[12 Months Spoilers] Minor Detail Mid-Conversation

[Vairelome]

I don't have a copy of the text in front of me, so this is paraphrased.  If someone could find the exact text, it might be helpful.

Partway through Twelve Months, Harry has a conversation with Mab in his apartment in the castle.  In the midst of this conversation, Harry notes that Mab wanders over to one of his bookshelves and re-orders the books of the Chronicles of Narnia.  Neither he nor Mab note this verbally, and to my recollection, Harry doesn't return to this point later in the book at all.  What is going on here?

A few points to start:

1) I assume that Mab is adding information that was not previously present; that is, her actions are meaningful in that she is intending to communicate something.  She is not randomly tidying Harry's bookshelf--that would be both out of character* and too trivial to mention as part of the narration, unless you want to postulate that this is intended as a meta-hint that something is wrong with Mab.  I mention this last bit for completeness, not because I think it's plausible.

2) Narnia has two standard orderings: original publication order and internal chronological order.  I would assume that the books started in one of these orderings (interestingly, both orderings are "official" in different contexts--you can find different editions with the spines of the books numbered in either ordering).  If the new sequence contains extra information, the resulting order would have to be neither of these; I think going from one order to the other is too trivial to mean anything.

3) The clue could be a seven-digit number containing the digits 1-7 once each, as read from the spine of each book in the new order.  Perhaps a phone number?

* In terms of Mab's character, I believe that her every action contains both intentional aid and the intentional infliction of pain.  In this case, both aid and pain would be quite minor (an obscure hint vs. the irritation of a disordered bookshelf), but both would exist.

[Bad Alias]

The only thing I've heard suggested is that she reordered them from chronological to publication order.

The whole thing might just be another nerd Easter Egg like so many pop culture references. There was one made by Lara that flew over both my and Harry's heads.

It could be some hint that she has something to do with the Chronicles of Narnia like she did with the Grimm Fairy Tales.

It could be a reference to Jim's inspiration for Mab's character. He said she was based off the Winter Queen in there. (He said a character name; I assume it was the queen from the first book based on context. I was never into Narnia enough to have recognized the name when he said it).

It could be a combination of things.

[g33k]

... Harry notes that Mab wanders over to one of his bookshelves and re-orders the books of the Chronicles of Narnia...  What is going on here?

An excellent point.
Agreed that it seems virtually impossible that it was meaningless and random (merely filler-text); Mab is neither.
She is clearly Chekhov's Librarian here!

... unless you want to postulate that this is intended as a meta-hint that something is wrong with Mab ...

There is this:  we know that (for example) the Grimm brothers had "inside info" for writing their faerie tales; and Stoker also had inside info for Dracula; and H.P.Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" is (more or less directly) inspired by Outsiders.
Now we know that Mab has an interest in C.S.Lewis' Narnia.
This suggests that Narnia too has important cognates in the Dresdenverse's supernatural world, that Lewis had "inside info" also.

It's also possible that she did something else, there... replaced one of the volumes with another book she brought, or slipped something between pages / between books, or etc.

[Bad Alias]

It could be a hint about who added a Calvin and Hobbes book to his library in Proven Guilty fixed Little Chicago.

[thorr-kan]

I will note that we know Mouse is reading Naria.

I don't think that's a coincidence, either.

[SerScot]

I don't have a copy of the text in front of me, so this is paraphrased.  If someone could find the exact text, it might be helpful.

Partway through Twelve Months, Harry has a conversation with Mab in his apartment in the castle.  In the midst of this conversation, Harry notes that Mab wanders over to one of his bookshelves and re-orders the books of the Chronicles of Narnia.  Neither he nor Mab note this verbally, and to my recollection, Harry doesn't return to this point later in the book at all.  What is going on here?

A few points to start:

1) I assume that Mab is adding information that was not previously present; that is, her actions are meaningful in that she is intending to communicate something.  She is not randomly tidying Harry's bookshelf--that would be both out of character* and too trivial to mention as part of the narration, unless you want to postulate that this is intended as a meta-hint that something is wrong with Mab.  I mention this last bit for completeness, not because I think it's plausible.

2) Narnia has two standard orderings: original publication order and internal chronological order.  I would assume that the books started in one of these orderings (interestingly, both orderings are "official" in different contexts--you can find different editions with the spines of the books numbered in either ordering).  If the new sequence contains extra information, the resulting order would have to be neither of these; I think going from one order to the other is too trivial to mean anything.

3) The clue could be a seven-digit number containing the digits 1-7 once each, as read from the spine of each book in the new order.  Perhaps a phone number?
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* In terms of Mab's character, I believe that her every action contains both intentional aid and the intentional infliction of pain.  In this case, both aid and pain would be quite minor (an obscure hint vs. the irritation of a disordered bookshelf), but both would exist.

The correct ordering of The Chronicles of Narnia is publication order.

[g33k]

The correct ordering of The Chronicles of Narnia is publication order.

Lewis said he preferred chronological order (but also that he thought it didn't actually matter very much).