I’m back, baby! Four books done for the month of May. This month felt special, because rather than wanting to finish these books to meet a deadline, I wanted to finish these books because I wanted to find out what happens next… even though I kind of already knew what was next!
If you couldn’t tell from my previous book preferences, my tastes don’t range far from the meta-fiction and memoirs. I’ve always found reality is stranger (albeit less complicated) than fiction, so I’ve never really ventured into the realm of fantasy novels. At least, not as an adult. Growing up I read the Harry Potter series like everyone else and L-O-V-E-D the Magic Tree House novels! My children will be read both. With corresponding voices.
Meanwhile, I don’t think Aaron, despite being a voracious reader, has ever read more than a few memoirs or biographies, instead consuming hundreds of medieval, space, and fantasy stories. With that in mind, I decided to sample a bit of taste from him. In spirit of “Star Wars Day,” May Fourth, may the fourth be with you, I elected to read four Star Wars-adjacent novels this month.
Note: if you have only seen each film once, or you haven’t seen Star Wars, some of this stuff might go over your head. I’m not gatekeeping by any means, but if you’re scratching you’re head a little from here on out, know I was scratching my head while reading, too. There’s a lot. A LOT.
I’ve seen the films in the Skywalker saga and thoroughly enjoyed Galaxy’s Edge, but that has been my extent of dalliance in the realm of Star Wars. Aaron, however, has read nearly every book in the Legends canon (also known as the stuff that came out between the originals, prequels, and before the buyout by Disney). I don’t believe in the concept of “real fan” vs. “fake fan,” but if I did, I’d say Aaron’s as real as they come. I knew I’d be in his capable hands if I asked him for guidance on where to start. He quickly recommended the novelization of Revenge of the Sith (arguably the best of the prequels). He also mentioned that the actress who voiced Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker’s padawan in the Rebels and Clone Wars animated series, narrated the Audible version of Ahsoka’s standalone novel, as well as a standalone novel about Padme Amidala’s early life as a senator. With that, and the knowledge of Carrie Fisher’s memoir sitting unfinished in my bookshelf, I was ready.
One month later and I can successfully say that I am still confused but equally excited about the prospects before me.
As I said, I’ve seen each of the mainstream Star Wars movies at least once, some more than once. With that in mind, there were some bits and pieces of each novel where the original trilogy or prequel films were alluded to in some way or another. Each time that happened, it felt like when the characters in the movie say the name of the movie, like “Ooooh! He said the the thing!”
- Star Wars: Queen’s Shadow by E.K. Johnston. This novel acted as an in-between of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Padme Amidala has ended her reign as queen of Naboo, and her successor has asked her to serve as Naboo’s senator in the Galactic Senate. She takes on the role, and learns the ropes of dealing with politics where, as the little boy from Tatooine would say, “the biggest problem in the universe is no one helps each other.” As wacky as it sounds, I sympathized with the story of this former royal striving to bring peace and equality to the galaxy when it seemed like even her close allies weren’t interested in helping her. People make fun of her traditional clothing, her inexperience, and everything you can think of to diminish her credibility, despite the fact that she was one of Naboo’s most beloved queens in history. She eventually finds her footing with the help of her handmaidens and the few allies she makes, chief among them being Senator Organa from Alderaan.
This novel is full of “Oop! She’s talking about Anakin! She’s gonna see him again in a few years and fall in love! Oop!” moments. It also left me balking at some of the dramatic irony. Knowing what becomes of Chancellor Palpatine and the senate as a whole, I remember scoffing and thinking, “Really, Padme? You’re gonna sit there and see all of this happen and it’s not gonna occur to you to think ‘Hm, I’m being opposed at every turn by the guy who I thought wanted to help me and the things I want are pretty moral things that most people with integrity would expect from modern society and he doesn’t want to help me maybe I should look into that’? You’re just gonna keep letting this slide?” The audacity of it all! She’s supposed to be brilliant!! How’d she not see this coming at all?
That said, this line stuck out to me, as another female senator provided SOME guidance to Padme on how to deal with offensive news articles:“The newsnets went after you because you were an easy story,” Bonteri said. “Which is not the same as an easy target, so don’t get all worked up.”
I wish I could send that to Billie Eilish, Adele, and every girl with a smidgen of TikTok fame. The novel leaves room for another (and maybe more than one) leading up to Attack of the Clones, and I kind of hope they write one! In the meantime, the prequel to this book about Padme’s rule as queen comes out tomorrow. I just might indulge! - Revenge of the Sith: Star Wars: Episode III by Matthew Stover. Revenge of the Sith was my favorite of the prequels, and it was the first Star Wars movie I saw in theatres (unless you count when I snuck in for the last ten minutes of Attack of the Clones, which my brother went to see with my dad while my mom and sister and I went to see another movie and our movie finished early and I wanted to bond with my dad so I went in to watch the rest of their movie… which I don’t).
Here’s some footage of eleven year old me watching the lightsaber battle between Anakin and Obi Wan on Mustafar:
“Environmental Science.” Community. NBC. 19 November 2009. Granted, I went in knowing what was going to happen as a result, but that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate it any less. If anything, this novel had bits and pieces that weren’t included in the film, like a scene with Count Dooku that really makes you think about his duel with Anakin and Obi Wan. The dramatic irony is strong in this one.
There were a lot of great quotes in this book, and I’ll bring up a few of them later, because they fit so well into what’s going on in the world right now. It’s been a shocking week, but I will get there. In the meantime, here’s a few quotes that stood out to me:“The adults have a sickening suspicion that Jedi cannot be trusted. Not anymore. That even the greatest of them can suddenly just … snap.”
“But for Anakin Skywalker, the completely impossible had an eerie way of being merely difficult.”“Anakin realizes that this isn’t actually an order. That it is, in fact, nothing more than what he’s been waiting for his whole life. Permission.”
Reading this, and thinking about my own personal struggles, I’m not gonna say I condone Anakin’s transformation, and what he does as a result of it, but if I were given all this power and all this dismissal of it and no one listens to me and everyone tells me what to do except for this one guy who ALWAYS listens to me and NEVER tells me what to do and then I get to be with the love of my life and the people I’m supposed to trust say I can never be with her and that if she dies that’s just life but then this ONE guy says if I channel the energy of this power I have that literally no one else has as strongly to save her life but only with his help can it happen but then those other guys are like hey you gotta kill that one guy… like… I get it.
- Star Wars: Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston. While reading these books, the Clone Wars television series came to an end. The Clone Wars television series was focused on (yep, you guessed it) the Clone Wars, from the perspective of Anakin, Obi Wan, and Anakin’s padawan, Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka Tano’s story took up the majority of the narration of those last few episodes (which are currently being lauded for their storytelling, animation, and more). She’s a fascinating character, and this novel details what happened to her after the finale and before Star Wars: Rebels, which takes place between the prequels and the original trilogy. I think. I never saw Rebels. After what’s happened this month I will probably watch Rebels.
There are a few detail discrepancies since this novel was released prior to this season of Clone Wars, but the overall gist is mostly the same. To me, there’s no glaringly obvious plot-holes. Ahsoka hides out on the planet Thabeska and the moon of Raada, eluding capture and a similar fate that her Jedi Alliance friends faced during Order 66. While in hiding, she plants seeds of resistance to the Empire, makes new friends with the planet (and moon) dwellers, and copes with her loss of Jedi friends, Clone colleagues, all while contemplating the fate of her Master, Anakin Skywalker. Again, plenty of dramatic irony. Having the voice actor of Ahsoka made listening to this Audible even more delightful! - The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher. Carrie Fisher had written plenty in her too-short time on this Earth, and this memoir focused on her life as the iconic Princess Leia. She reflects on her life prior to the movie, and shares the diary she kept while shooting Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The diaries mostly reflect on her affair and crush on Harrison Ford. He was married at the time, and they divorced not long after shooting, but nothing ever became of “Carrison,” as she calls it in the memoir. It isn’t lewd by any sense, and Carrie mostly just recalls how it started and how in love with him she was at the time. Reading through her diary entries, and thinking about how charming Han Solo is and how Harrison Ford, even now, in his late seventies, can get it, I totally understood her feelings for him at the time. I mean oof, that cool guy grin. THAT’S MY TYPE.
Bookending her reflection of her relationship with Harrison Ford, Carrie discusses what it was to be Princess Leia: not realizing at the time what would happen with this tiny space movie she shot at nineteen years old, being many a man’s first crush, and being forced to look at herself almost daily in a slaver’s bikini. She says that many young fans at Comic conventions didn’t recognize her as she aged, expecting her to be the young princess in person, and that many fully grown fans were disappointed that she wasn’t Slave Leia shape in her forties. Sometimes she struggled with people who couldn’t separate Leia from Carrie, and sometimes she struggled with that, too. Try as she might, which admittedly wasn’t super hard, she will always be Leia Organa Skywalker. More than that, she will be Carrie Fisher.
Carrie wrote this book not long before her untimely passing. Her daughter Billie is two years older than I am, and she was in the sequel films and played a scene-stealing Gigi in the coming-of-age movie Booksmart, which was one of my favorite movies from last year. I don’t think anyone could ever replace Carrie, and I genuinely think Billie will come into her own as an actress. That said, if Billie has half her mom’s talent, charm, and “take no prisoners” fearlessness, she will be just fine. In her time, Carrie was appreciated for her brutal honesty. All that said, I hope that if there’s an after life, I can meet her, thank her, and maybe share a laugh.
As I said, I had started her memoir when it came out a few years ago, but between moving around that time and mourning her, it was hard to pick up again. Today I did, and it took me maybe three hours to do so. No regrets. Here are a few quotes that stood out to me:When referencing her need to clear her mind through keeping a diary: “Better an empty house than an unhappy tenant.”From her diaries, when thinking about Harrison: “George says that if you look at the person someone chooses to have “a relationship” with, you’ll see what they think of themselves. So Harrison is what I think of myself.”
By the way, in this context, George = George Lucas, the creator of Star Warsvia GIPHY, from “Jasmine Masters handle your liquor”, posted October 28, 2015.
“My mind has a mind of its own. I try to define my limits by seeing just how far I can go, and I find that I passed them weeks ago.”
“I noticed right away that Harrison tended to quote philosophers when describing what he thought of the film. ‘As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,’ he might’ve said when asked if he thought success would change us. He also might’ve said ‘Give me a minute–I’ve only been successful for a few weeks.’ He might’ve said these things, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t.”
She also has a full diary entry where she laments her taste in men, and how she thinks she should just fall in love with chairs instead, which are at least consistent and sturdy. I won’t post the whole thing, but it brought an inner laugh.
I felt such enjoyment reading these books this month. I genuinely think I will return to Star Wars novels more than once in the rest of this year, they genuinely made me happy. They have symmetry, even if there’s so much I still don’t understand.
That said, in the past month but especially the past week, society has descended into madness. Earlier this month, people were protesting COVID-19 lock-downs with picket signs, few face masks, and machine gun rifles gently slung across many a protester’s shoulders, because they could. The government lamented and began decreasing restrictions, to many’s delight and many a frontline workers’ horror.
In the past two months, there has been a crazy strike in public hate crimes. Will Smith commented “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.” Two men were arrested for shooting a black man named Ahmaud Arbery while jogging. He was my age. Breonna Taylor was killed when police broke into her home and shot her when her partner picked up a gun to defend them from intruders (her partner was shot in the leg during this conflict).
Another woman’s life is effectively over because she was caught on film making a false emergency call to NYPD. Amy Cooper, an affluent white woman, was in Central Park with her dog in a section where dogs are required to be leashed. Her dog was not wearing a leash, and Christian Cooper (no relation), a black man who happened to be in the park birdwatching, told her she needed to leash the dog. Amy responded by saying she was going to call the police to tell them an African American man was threatening her. Christian filmed the interaction, which also featured Amy holding her dog not by leashing him, but by the collar, effectively strangling the crying dog for a few minutes. Amy Cooper has been fired from her job, and she surrendered her dog to the adoption agency from whence she got it pending an investigation. That was just last weekend.
In the past week, a video was released of a white police officer arresting a black man and kneeling on his neck for nine minutes, killing him. The man’s name was George Floyd, and it was initially printed that he was being investigated for a fraudulent check. It was later announced that he was accused of using a fake $20 bill. He hadn’t. Regardless, the cops were called, and he was killed by his arresting officer, Derek Chauvin. Chauvin has prior entries of aggression, even racially biased aggression, and within the week of Floyd’s death, he was taken into police custody. His wife has since filed for divorce. Many are considering the implications, given that the wife was in an abusive relationship before and that most women in abusive relationships tend to find themselves in multiple abusive relationships in their lifetime, having been used to the behavior. With that in your head, she waited until he was away from her to file for divorce. It just. It does make you wonder.
The streets are filled with protestors, calling for peace and justice. As people took to the streets, the president tweeted that he supports the police in question and encouraged officers to shoot the protestors. His tweet was removed by Twitter for violating their standards (and many have called for the company to delete his account entirely, as people get removed a lot quicker for a lot less). This weekend has seen cops throwing tear gas, shoving protestors, shooting bullets at protestors, driving police cars into protestors, calling ICE to deport any illegal immigrants at protests, and bringing in children in riot gear as shields.
This is my world right now. I can’t gif that.
As I read through tweet after tweet of anger, flipped through countless Instagram stories about protests and unnecessary race-based murders, all of which are certain to continue, my blood boils and my heart breaks. I don’t really like talking about this for a myriad of reasons, but this is the best way to condense them:
1 – I am a white woman, with an affluent upbringing and no true influence (YET). My words are mostly meaningless and you know what, I don’t think white people should be explaining racism. I genuinely don’t think that’s my place.
2 – Retweeting “SPREAD LOVE, GET JUSTICE! :random emoji” is useless to me. Oh wow, she hates crime and wants everyone to get along, so she posts a social media status about it? How special she is!
It’s armchair activism and it does nothing. I’ll sign petitions and donate what I can quietly. The rest feels performative. And again, *I* know that I support the cause. Maybe if I had 15 million Twitter followers or a high Youtube subscriber count, I’d feel more of an urge to make more of a public statement, knowing that what I said could inform people who don’t fully understand what’s happening here. For now, I’m just part of a millions-large Twitter mob that’s angry. Everything above what I do in the privacy of my own brain feels like a “LOOK AT ME!” show.
This week I watched as police officers assaulted its people, only to then turn on the Ahsoka Audible book and listen to the sounds of Stormtroopers murder citizens of Raada for the slightest dissent. There are so many riots and protests across America right now. Businesses are being looted and people are being assaulted in the streets. Buildings are on fire.
I write this now not as the performative activism I mentioned earlier, but for the same reasons I’ve reflected on Coronavirus in the past few months. Documenting so I never forget.
Assuming things lighten up in terms of the Coronavirus in the next few months, we will have an election to choose whether or not our current president gets a second term. I was convinced that he would get a second term, because the people who want him out don’t want the current frontrunner/ probable candidate for the opposing party to be president either.
Just in the past week alone, I think those who weren’t in his favor are singing a different tune.
These quotes from Revenge of the Sith have truly stood out to me in the past two weeks:
A Senator might carefully construct a reputation, appearing to all the galaxy as honest and upright and honorable, all the while holding the rotten truth of himself so absolutely secret that no one would sense his evil until he had so much power that it was too late to stop him … It was possible.
The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.
It comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compassion, not greed.
Love is the answer to the darkness.
To those directly impacted by all of this, and those who have joined them in arms in any way… may the force be with you.