usatoffeefan said:actually the complete volume of narnia says that it has the books in it in his prefered order...
Actually this debate has been addressed in another thread as well as detailed in here. That note is from the new publisher. Your complete volume is a new edition, relatively speaking, and is precipitated on a note from Lewis. He was responding to a letter from a young fan, who discovered they could be read in another order, than published. Lewis said he never thought of that, but liked it and supposed it didn't really matter what order you read them. I paraphrased that a bit.
The note in the complete edition is a bit confusing.