please…I ache to oblige your quest for knowledge.
Jadis means “formerly” in French.
Jadis is the White Queen in The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.
Jadis is the name of an English band.
Jadis makes audio equipment. Jadis et naguère is the name of a collection of poetry by the French writer, Paul Verlaine.
Hey, glad to see you made it to registering! I’m Sarah, commonly known as Silver Fire. (slvrfire in chat, but I’m guessing you could have figured that one out) Have fun here and stuff. I’m sure you will.
It would be the name of the White Witch as told in The Magician’s Nephew (Book 6 of the original order, I absolutely loathe the re-ordering that the current printing has done) in the Chronicles Of Narnia series.
“Dog, unhand our charger. We are the Empress Jadis.” Hehehe…Jadis kicks patootie.
Why don’t you like the current order? The Magician’s Nephew logically goes first, doesn’t it? I’m currently reading The Last Battle to my sons, having read the entire series in the current order. I’m sure they would find it quite confusing if I read …Nephew last.
St. Attila…I just prefer to read it in the order in which it came out of C.S. Lewis’ head, that’s all. TLTWATW was the first story around which his ideas coalesced …it is, IMO, the richest of his stories. The others build off of that one, with the exception of THAHB and TMN, which fill in some of the back story, if you will.
Maybe it’s just clinging to tradition. In case you’re not familiar with the order in which they were published, it was:
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse And His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
The current publishing order notes that they have been posthumously re-ordered according to C.S. Lewis’s wishes, but I have my doubts. I suspect it was more of a marketing issue than anything else. Also, for all intents and purposes, it’s really impossible to put them in true chronological order, as THAHB occurs entirely within TLTWATW.
Jadis, that’s interesting. As a boy, I never made it past The Horse and His Boy; I couldn’t get into it. Had I read them in the original order, I would have read more, though I suspect I would have enjoyed the entire series less.
I read three or four of them, and I always wondered why The Magician’s Nephew was #6, since it seems to be the opening story. Were they numbered in the order they were written (the obvious assumption)? Yet intended to be read in a certain order? What’s the order of the books in the reissue?
The books were originally ordered in the sequence that they were written, as listed above. The re-ordered sequence is, I believe, as follows:
The Magician’s Nephew
The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe
The Horse And His Boy
Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
Prince Caspian
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
This is almost chronological, but not quite, as THAHB takes place entirely within the timeframe of TLTWATW.
I think that Lewis fleshed out the origin of Narnia as his concept of the series developed, which is why TMN comes so late in the original series. I still prefer to read it in the order I was introduced to it, and despite reading it when I was in grade school (I think I began reading the series in 3rd grade), I had no trouble grasping the non-chronological sequence of the books.
I found the same thing the first time I read The Horse and His Boy. Couldn’t stand it. When I re-read it when I was a little bit older however I loved it.
I never even knew there was originally a different order, although I think I did have the idea that TLTWATW was the first one to be written. Don’t ask me how those two ideas are compatible, cause I don’t know.
True, she’s tough, smart and evil. She became quite the wimp by comparison in her next chronological appearance (note how I didn’t spoil anything for the uninitiated).
But Uncle Andrew )who must be played by Peter O’Toole or, in a weirder mood…whatshisname…Doc Brown from Back to the Future) stole every scene he was in. “A dem fine girl, that. Dem fine!”
The new order sucks. It ignores the wonderful little thing that happens for young listeners (or precocious readers) who have been through the stories in order. The lamppost is a “secret” that you already know about! Stuff that you already know about is really neat when you are a little kid, especially magic stuff. And, the long mystery of what the heck the lamppost is there in the middle of the woods is cool, too. The name Lanternwaste for the entire area is a bit of an “in” thing, in the books in between. The source of the wardrobe, much more properly explained after the mystical nature of it is well established.
Lewis’s heirs claim he wanted the new ordering. I think it is a mistake, even so.
Wow, that’s funny. I read 'em all and thought that only the first three were really cool–the Metallica Syndrome, you know. I wonder what I’d think of the new set?
That’s a point, I already knew the story of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I first read the books, having seen at least two TV versions of it.
