I started 2019 telling myself this would be “The Year of the Classics.” Despite focusing on writing and literature for the entirety of my adult life, I am woefully unread in “the classics.” This year seemed as good as any to fix that.
I started strong. The Grapes of Wrath, which I loved, led me to read a bunch of Steinbeck in the first couple of months. I followed those with some Tolstoy, which I also loved, then a few others.
But about halfway through the year, I got my annual hankering to read a science-fiction series, and I abandoned my “Year of the Classics” goal. I guess I’m okay with that.
In September, I started working with a student on how to write and illustrate a graphic novel. Since I’d never done either, I threw myself into the world of graphic novels to get a sense of things. I also had the opportunity to take the student to a talk given by an award-winning graphic novelist, which helped cement my interest in the genre.
In December, I got caught up in the excitement of the final STAR WARS movie (in the Palpatine Saga, anyway) and read a bunch of STAR WARS books and comic books…like, a lot. Again, I’m okay with that.
I set a goal in January 2019 to read 25 books this year. Thanks to those graphic novels, which I often read in about an hour, and comic books, which I often read in 10-20 minutes, I was able to exceed the mark.
Anyway, without further ado, here are the books I read in 2019 in the order I finished them.
January
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
468 pages, published 1939
What is there say about The Grapes of Wrath? I picked it up because I listened to Bruce Springsteen’s classic, “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” and I realized (not for the first time) that I didn’t know the story of Tom Joad.
I wasn’t disappointed. When I wasn’t reading this book, I was thinking about it, and after it was over, I just wanted to go back and spend more time with Joads (hence the next book on this list).
What’s sad is how timely this book about the Great Depression still felt in 2019.
Working Days: The Journals of the The Grapes of Wrath,
by John Steinbeck
240 pages, published 1990
“Here is the diary of a book and it will be interesting to see how it works out.”
I’m a sucker for these books. One of my favorites of all time is The Journal of a Novel, which came from a collection of entries Steinbeck wrote on the left-hand pages of his manuscript booklet for East of Eden, little warm-up letters he wrote to his editor before embarking on the work for the day.
This book, Working Days, is a little different. The entries are taken from a handwritten journal he kept as he worked on Grapes of Wrath. In the introduction, the editor quotes a note Steinbeck wrote to his publisher on the rediscovery of the journal in 1958: “Very many times I have been tempted to destroy this book. It is an account very personal and in many instances purposely obscure. But recently I reread it and only after all this time did the unconscious pattern emerge… I had not realized that so much happened during the short period of the actual writing of The Grapes of Wrath—things that happened to me and to you and to the world.”
During the time period of the novel, Steinbeck is dealing with relatively newfound fame, thanks to the success of Of Mice & Men, and he complains of people coming to him wanting money or to just “watch me.” He’s “tired of the struggle against all the forces that this miserable success has brought against me.”
Steinbeck starts the journal in June, 1938. His last entry (in this collection) is on October 26, 1938. Suffering from the flu, he complains of struggling to write and of being ill on the day he aims to finish the book. The last line, written after the day’s work, is “Finished this day — and I hope to God it’s good.”
Five fucking months. In five fucking months, he was able to write The Grapes of Wrath, (arguably) the best American book of all time. The feat is unbelievable.
But in Working Days, you get to see how he did it. Complaining, doubting, sick, depressed, with dinner parties, house guests, spousal arguments, moving from one house to another, and more of the banality of life, and through all of it, sitting down, putting one word after another, until “Finished this day — and I hope to God it’s good.”
One last quote from Steinbeck: “The trouble with being too casual about a manuscript is that you don’t do it. In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.”
Ain’t that the truth.
February
East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
602 pages, published 1952
Journal of a Novel may be one of my favorite books of all time, but with it came a dark secret: I’d never read the novel, just the journal. I’m generally prejudiced against the classics thanks to my anti-authoritarian bent in middle and high school, and I’m doubly prejudiced against early-to-mid 20th century American novels thanks to my postmodernist bent in college.
But after reading and loving The Grapes of Wrath, I no longer had an excuse to ignore Steinbeck.
East of Eden thrilled me. I couldn’t get enough of the language, the imagery, or the characters. I went to bed each night excited to spend time in Steinbeck’s world. With this book, he cemented himself as one of my favorite writers of all time.
It also has one of my favorite lines: “They say it’s a dangerous thing to question an Irishman because he’ll tell you.”
The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
86 pages, published 1886
I chose this book because of its page count. East of Eden weighs in at 600 pages, and I wanted my next reading experience to soar.
Eleven months after reading The Death of Ivan Ilych, I can tell you I loved it, and I can point to my five-star rating on Goodreads.com as evidence. But now, eleven months later, that’s about all I can tell you. I barely remember the characters, the plot, or even the theme. I have some of the images stuck in my head, and I have the certainty that I loved the book, but that’s about it.
This is why I should write reviews of these books immediately after I finish reading them and not eleven months later.
Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
368 pages, published 1985
My wife tried to get me to read this book for at least 12 years, and though I’ve loved every Marquez book I’ve read, something about this one — the title, I suppose — prevented me from picking it up.
Boy, was I an idiot.
This book is possibly the best love story ever written, in that it examines virtually every facet of the concept of love, and it does so in empathetic, nonjudgemental, and heart-provoking ways. All of the characters are as lush and vibrant as the land where they live, and you get to experience them as both young and old people, and everything in between.
Plus, it’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so not only is the plot at once both simple and convoluted and not only are the characters at once both comedic and tragic, but there’s also the joy of the language, which is at once both poetic and vulgar, sharing its linguistic space with both the mother and the whore.
March
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
138 pages, published 1899
This classic novella follows a young woman as she comes to understand her power as an individual and the limits placed on that power by her society’s expectations of women.
Over the course of the story, she experiences a series of epiphanies about femininity and motherhood, leading her to escape from her middle-class life in favor of her individuality and passions. She allows her feelings to be seduced by a younger man, and channels her passion into painting. She ends up abandoning her family, moving into her own apartment, and declaring herself independent.
Things happen and, in the last few pages, we witness one of the grandest endings in literature, one we question at the same time as we understand.
I highly recommend this book.
April
Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
285 pages, published 1969
I’d read Slaughterhouse Five before, but after reading Kate Chopin’s beautiful but very-much 19th-century prose, I needed to read someone with a 20th-century wit and an economical writing style. Nobody provides as much wit in as few words as Mr. Vonnegut.
I won’t go into much detail on this anti-war classic. Slaughterhouse Five is perennially listed in the top 100 books of all time, and it earns its slot with both pathos and humor. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up.
But first, a passage I love:
They were brought at last to a stone cottage at a fork in the road. It was a collecting point for prisoners of war. Billy and Weary were taken inside, where it was warm and smoky. There was a fire sizzling and popping in the fireplace. The fuel was furniture. There were about twenty other Americans in there, sitting on the floor with their backs to the wall, staring into the flames—thinking whatever there was to think, which was zero. Nobody talked. Nobody had any good war stories to tell.
May
Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin
945 pages, published 2005
Though too young to be considered a true classic, Team of Rivals ought to be considered a “new” classic, at least in the realm of historical nonfiction. Goodwin’s conceit for examining the life and times of Abraham Lincoln is to focus her research on the four men who could have been nominated as the Republican candidate for President in 1860.
Lincoln (obviously) won the nomination and eventually the Presidency and the Civil War that resulted from his win, but Goodwin centers her story on the way Lincoln balanced the competing interests, personalities, and opinions of his opponents, bringing them together in his cabinet for the good of the Union.
Goodwin conveys the emotions, motivations, and peccadillos of her historic characters using primary sources and an illustrative language, reaching for both accuracy and poetry and allowing Lincoln, Seward, and all the others to come to life.
Additionally, reading this in the age of President Trump and the feckless GOP that has grown to enable him and other charlatans like him, I couldn’t help but be moved by the words and ideals of President Lincoln and other statesmen like him. This book shows just how far the GOP has fallen.
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
610 pages, published 1952
This 20th century classic did not disappoint. Ellison’s command of the English language and his ability to channel rage, humor, and tragedy all at the same time, while also developing a nontraditional coming-of-age story grabbed my attention and my heart in ways I did not expect.
As a suburban-raised, rural-living, overeducated, white, middle-aged man, I found Ellison’s depiction of “the Black experience” to be harrowing, surreal, tragic, compulsory, and right on the money.
Many of the passages in the novel made me think of our nation’s current and continuous struggle with its systemic racism, but two struck me the most.
The first recalled the protests of Colin Kaepernick, who helped inspire dozens of professional athletes to take a knee during the playing of the national anthem because he “would not stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
In Invisible Man, the main character is approached by another who says he thinks their pseudo-communist movement, which goes by the name the Brotherhood, needs a flag because a flag “makes people stop, look, and listen,” and the man complains of not having a true flag, one that’s as much his as it is anybody else’s. The narrator sympathizes:
…There was always that sense in me of being apart when the flag went by. It had been a reminder…that my star was not yet there …
The second, short and to the point, recalls what, unfortunately, remains a horrible reality in our country:
His name was Clifton and he was black and they shot him. Isn’t that enough to tell? Isn’t it all you need to know?
June
Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges
174 pages, published 1944
Written by my favorite short-story writer of all time, Ficciones collects some of Borges’ best tales, including:
- “Funes, the Memorious,” about a man whose “perception and memory were infallible”
- “Three Versions of Judas,” about an heretical theologian who dedicates his career to rethinking the value of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal in the economy of the Redemption
- “The Secret Miracle,” about a Jewish man put to death by firing squad by the Gestapo, and of the secret miracle that occurs “between the command to fire and its execution”
And more.
Borges’ stories exist in a realm where gauchos, priests, librarians, murderers, con men, secret sects, musicians, poets, and more all reside in a mysterious, wonder-filled, crime-ridden, love-ridden, passion driven world. Each story opens a doorway to a literary possibility, decorated in a poly-linguistic manner, and inspired by the folk tales, detective mysteries, and romances of low and high culture alike.
Each one dazzles with its conceit, and each one delivers in its own, unique way.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin
427 pages, published 2010
Last year, I discovered the work of N.K. Jemisin (she’d already been a NY Times bestseller before I “discovered” her), and loved it. As the school year wrapped up in June, I decided to abandon “The Year of the Classics” and pick up another fantasy series by this powerful author.
This first book of The Inheritance Trilogy introduces a reality where the gods and godlings are very real and very involved; in fact, in this first book, most of them are enslaved.
I don’t want to say more because it’s a fantastic trilogy, and I highly recommend it. I will say that Jemisin creates a fantastic cosmogony for this world, reimagining the experience of living in a world of wild gods.
July
The Broken Kingdoms, by N.K. Jemisin
417 pages, published 2010
The second book in The Inheritance Trilogy, The Broken Kingdoms, is even better than the first. Picking up ten years after the first book, The Broken Kingdoms introduces a new main character while giving the reader the continuation they desire from the first book.
It also flips a lot of the mythology from the first book on its head, making “the truth” of Jemisin’s fictional world much more complex and “real.”
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, by Scott McCloud
215 pages, published 1993
The school where I teach runs a summer program during the month of July. For the most part, we run it like a summer camp. There’s a lot of days at the lake, or spent hiking, or maintaining a garden, or swimming in a river, etc., but some students also want to work on their personal projects during the month. One of the latter decided that, this year, he would finally write and illustrate the graphic novel he’d been planning for the past couple of years.
As one of his mentors, I took it upon myself to bone up on the art form. I started with this classic work of nonfiction from Scott McCloud. Written almost like a thesis paper, Understanding Comics attempts to capture not only the entire history of the medium, but also to point out how the medium works, how it accomplishes its goals in ways that are unique to the comic — apart from straight prose, straight illustration, and even apart from cinema.
The Kingdom of the Gods, by N.K. Jemisin
577 pages, published 2011
The final book in the trilogy, The Kingdom of the Gods takes the story to its inevitable conclusion. Now the story focuses on one of the little known gods from the previous two books, one who appeared and entertained, but who revealed little of his true power.
A fitting end to a fantastic series. Again, I highly recommend it.
August
The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin
400 pages, published 2008
First recommended by a friend of mine who lives in China, The Three-Body Problem is a fantastic work of hard sci-fi. Its author, a former engineer, uses his knowledge of science and math to ask real questions about the nature of the universe and the role of life within it.
I didn’t know it when I started it, but The Three-Body Problem is the first book in another trilogy, which pleased me to no end. The trilogy is called Remembrance of Earth’s Past, and this first book just sets the table for the heavy meditations that are to come.
Long story short, if you have any curiosity about life, the universe, and everything, you’ll want to give this one a read.
Radio Free Vermont, by Bill McKibben
224 pages, published 2017
You might have heard, but last year, I self-published a novel about the secession of Vermont from the United States. Well, it turns out I’m not the only person writing novels on the subject. Vermont’s very own Bill McKibben, one of our nation’s undisputed leaders on climate change, put on his fiction-writing cap to pen this fun romp of a tale.
Radio Free Vermont is everything my book is not. It is fast paced, tightly plotted, and grounded in reality. Its characters are quirky but relatable, and the way McKibben takes his secession story from here to there is both hopeful and fun. More than anything else, it called to mind the fiction writing of Jimmy Buffett, especially his debut novel, Where is Joe Merchant?
If you happened to be one of the 30+ people who purchased my book, you might want to check out Radio Free Vermont. It’ll probably be a secession tale you actually want to finish.
The Dark Forest, by Cixin Liu
513 pages, published 2008
This is the second book in Liu’s trilogy, Remembrance of Earth’s Past. Trying to explain the full plot of this one would be incredibly difficult, but the short version is that the world has been given a multigenerational countdown, and at the end of the countdown, an alien civilization will arrive intent on destroying us. In the meantime, the civilization will have pseudo-omnipresence among us thanks to its advanced technology, which means we are unable to develop new technologies to defend ourselves. The only place safe from their interference is the human mind.
To help save the world, the nations grant four men virtually infinite resources to come up with four different strategies to save us. This book follows one of those men, a completely unknown astronomer and sociologist who has no idea why he was selected.
What quickly becomes clear, however, is that he is the one the alien civilization most fears. Hard-sci-fi hijinks ensue.
A quick note: The first and third book in the trilogy were translated into English by Ken Liu, an award-winning author in his own right (and, I just discovered, the author of a bona-fide STAR WARS book!). This second book, however, was translated by someone else. The first and third books are clearly the better translated ones, which makes this second book a little harder to read. Don’t let that stop you from picking it up.
Death’s End, by Cixin Liu
608 pages, published 2010
The final book in the trilogy, Death’s End brings the story right up the end mentioned the title, revealing just how mind-blowing in scope Liu’s trilogy actually is.
This book pushes everything from the first and second book further and farther than I hoped to imagine. It provides new (to me) science-fiction technologies and attempts to explain (in understandable terms) how they might actually have come to be.
If you read the first two, there’s nothing on Earth that will stop you from reading the final one.
September
Fall, or, Dodge in Hell, by Neal Stephenson
892 pages, published 2019
Fall is a pseudo-sequel to Stephenson’s previous novel, REAMDE, and another in the list of his novels that includes characters first introduced in his novel Cryptonomicon and his trilogy, The Baroque Cycle. With that being said, you don’t have to read any of those previous books to enjoy Fall.
What you do need is an ability to accept a reality where video games, artificial intelligence, and the quest for immortality all run in parallel.
As with all Stephenson novels, you have to be willing to indulge the author’s desire to explore the social, political, and scientific ramifications of contemporary thought. Stephenson’s knowledge base is vast, and his ability to visualize the probabilities and potentialities of the near future is second to none in American literature. Unfortunately for some (but no longer for me), he is also one of the most verbose motherfuckers on the planet, telling in 900 pages a tale that probably could have been told just as well in 400 pages.
Personally, I’ve grown to appreciate Stephenson’s flights of fancy. There’s a whole section in this novel that imagines a United States basically at civil war with itself, but nothing in that section is technically required by the overall plot. It’s just a well-developed, and scarily probable, detail that Stephenson indulges for twenty or third pages before (basically) leaving it behind. Like so much in Stephenson’s novels, it wasn’t necessary, but I do enjoy it.
Also, for that reason (plus, with school starting up full time), Fall was the only novel I read in September.
October: A Graphic Novel Onslaught
As I mentioned above, I spent a bunch of weeks devouring graphic novels to help prepare myself for mentoring a student in the creation of his own graphic novel. October was when I got moving on that.
Berlin, by Jason Lutes
580 pages, published 2018
This graphic novel explores Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Hitler has not come to power yet, those his brownshirts are a force to be reckoned with.
A young woman, refusing to be married off by her father, comes to Berlin to pursue her art degree. She meets a seasoned journalist who has lived in the city his entire life. Over the course of the book, we’ll follow both of these characters, as well as several others, as Lutes reimagines the vibrant but difficult lives taking place in Berlin between the years of 1928 and 1933.
Famously, Lutes took twenty years to complete this undisputed masterpiece. I was lucky enough to take my student to a lecture he gave a couple of towns over, and he was as down to earth and as gracious as a person can be. He teaches full time at the Center for Cartoon Studies, which just happens to be located in Vermont, and I’m hoping to steer my student in his direction.
Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe
240 pages, published 2019
A graphic memoir, Gender Queer tells the story of a person who was assigned female at birth but now no longer considers eirself either of the traditional genders. Neither male nor female, neither gay nor straight, the main character conveys all of the confusion and complexity one must experience on the journey to self-discovery.
I particularly enjoyed having this book on my coffee table for my seven-year-old daughter to discover. She’s a huge fan of graphic novels, so part of the motivating factor behind buying and reading all of these books is to build a little library of challenging graphic novels that she might one day be inspired to read.
Gender Queer is not shy in its depiction of its topic. There are close up drawings of pap smears, gay erotica, the human body in all of its forms, and so much more. When my daughter found it, I didn’t dissuade her from opening it up and paging through it, and when she had questions about what she found, we talked at length about the notions of gender and sexuality. I didn’t let her read the book, because many of the sections and themes are way too mature for her, but I liked having it around and engaging in the conversations it engendered.
Here, by Richard McGuire
304 pages, published 2014
As a reader, I tend towards those books that attempt to push the boundaries of a genre (in fact, genre boundaries were the topic of my grad-school thesis; here’s the short version). When I turned to the graphic novel, one of the first groups I went looking for were those books that challenged the genre, that pushed it to and possibly beyond its natural limit.
Somehow, and I don’t remember how, I found my way to Here. Illustrated by Richard McGuire, this graphic novel imagines everything that happened, is happening, or could happen in a single geographic location on planet Earth. The novel is not a novel, per se. While a drama unfolds, there is no recognizable narrative for the reader to follow.
It’s a book that has to be experienced to be believed.
The Park Bench, by Chabouté
336 pages, published 2012
Here led me to The Park Bench, which uses the same conceit of focusing the camera on a single location and letting the world come to it. More narratively contained than Here, The Park Bench, while not having a single plot, does include recurring characters whose lives are affected by the goings-on at the park bench. The result is a book that is more fun to read than Here, but less grand in scope.
Roughneck, by Jeff Lemire
272 pages, published 2017
Back in the early 2010s, a comedy entitled Goon came out. The story focused on the kind-hearted but gifted enforcer of a minor league hockey team. Roughneck imagines a similar tale, except the main character isn’t kind hearted and the story contains the darker elements that come from rural living: drugs, alcoholism, abuse, racism, and trauma.
This is a relatively heavy read, with an illustrative style that captures the roughneck life of its characters.
Castle Waiting, Volume 1, by Linda Medley
457 pages, published 2006
The story is Sleeping Beauty. Prince Charming arrives, moves through the frozen castle, finds his princess, kisses her, and both she and the rest of the castle staff magically awake. Then the princess jumps on the back of Prince Charming’s horse and off they ride, happily ever after.
But what about all the people and creatures who’ve been asleep in the castle for the past hundred or so years? Well, Castle Waiting is what.
Written and illustrated with the simply joy of a fairy tale, Castle Waiting introduces memorable characters, charming plot devices, and intriguing world building details. A delight of a read.
Ghosts, by Raina Telgemeir
256 pages, published 2016
Raina Telgemeir is a wonderful author of almost half a dozen modern classics. Her books depict the confusion, fear, and emotional complexity of the pre-teen years. Her protagonists are often lonely or left out, suffering from some kind of severe anxiety, or dealing with some physical limitation.
In Ghosts, the main character and her family have recently moved to a spooky seaside village where the ghosts are not only real, but welcomed. Unfortunately, she’s having none of it, and she’s especially anxious about her little sister, who suffers from cystic fibrosis and who needs the seaside air to survive.
Thankfully, my daughter shares my love of Telgemeir, so we’ve been able to enjoy these books together.
The Son of Hitler, by Anthony Del Cole
192 pages, published 2018
A piece of alternative history that uses the real-life rumor of Adolph Hitler’s son as its major conceit, this graphic novel falls into the same category as Tarantino’s film, Inglourious Basterds, i.e., violent revenge porn.
Hitler’s son has been living as a troubled youth and an apprentice baker when Allied agents reveal who he really is and how he came to be. Then they ask him to do what he’s always wanted to: find and kill his father.
There’s a twist about three-quarters of the way through the novel, which I thought added a nice little touch. If you liked Inglourious Basterds, you’ll like this one.
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation, by Sid Jacobson & Ernie Colón
117 pages, published 2006
By this point in the month of October, I’d dropped over $50 on graphic novels, all of which I finished reading in about an hour, and my wife, thankfully, put the kibosh on me purchasing anymore. I ended up having to satisfy my craving using our local library.
Most of our library’s graphic novels are superhero based (plus The Walking Dead), so by the time I got to the 9/11 Report, it was slim pickings.
I gave it a read anyway. If you don’t have a clear understanding of what actually transpired on 9/11, I highly recommend it. The authors did a great job of condensing the report to a manageable presentation of the information. The book isn’t an attempt to criticize or refute the report, or to explore the sociology and politics around it. It’s just a clear presentation of what the report says happened that day.
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
400 pages, published 2003
Written by the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, this first book in the MaddAdam trilogy depicts the end of civilization as told by one of the individuals responsible for its loss. It’s a frightening vision of the end of the world, one lost to a bioengineered plague released into the wild by a terrorist. As the story takes place, the narrator believes he may be the only human alive on the planet, and it’s his duty to care for the Children of Crake, a genetically engineered species designed to replace us.
As with most of the Atwood novels I’ve read, Oryx and Crake is both engaging and boring at the same time. Atwood’s overall pictures are wonderful and her details are rich and insightful, but the act of reading her books leaves me somewhat cold.
I read Oryx and Crake while devouring all of the graphic novels this October, and I think if I had not had those other books to distract me, I would have put this one down before the end.
November
The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood
529 pages, published 2009
Despite being left somewhat cold by the previous book, I still felt curious about the world of Oryx and Crake, so despite not really wanting to, I still picked up the second book in the MaddAdam trilogy.
In The Year of the Flood, Atwood gives the reader a new perspective on the end of the world, now telling the story from the point of view of people who had no real hand in making it happen. Instead, we see it from the perspective of God’s Gardners, a religious cult with its own leader, calendar, feast days, saints and martyrs, and more.
I enjoyed this sequel much more than I enjoyed the original. The main characters were more engrossing, and I enjoyed getting a female perspective rather than the male perspective in the first book. If you read the first book, reading this one is a no brainer.
STAR WARS: Resistance Reborn, by Rebecca Roanhorse
304 pages, published 2019
Taking place after The Last Jedi and before The Rise of Skywalker, this book demonstrates how the Resistance to the First Order begins to rebuild in the wake of the tragedy on Crait, where the First Order had decimated the Resistance to just those people who could fit on the Millennium Falcon.
I purchased and read this book while visiting family for Thanksgiving. It marked the beginning of a full two months (and counting) of STAR WARS devotion.
Resistance Reborn brings together most of the disparate characters from the previous novels, giving a sense of how the still-wounded Resistance is ready to go on the offensive in The Rise of Skywalker.
STAR WARS: Thrawn, by Timothy Zahn
449 pages, published 2017
Once I devoured Resistance Reborn, my STAR WARS reading adventure was off and running. Back in 1991, Timothy Zahn wrote the first official book to follow the original STAR WARS movies, kicking off the Expanded Universe. Titled The Heir to the Empire, the book began a trilogy that fit in perfectly with the movies and, had they been filmed, would have taken the galaxy in a completely different direction than what we saw in The Force Awakens.
But once Disney bought LucasArts, they exiled the Expanded Universe from the official timeline, relegating its stories to non-canonical “Legends” in order to give themselves a blank slate from which to build the Disney version of the STAR WARS galaxy.
Some “Legends” characters refused to remain in exile, however, and the entire STAR WARS fandom reacted with joy when The Heir to the Empire‘s incredible bad-ass, Grand Admiral Thrawn, joined the canon in the third season of the animated STAR WARS show, Rebels.
With Thrawn back in the fold, LucasArts commissioned Zahn to bring the rest of Thrawn’s story into canon, and with this first book, we get to see how a young-ish Thrawn first joined the Empire and how he rose to Grand Admiral status.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable book — one of my favorites of all the STAR WARS books. If you’re a STAR WARS geek like me, this trilogy is a must-read.
December
STAR WARS: Thrawn: Alliances, by Timothy Zahn
320 pages, published 2018
The second book in the Thrawn trilogy, Alliances focuses on two missions where Thrawn had to first, ally with Anakin Skywalker, and second, ally with Darth Vader. As a member of the Empire, Thrawn has become one of the Emperor’s favorites, stoking some jealousy in Darth Vader. When the Emperor forces them to work together to solve a problem, we learn that the two had met before, when Anakin was a Jedi knight in the Galactic Republic and Thrawn was a spy sent by his undiscovered species to uncover the secrets of the known galaxy. We also learn that Thrawn is one of the few people in the galaxy who knows who Vader really is.
This was a fun book where the narration explores the similarities and differences between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader, further developing our understanding of how Anakin fell to the dark side.
STAR WARS: Thrawn: Treason, by Timothy Zahn
320 pages, published 2019
The final book in the trilogy, Treason, puts Thrawn in the middle of a difficult choice: fealty to the Empire or loyalty to his home world. We finally get to see other members of Thrawn’s species, and we learn how the Force is used outside of the mythologies/philosophies/religions of the Jedi and the Sith. We also see Thrawn and the rest of his species engage their starships in light-speed skipping, a technique that wouldn’t appear in the movies until Poe Dameron used it in the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker.
I enjoyed this book, but less than the other two. The trilogy does not develop a single story arc over the course of the books, but three separate experiences from Thrawn’s life. I haven’t seen Season 3 of Rebels yet, which is where Thrawn’s story will basically come to an end (so far), but I do look forward to it. Thrawn really is one of STAR WARS’ best characters.
STAR WARS: Force Collector, by Kevin Shinick
400 pages, published 2019
Set just before The Force Awakens, this story follows a boy and his newfound friend, the daughter of a First Order officer, as they travel around the galaxy looking for items that may have once been touched by the Jedi. The quest connects to various moments in the STAR WARS stories, including elements related to the Clone Wars, Vader’s Inquisitors, the First Order, and Order 66.
This is definitely a young adult novel, and I actually listened to the audiobook more than I read it. It’s definitely not required reading, but I did enjoy the story.
Along with the STAR WARS novels that I read in December, I subscribed to Marvel’s service, MARVEL UNLIMITED, which gives you access to a large variety of Marvel comics for a monthly subscription. I signed up for the first month (first 7 days free), and while I was in Chicago with my in-laws for Christmas break, I devoured a bunch of series of the STAR WARS comics, including:
- Dawn of the Jedi, issues #1 and #2
- Darth Maul, issues #1 through #5
- Darth Maul, Son of Dathomir, issues #1 through #4
- Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, issues #1 through #25
- Princess Leia, issues #1 through #5
- Star Wars, issues #1 through #21
- Darth Vader, issues #1 through #23
- Darth Vader, Dark Visions, issues #1 through #5
- Captain Phasma, issues #1 through #4
I loved most of the issues, but the Vader-focused ones were definitely my favorite, especially Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, which picks up right where Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ends. The first issue has the Emperor telling Vader that a Sith does not make a lightsaber, but takes it, and then bends it to his will. As the Emperor says, “A red saber is no different than any other, except…it has been made to bleed. Through the dark side, you must pour your pain into the crystal, and when, at last the agony becomes more than it can stand…a beautiful crimson…the color of your rage.”
I planned on keeping my subscription just for the two weeks we were on winter break, but I’m enjoying the comics so much that I’ve decided to keep the subscription for a little while longer. Who’d a thunk it would have taken me 42 years to become a bona fide comics nerd?
City of Orphans, by Avi
370 pages, published 2000
I read this young-adult novel with one of my students, a twelve year old who is working on his ability to summarize texts in a clear and concise manner.
The novel focuses on a young newsie in New York City in 1893 whose sister has been falsely accused of stealing a gold watch from a guest at the Waldorf Hotel. It’s a simple romp/detective story, but the author, Avi, did a good job of researching the time period, so the reader gets a decent sense of what life must have been like for a poor urban kid at the end of the 19th century.
If you’re ten to twelve years old, this is a good one for you.
New Year’s Resolution
So those were them: the books I read in 2019.
I started writing this post before Christmas, and I worked on it off and on between then and now (the middle of January). Outside of laziness and other responsibilities, one of the reasons it took so long is because…well, I read a lot of books this year: 20 more than I originally intended, in fact.
As we move into 2020, I’d like to be a little more diligent and write short reviews of each book as I finish them. I’ve set a goal for 30 books this year, so hopefully, I’ll write at least 30 reviews before the year is out.
Looking back on the books I read, I’m somewhat disappointed that I didn’t make it a “Year of the Classics,” as I intended, but I’m psyched that I got to read a bunch of graphic novels and go deep into the world of STAR WARS.
Let’s see what 2020 brings.