“SO I’m reading Star Wars novels again..” “Well, there’s that.”

Yeah.. I bought another Star Wars novel. Unless you know me, you don’t really understand this, but it’s been a LONG TIME since I last bought one. Allow me to explain.

I started reading Star Wars novels way back in elementary school. I got obsessed with the films rather quickly (on a day I stayed home from school with a cold, no less) and I went looking for some way to find more of the wonderful universe that had been created. That lead to me to the Expanded Universe, which has greatly grown since I started my first foray into it.

I started with Michael Stackpole’s X-Wing series way back when it first hit the New York Times’ Bestseller list back in 1996. I know that I’d get a lot of flack if I got into a real debate, but I personally believe that this nine book series is among the best books in all the EU. In any case, I got obsessed rather quickly, especially as the fighter pilot story expanded to full scale civil war and Jedi involvement. As such, I got pretty religious reading the EU books — to the point where I was reading two to three books a week. (Yes, a week.) I even started adapting the X-Wing series into a television series (don’t worry, I didn’t get too far).

The point is that I had it bad. But eventually I lacked both the funds and the time to continue, and so I sort of put the EU books aside and went on living my life with a little less Star Wars in it. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I had about six hours to kill between Professional Responsibility and watching the USC-Hawai’i game with some classmates. I attempted to sit in the library and read for my Con Law course (which I’m currently sitting in) — I failed. Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but mostly because I had a racing mind and I’ve read Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee far too many times to be able to read it once again, in the library no less. So I took off and ended up at a nearby mall, walking around for about an hour before I found myself at Borders, browsing the shelves just to kill time.

And then I found the Star Wars section.

Boy, the nostalgia hit me like a freight train when I got there. I started looking at all the books I had read over the years, and I found myself glancing at the back covers of those that I haven’t. I noted that the Legacy of the Force series had finally concluded, and the new Fate of the Jedi series had started. Now, I knew what happened for the most part in the Legacy of the Force books (yes, I read Wookiepedia to get plot summaries — I stopped reading the novels, not caring about what happened with the story), but I didn’t know with the detail I would have had from reading the books. And I found the back covers of the Fate of the Jedi series to be rather compelling. So I did what any self-respecting nerd would do — I sat down in Borders’ little cafe, fired up my iPhone, and read through the fully detailed plot summaries of every book I had missed leading up to Fate of the Jedi. Yeah — I’m bad. And then I bought the first two books of the series to get started. Yes, I realize I’m in law school, but I need to find some pleasure reading for myself too, right? And I figured I’d buy two because, if I’m anything like I used to be, I’ll be done with the books rather quickly.

I’ve read for about two hours — and I’m halfway done with the first novel.

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