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So I've wanted to read Isaac Asimov's Foundation series for a while now, but I just don't know where to start with it. Internet sources give me varied results, so I'm just wondering if anyone here can help me out with the reading order.

Thanks in advance!

Asimov apparently has his own preferred order, but you don't have to take that as canon. If I'm ever going to tackle a series, I do it in the order it was written.

Don't even get me started on how the Narnia books always used to enrage me by being collected together in chronological order by the setting timeline instead of order of creation...people were reading them to their kids and they were doing it WRONG.

Yeah, Narnia confused me too when I read it for the first time.

 

Thanks for the advice though. I'll look up what order the series was written in and read it based on that.

I read them in the order of Foundation Trilogy, Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation, then the Galactic Empire Trilogy, and a bunch of the robot series books and short stories, then his wrap ups Foundation's Edge/Earth. Somewhere in there I read Nemesis at least three times, and didn't realize it was in the same universe until it gets a reference in one of the last two Foundation books. I enjoyed it in the order I read it in, though I regretted reading the last book. I didn't plan the order, it was just what was available at the library.

I think I only made it a book and a half into the Bear/Brin "Foundation's Triumph" follow up. Didn't care for it. But it's been over a decade since I read all the Asimov books, save Currents of Space which I have reread a number of times.
 

Thanks Camelon. I'm reading the first book in the Robots series right now, but the order for reading Foundation seems like a good one. 

It's usually best to just start with the book called Foundation. Prelude is of course a prequel in that it's about the young Hari Seldon and how he first got to Trantor, the Imperial city planet--which George Lucas ripped off for the Star Wars movies with Coruscant. Starting in Foundation's Edge (1982) Asimov began tying his Foundation Series together with his Robot novels (the Galactic Empire novels where always part of Foundation universe) and his time travel novel, the End of Eternity. R. Daneel Olivaw , Elijah Bailey's robot detective partner from the Robot novels, is revealed to have a major role in the Foundation universe. Aside from Olivaw and Seldon, the best character in the series is the mutant empath known as the Mule, who is both a mass-murdering tyrant AND a tragic figure.

Apple TV is making a 10 episode series based on the original "trilogy" with Asimov's daughter as a consultant. If you're interested, the BBC in England did a radio play series based on the first three books back in the early 70's. Here's a link if you ever want to listen to it.  https://archive.org/details/IsaacAsimov-TheFoundationTrilogy