Well, it wasn't quite "closing out" things - setting up a whole new Wraith Squadron, to me, felt like it was opening a door for at least a few more books, which would've been awesome if it hadn't been for Allston (and then the EU) passing away. But I was still really happy that we got to go back to that world one last time, yeah. It's the only post-NJO book I actually like.
25,000+ years of the Republic and Jedi Order, though add another 10,000 years for the Je'daii, hundreds of thousands of years for the Rakata, Gree, Kwa, Taung, Zhell, other Force groups, other families aside from the Skywalkers, etc. Much more exciting thinking of all that in addition to the movies, instead of just the movies. The EU is the backbone of my SW knowledge. How I see the movies, is tied to the EU.
I think a big part of the reason I wasn't as disappointed with the prequels as so many people were is that the novels from that era, IMO, did such a great job of picking up the slack. The politics behind the trade disputes in Episode I might not make too much sense in the opening crawl, but "Cloak of Deception" and "Plagueis" made some great stuff out of it. And, of course, there's the novelizations.
Amen. Cloak of Deception, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, Republic comics, the micro-series, Labyrinth of Evil, Shatterpoint, the novelizations, Plagueis,etc greatly improved the era.
I was so confused with your pictures at first since I am not used to seeing books ordered from the bottom up. I'm currently in my [very slow] reread of all the books I have, including ones recently purchased which need to worm their way into my shelves. They mean a lot to me, and there is something to be said that we have decades of head canon at our fingertips ready to be re-explored. I'm also amazed by the fact that you have almost all paperbacks. Amazed and a bit envious since my hard covers drive me insane.
I'm torn on whether to get rid of some of my hardbacks to make room in the cupboard going forward for the Disney stuff. I have the paperbacks for the hardbacks I have but at the very least want to keep ROTS, The Unifying Force, Heir to the Empire 20th Anniversary, and a couple of others in their hardback forms. I will put them on EBay or some site like that though.
When I started reading the books in junior high, I didn't have the money to buy hard covers. My OCD prevented me from buying them in later years, because they should all be the same right? Haha. Another reason is that I mostly ready in bed, and hard covers are too big, heavy, and awkward to read in this position. So although I don't have the prestige of a hard cover collection, paperbacks do have their positives .
Haha, I can relate. The last time I watched Jedi, I got to the Rebel briefing scene and was like "There's Lieutenant Page sitting behind Leia and Han! Holy crap!" My problem with reading hardcovers in bed is that I sit against the backboard and prop the book against my knees, and then subconsciously think that it's a kindle and tap the page when I finish it.
Now its more like "There's Whoever-David-Church-Plays-In-This-Movie sitting behind Leia and Han!" -_-
I'm holding out hope for a recanonization of Page. Cracken, too, was an EU character retconned into being a background Jedi Rebel, and he's made his way into the new canon. There's hope for Page yet!
I'm not so keen on recanonizations of that kind, y'know. Because, ultimately, it's just putting a name on an unidentified extra, but it doesn't bring back anything else (a biography, a personality and so on).
I do too. And since Tarkin and Lords of the Sith are canon, not Legends, they're even with the newer books. With the way my shelves are, they're even on opposite sides of the room
I'm still putting the finishing touches on my Legends collection. Still slowly tracking down some of the junior novels (Last of the Jedi, namely). I was nine when TPM came out, and grew up on Watson's Jedi Apprentice/Jedi Quest books. I'm all caught up on current canon books, and I'm about to dive into the X-Wing series for the first time. Quite the collection OP has there (though the backwards order does throw my slight OCD for a major loop ).
Just curious...how do you and others organize your canon bookshelf? I have all the canon material thus far (adult novels, junior novels, comic tpb, reference books, etc) and I've gone back and forth with how best to display them.
Chronological order as given by the Wook. If a novel/compilation/Omnibus/whatever spans multiple timeframes, I put it where the first one is. I have three separate areas: Legends, Canon, [Legends] Comics. NEU comics I'll probably put after the NEU books in chronological order Reference books are completely separate and I have them in chronological order by episode then alphabetical order after that.
Cool post. The EU meant a lot to me growing up and into young(ish) adulthood. It's safe to say the Thrawn books, the X-Wing series, the NJO and others will always be essential Star Wars to me. I followed Luke and company for so long in the books that it's pretty much impossible for me to see TFA as "what really happened." I stopped reading right as FOTJ hit, mostly because of other interests/less time more so than any strong sense of dissapointment with the direction they were taking. Since I'm not feeling the new stuff maybe I'll look back into some of the final "Legends" books as a sort of closure.
Yeah, I agree with this. Like I said not long ago on another thread, this is why I actually don't want any new stories with Wedge Antilles in the current canon. Without the entire little universe that had built itself up around him - without Tycho, Wes, Hobbie, Iella, Corran, Gavin, Mirax, Booster - it would just feel empty and fake. What I am eager for are the Poe Dameron stories. Something X-wing-series-esque, but built around entirely new characters and telling entirely new stories, which could be its own thing instead of a pale imitation of an older series? Yes, that I'm down for.
A fine effort, JABoomer! That collection looks great. I still need several Clone Wars era and Jedi Quest books to complete my collection. When I was into YA SW, it was in the days of Young / Junior Jedi Knights. In a way I agree, I don't think NEU would do proper justice to these awesome characters. While Marvel's Poe Dameron looks promising, I reaaaally miss the good ol' days, both the X-Wing gang and the NJO Jedi + the Fels.
Well, I continue to hold out some hope that they'll one day have enough sense to let Legends continue on in its own continuity, the same way various comic book franchises already have multiple continuity. Trouble is, even if that happens, I'm afraid all the old authors will've moved on by then.
I recently reordered all my novels (adult, young readers and junior readers) in to chronological order. It took a while and takes up a ridiculous amount of space but my life did I feel a sense of completeness and achievement! I did buy hardbacks so it does look bumpy rather than the nice, smooth lines in the first post. I'm missing a few novels, mostly the Clone Trooper ones and some of the junior reader ones like Glove of Vader but over all I have (quickly checks spreadsheet of novels) 172 novels which is crazy. There are also 76 reference books - making of, cross sections, art of .. etc And then there are the comics - this includes all the DHC, the original Marvel era reprints (the originals I don't have except for the last three issues as I have the UK weekly/monthly reprints from when they came out). All in all that amounts to a crazy amount of shelf space. Now, some of these novels I remember very well, some I barely remember at all. I've been collecting since 1977 so this has been built up slowly but surely. I have no idea how someone starting now from scratch would be able to collect all this, even as ebooks as the cost would be ridiculous (just doing a quick calc of 172 novels at £5 each equates to £860 which while not sounding too bad, is still a lot to spend on novels) With regards to reading them all, up to the start of last year, i had read them all up to book 3 of the FOTJ set. So I set myself a task to complete the read before the film opened. i managed it but boy at times was that hard. Some of the FOTJ stuff was just painful and the constant changing behind why Jacen did what he did was annoying. And then Crucible. Oh, that hurt. But I managed it and also managed to stay up to date with the NEU. From memory, my favourite ones would be Thrawn trilogy, X-Wing, some of the Vong war and some of the Clone War novels. I remember finding the Black Fleet Crisis a particularly hard slog and barely making it to the end of that. Anyway, congrats to the original poster, your post has sent me down memory lane and I can relate to what you have achieved.
Those books are a treasure. They do so much to flesh out the prequel-era galaxy and make it feel like a real lived-in place rather than a stage for contrived drama like the prequels and their novels often seemed to do by ignoring the existence of anyone but the Jedi and the government. And the Young Jedi Knights books were my gateway drug to Star Wars reading obsession. I read them when I was in the intended age group for them and they were absolutely riveting. Some of the happiest moments of my life were experienced reading Trouble On Cloud City and being awed by Lando's theme park and that ride where they free-fall thousands of feet into a water-vapor cushion, and being utterly terrified when Jacen (who was my favorite) fell off the city for real. Those were the days where I was too young to know that no, of course they're not going to kill Han & Leia's son in the middle book of a YA trilogy. And it was wonderful. Say what you want about KJA and Moesta's literary chops but they understood how to take advantage of the creative freedom of being in a whole other galaxy and all the weird, fascinating, and compelling ideas that can be played with in a Star Wars novel.
