Social: Member's Bookshelf

[colls]

September has 5 weekends, so that means we have a FREEBIE.
This weekend I thought I'd make a post to talk about Star Wars books in general. Novels, junior series, comics, EU, Disney canon.... anything goes.

+ What books have you read?
+ Which ones do you recommend?

Our October theme will be "Published in the 00's". Do you have any recommendations that would fit that theme? Or ideas of which book you might select for yourself to read?
For reference, here's a list of novels by release date from Wookiepedia

Comments

[brokenmnemonic]

Before you started the community, I hadn't actually read many of the books at all. I'd read the novelisations of Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back (and Han/Leia may actually have been my first ever ship as a result), and I had copies of the Thrawn trilogy and some of the New Jedi Order novels, so I think I'd probably read them, but they're stickered up by a secondhand book stall in a market I used to go to but which I haven't visited in 25 or so years, so if I have read them, I don't remember anything.

I read the Marvel UK comics that came out when I was a kid for years and years and at least one of the stories really stuck in my head, and over the last 18 months I've been using Marvel Unlimited to read through as much of the Dark Horse-published Star Wars comics as I can; I finally reached the end of that list last month, and I'm now starting to catch up with the Marvel High Republic comics. This is the reading list I used, so that I was reading the comics in in-universe chronological order rather than publishing order: https://comicbookreadingorders.com/other/star-wars-dark-horse-reading-order/. Reading that reminds me I need to go back and read the Republic comics I couldn't find originally because they changed name part way through... (It went from being simply "Star Wars" to "Star Wars: Republic" about 45 issues in.)

I think the Knights of the Old Republic comics are some of my favourites, and I really like the Rebel Heist limited series. The Dark Times stories were often good but also pretty painful in places, as they revolve around the Jedi who survived Order 66 mostly being hunted down by Vader and the Empire. There are also some interesting bits and pieces in runs like the Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire arcs where you get to see stories around people within the Empire, some of whom are loyal and some of whom aren't, and I found I liked some of these stories much more than I expected to. For example, there's an arc revolving around the commanding officer of the biggest Imperial officer academy, a former Clone Wars era general, attempting to lead a coup against the Emperor early after the formation of the Empire that I thought was very interesting, even if you obviously know how things are going to end up going!

[colls]

I applaud your commitment to (and ability to navigate) the comics side of the Star Wars storytelling universe.

The only exposure I've had to the Old Republic is through KOTOR - the only game outside of swgoh on mobile I've played. I know they're a popular setting/subgenre/timeline. If they're in some sort of cohesive set, I might check those out.

[brokenmnemonic]

I think it helps that the comics I've been reading are mostly from Dark Horse. The High Republic comics vex me a bit, because I haven't worked out where they all fit in relation to the various novels ;)

The Knights of the Old Republic has a core cast of characters and is a really interesting run. It helps that I like the characters :) It has several long plots, and includes one of the wars between the Republic and the Mandalorians, if that's of interest to you?

[barbiejedi]

I didn't see them listed on the comics reading order list you linked, but have you run across the Star Wars Tales comics? It was an anthology of short comics, most of which weren't "canon" but were fun little stories from all different places in the timeline. I only had a few of the monthly issues but years later I was able to find the big TPB collections.

[brokenmnemonic]

I didn't realise the Star Wars Tales series existed until you mentioned it, but I'm going to have to track it down. I have read some of the Infinities comics though, which are referenced in that article - I've read the Infinities stories that tell different versions of or give different endings for the original trilogy movies.

And this reminds me I haven't done much comic book reading in the last few weeks, which I could make up for...