Episode 00 ‘The Star Wars Project’
It is a dark time for Star Wars fans, a good Star Wars movie (that has real people in it and not cartoons) hasn’t been put out by Lucas Arts since 1983 and now we are all being forced to cough up $17 each to watch the prequels in ‘3D’ so that maybe Lucas will continue and release the originals in 3D as well. But, the bad news is that the ‘3D’ in The Phantom Menace wasn’t really all that 3D while the dialog was just as terrible. Meanwhile, with each Blu-Ray or limited edition that come out, Lucas keeps tinkering. . .
So what do you do if you want more Star Wars but really really don’t want to see what Lucas would do with another movie? Well besides trying to fix the movies like this guy or even Topher Grace recently tried to do, you could pick up one of the many books that add to the Star Wars saga. In fact you could try to read all 251 of them. That’s what I’m doing.
Starting in early April of 2010, I decided to read every single Star Wars book that I could find and that fit somewhat with the official canon of the series. So far I have read 132 books, which puts me right in the middle of the Han Solo Trilogy . There have been good books, the Sith books by Drew Karpyshyn and James Luceno were particularly interesting and not so good books – The Adventures of Lando Calrissian were a little hard to get through and had no bearing to the over-arching story.
If you have opinions or recommendations about any of the books, I would love to hear them. In general, I read up to one of the movies then I watch the movie and continue – yes this meant watching all the prequels again. Wow, ‘Revenge of the Sith’ was so much worse than I remembered. And, if you’d like to try reading all of them yourself I would love to hear about that too. Here is the most recent list provided by James Luceno in his latest book ‘Darth Plagueis.’ I have added a few of the series such as Jedi Quest and Last of the Jedi series even though they may not be canon because they help to flesh out the story – especially of Obi Wan and more so because I already went through the trouble if reading them.
As I finish each book, I will post a review along with relevant links and a description of how the book affects the overall story. I will also try not to spoil as much as possible and post a warning when I am about to.
Like I said, I am reading all 251 of these things – and they keep making more so that number will go up, and all I can say is that I am not looking forward to ‘The Courtship of Princess Leia.’
