Having gotten thru a series of “heavy” stories, I wanted something light. When, months ago, I’d read the sixth Harry Potter book, I wasn’t quite getting all the references – to people, to past events, to details about the school – so I knew I was going to do a complete read-through of the series at sometime in the future. The future arrived, and I raced through the six books in about two weeks, a whirlwind tour through six years of Harry’s trials and tribulations. It was a lot of fun, filled in the gaps nicely, and I’ll be curious to see what book seven brings. After that, probably another cruise through the completed series. What then? Will Rawlings send Harry to Wizard U? Anyway, to give the titles their due:

• Harry Potter 1: The Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rawlings
• Harry Potter 2: The Chamber of Secrets
• Harry Potter 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban
• Harry Potter 4: The Goblet of Fire
• Harry Potter 5: The Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter 6: The Half Blood Prince

Perhaps because of the wizard school comparison, perhaps just because I so love being immersed in her worlds, I wanted to leave Hogwarts for Earthsea. I decided, this time, to skip the first three, the original Earthsea Trilogy, and just read the later books. All wonderful…

• Tehanu, Le Guin
• Tales from Earthsea
• The Other Wind

A good dose of Earthsea, and I needed to experience another of her worlds. I picked up the much beloved…

• Always Coming Home, Le Guin

Always Coming Home always makes me think of what would be happening in the Northwest, if the same geological and sea-level changes were to happen up here. The Willamette Valley would be an inland sea, and the Puget Sound would become a great water way, buffered from the Pacific Ocean to a small degree by the Olympic Mountains – probably an island, and what would be left of Vancouver island. Grays Harbor would flood east till it connected with the base of the Sound near Olympia, burying all the cities and towns along the old shorelines. Quite a trip down imagination alley.

• The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Le Guin

I loaned a good friend The Wind’s Twelve Quarters and then decided to read it again, myself, when I finished Always Coming Home. I didn’t read every single story, but most of them. Made me decide to just cruise through all her short story collections, in order of publication.

Strangely, I didn’t really look at the publication dates for Changing Planes or even include Orsinian Tales or SeaRoad or Unlocking the Air, I think because I was cruising for Hainish and Earthsea stories, primarily. The following collections offer plenty, but also stories of other … settings and contexts and assumptions.

• The Compass Rose, Le Guin
• Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight

Mostly animal stories. I never make it through the poems.