Foundation is an unusual reading experience because nothing in it is about what it appears to be about. On the surface it's a story about the fall of a galactic empire. Actually it's about whether individuals matter when systems are large enough. Asimov was twenty-one when he started it and somehow had something genuinely interesting to say about determinism.

The structure threw me at first — it reads like loosely connected stories rather than a novel. I came to appreciate that as a feature rather than a bug. Each section advances the historical timeline but the protagonist is effectively civilization itself rather than any of the named characters.

I read it in publication order and I think that's right. Internal chronology would drain the dramatic tension from the later reveals, and Asimov's prose style changed enough across decades that you'd be jumping between very different writing voices.