Question: The purpose of this question is to get a clear policy about [reading-order](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/reading-order "show questions tagged 'reading-order'") questions. 

There have been instances where reading order questions have been closed because ["there doesn't seem to be any connection between the different... novels"](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in#comment2330_788), such as the question [What order should I read Thomas Pynchon's novels in?](https://literature.stackexchange.com/questions/788/what-order-should-i-read-thomas-pynchons-novels-in) This creates problems because it's not exactly clear what qualifies as a connection between the different novels. For example, the question <https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/1783/111> isn't about books in the same series, but some community members have argued that the question is on-topic because the books revolve around a common theme.

What is the criteria for whether reading order questions are on-topic?

Answer: 
Reading order questions are a chance for us to offer practical, experience-based advice on how best to approach specific sections of the material this site is about. Obviously they should adhere to [good subjective](https://stackoverflow.blog/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective/), of course, and should support their solutions clearly by explaining why and how the suggested reading order is a good one. But I'm honestly kind of baffled at the pushback against having questions that are so well-fitted to this site.

In the interests of [optimising for pearls, not sand](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/06/optimizing-for-pearls-not-sand/), we would expect these questions to specify why the querent suspects the reading order of that particular group of works is non-obvious/non-trivial. To avoid collecting answers that aren't actionable solutions to the querent's problem we would close such questions as unclear or too broad--same as with any other kind of question.

And to be clear, reading order is not reading recommendation. Asking the order one should read a set implies that one has already chosen to read the set--so it's not [shopping](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/158809/244929) and the primary reasons shopping questions are bad (both open-ended and quickly dated) don't transfer.

We just have to expect the same level of quality from reading-order questions and answers that we do from every other subjective question, and this will become a small but valuable subset of our site's content.
I would propose:

On-topic requests will ask for an ordering according a well-defined, non-subjective criteria.
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Here I'm thinking of things like:

* Publication order: "In what order were the *Narnia* books published?"
* Order by the internal chronology within the fiction: "What is the chronological order of the *Narnia* books?"
* Writing order: "Jane Austen's books were not published in the order they were written; in what order did Austen originally write them?"
* Identification and ordering of sub-series:"Which Discworld books have the Witches in them?", or "What are the various sub-series of the Discworld books?").

For large, intricate series, I think requesting a **reading guide** to a series makes for a great question -- based on chronology, subseries, a common element ("What are all the Dragonlance stories with Raistlin in them, by the fictional chronology?"). As long as a well-defined criteria for the guide is given, I think this falls within the bounds I've described here.

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There might be other well-defined orderings that could be asked about; this can't be an exhaustive list.

But I would like to see reading-order questions nudged towards asking for a *particular* order - publishing, chronological, etc, rather than just asking "What order should I read this in?". I think it would be much clearer to have one question for publication order and a separate one for chronological order, than to have those be two different, contrasting answers to the same question, with vote-counts implying that one of these is "better" or "more correct" than the other.

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Which is one part of a larger observation: **requesting subjective suggestions for reading order, is exactly the same as asking for a reading recommendation.** It may be a limited, well-scoped, well-defined reading recommendation, but it still boils down to "what do you recommend that I read," which we have [firmly come down against](https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2/should-recommendation-questions-be-on-topic). 

This is the case whether the question is "What volumes of this series are essential and which can I skip"; or "What ordering of this author's works will best make me appreciate his themes and ideas"; or "I know the publication and chronology orders, but maybe *you* have a *different* reading order that makes reading the series *really fantastic*." These are all great things to discuss, but they are very poor Stack Exchange questions, and will have all the problems we're trying to avoid with reading recommendations.

Effectively, my position is that **requesting lists, orderings, subgroups of books is fine; requesting *recommendations* for reading order is just another recommendation quetion.**