[Books] November 2021 Reads

Despite the great progress I made in October and me still being ahead of pace to hit my end-of-year reading goal, I rather fell behind on my reading this November. I didn't quite read the equivalent of one book a day and I can only attribute my delays to things at work and other sources of stress. And in the middle of a pandemic, it's not like we're ever in short supply for things to worry about.

But hey, reading is ultimately an activity meant to help us relax or even escape our troubles for a while. As "competitive" as I can get when it comes to my reading goals, I also don't want to force myself to read just for the sake of " numbers". I love reading for the sake of reading and I know I'll end my reading year pretty well despite all this.

[Books] September 2021 Reads

 I thought that I had read a lot more books last month, but when I sat down to do my tally, it seems that wasn't quite the case. Don't get me wrong - I'm still way ahead of my end-of-year reading goal. But it seems that August was even more productive than September for some reason. Go figure.

So let's dive into my summary of all the different titles I managed to consume cover over the course of the last month. 

[Books] April 2021 Reads

April was not a great month for reading for me. As much as I read a lot of interesting things, my overall number of titles read in the month wasn't just lower than previous months, but it was also below the a-book-a-day pace I need to keep up with my end of year reading goal.

But these things happen. Work was pretty busy, so that's a big "barrier" to extra reading. but perhaps my decision to finally read Haruki Murakami's Killing Commentadore may have played a larger role as well. Allow me to explain once I've gone over the numbers.

[Books] March 2021 Reads

March was a bit of a mixed bag for reading, and my decision to invest time in reading a longer Haruki Murakami novel this month means that I had to lean heavily on comic books to make up my numbers. I'm glad that I still managed to keep apace, but I also feel like I cheated a bit since my reading included a few single-issue stories.

But hey, when it comes to competitive reading and a one-book-a-day reading goal, you also have to read smarter at times to balance our more enthusiastic reading, if you get my drift.

[Books] December 2020 Reads

And now we get to the end of 2020 and the last few titles that made up my reading for the year. I didn't just hit my one-book-day reading goal, but actually managed to cover a total of 388 titles, which is sort of a new record for me. 

I guess the quarantine has had some geeky benefits for me. But let's focus on just December and see how things panned out.

[Books] May 2020 Reads

May 2020 was one of my worst months for reading this year. But I guess it makes sense, as this was well within the lockdown period and I know I was feeling pretty frustrated with how things were going in the country.

But that's not what this blog is about.

This one's going to be short, but there's still stuff to talk about for the month.

[Books] January 2020 Reads

I wanted to start 2020 right, and thus I tried to balance "smarter" reading choices so I wouldn't feel so pressured at the end of the year to read for quantity instead of just enjoyment. That meant making sure to cover a good mix of quick titles amid the more complex ones in order to set a good pace for the year.

I finished the month with 28 titles, just short of 31 titles had I covered a full book a day. It's not terrible, considering this broke down into 2 Star Wars novels, 14 comic book volumes and a whopping 12 audiobooks.

My efforts to finish up my Legends period books with the 9 different Fate of the Jedi titles took up the bulk of my book-based efforts, so the title I really wanted to highlight for this month is MIND MGMT, which I finally covered in a fairly speedy amount of time. It's an amazing series about psychic espionage agents with amazing abilities. There are so many different layers to this story (both in terms of the narrative and its imagery) that I know that I'll need to re-read this series a few times to fully understand all the possible nuances to this tale. This is a serious must-read and we'd all be better for it.

On the audiobook front, I covered a mix of self-help books on finance and leadership along with fluffier Classic Doctor Who audio dramas. I hope your reading for the year is off to a great start as well.

[Books] November 2019 Reads

As of the time of this blog post, I'm still 7 books behind target in order to achieve my reading goal of 365 books for the year. November has been a sort of slow month in terms of completion and no single franchise really defined my reading activities for the period. It's a slow crawl to catch up, but I remain optimistic that I'll get there eventually.

Here are last month's numbers:

[Books] Star Wars: Death Star Review

Rogue One is a great movie that tells the story of how the Rebel Alliance got their hands on the plans of the Death Star and how that battlestation got its fatal flaw. But that's the new canon continuity and not at all what the older Expanded Universe books had crafted as an explanation for the details of the Death Star's creation.

Enter Star Wars: Death Star, which is a Legends book that had come out towards the tail end of the old Expanded Universe and tried to explain some of the stories of the Death Star, but with an unusual focus on the people who were actually on the battlestation that is definitely not a moon.

I only read this book recently after it had spent years in its original plastic while sitting on the shelf. Heck, it sat on two different shelves since I had purchased it before we moved condos - such is the fate of many of my physical books in this digital era of the Kindle and other ereaders.

It was quirky but not that bad. In other words, it's a classic Legends book.

[Videos] Spacedock on the Clone Wars

So Spacedock, one of my favorite YouTube channels for geeking out over the technology of science fiction, has recently posted a few more videos covering the different vessels of the Star Wars Clone Wars era. While the channel has featured a number of the capital ships in the past, the recent videos kind of dive deeper into some of the nuances of the technologies utilised during the conflict and some of my favorite vessels.


Star Wars: LAAT/i Republic Gunship - Ship Breakdown
First there's the LAAT/i Republic Gunship, which is definitely one of the more memorable ships from the time period. As much as a lot of Star Wars space combat has more or less emulated the sort of old school naval combat of the World War II era, the Republic Gunship sort of emulated the role of the Huey helicopter in the Vietnam War. Of course this Star Wars equivalent is a lot stronger with more diverse capabilities that went a long way to support Clone forces. Plus it looked pretty cool.


Star Wars: The Starfighters of the CIS

Then there's the more recent video that goes over the various starfighters of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, better known as the Separatists. It's not often that we get to really look at these ships since they only received limited screen time in the movies and a lot more work has gone into covering the Imperial-era TIE fighters and related craft. This video actually covers a lot of great details about the various fighters despite the relative brevity of the video.

If you share this geekery over science fiction ships, you can get started by checking out the Spacedock playlist of videos about other Star Wars ships or just explore the full channel on your own.

[Comics] Star Wars: Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir Review

The premature end to the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series because of the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm and all of its related properties resulted in a lot of stories going untold. The cancellation had come while the sixth season had still been in production and thus a lot of scripts had already been plotted out but the episodes themselves had gone unproduced.

Star Wars: Darth Maul - Son of Dathomir was one of those stories that found new life beyond the show. Part of what is known as the Clone Wars: Legacy, the multimedia project that tried to salvage what it could of the unproduced stories from that final season. In this case this story arc became a comic book instead of a piece of animation.

The lost status of some of this is sort of moot now that some of the final stories will be brought to life thanks to a recent announcement by Dave Filoni. But still you have to appreciate these stories and the work that went into finding a way to get these stories out there beyond the end of the series.

[Books] Star Wars: Thrawn Review

As a fan of the former Star Wars Expanded Universe, now the Legends continuity, it's inevitable that there are various characters and stories that I wish were still part of the main Star Wars canon. We don't always get what we want and I can totally respect why Disney had to do what it did once it had jumpstarted the movie machine for new sequels. But a guy can dream, right?

Star Wars: Thrawn is a celebration of a dream many Star Wars fans like myself held onto but never really expected to come true. With the return of the Legends character of Grand Admiral Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, this also opened the door for new stories about him within the canon universe. And who better to write the first such story than the man who create the character - Timothy Zahn.

This book helps cement Thrawn in the new canon universe and also adds new depth to a character that many fans have loved and have probably wanted to know a lot more about. And now we're starting to fill in those gaps with a great novel.

[TV] The Toys That Made Us Review

Toys are obviously very important to me as I remain a collector of Transformers and other collectibles of interest. And while my own research into this or that has me feeling like I have a good grasp of the hobby as a whole, there's still a heck of a lot of things that I and other fans and collectors probably don't know.

There have been a few documentaries focused on this or that toyline such as how Plastic Galaxy focused on the Star Wars toys. But The Toys That Made Us expanded on that subject and explored 8 different toy lines across a limited series. And it goes without saying that this was a lot of fun to watch.

The show was presented in two short "seasons" of four episodes each but it seems more prudent to look at this as a single mini-series. This could all become mood should the show decide to go beyond their initial plan of 8 episodes but that would necessitate a new theme song.

[Books] Star Wars: The Rise of the Empire Review

As part of my efforts to better rationalize my ridiculous collection of books, I had comitted to focus on digital copies for certain ranges. One of the lines of books that I've shifted to digital is the new Star Wars canon given I still have a significant number of Legends books still occupying a lot of my shelf space. And so I've been slow to fully wade into the newer books since I'm also trying to hold out for getting the books either (1) when they're on sale or (2) only when I'm literally about to read them.

Star Wars: The Rise of the Empire was an economical choice that I managed to get on sale since it consists of 2 full novels and 3 short stories all collected in a single volume. I haven't seen collections like this very often among Star Wars books apart from the novels based on the movie trilogies, so this was quite amusing. And a smart purchase as well, right?

And given the end of Star Wars Rebels, I had a new interest in reading the fiction related to Kanan and Hera. And this was a great way to get my hands on that particular book.

[Movies] Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Review

Prequel movies are tricky since they start already constrained by the movies that chronologically follow it. It's a weird place to try to write yourself into as it's definitely a case when continuity becomes a lot more important. But a lot of times prequels have particular goals in mind in terms of aspects of the movie franchise that it wasts to explore.

When the news of Solo: A Star Wars Story came out, a lot of eyebrows went up. As much as Han Solo is a much beloved character, it's not like a lot of us wanted a prequel set before the core Star Wars trilogy. There is a lot of Legends material that tried to talk about this early years but it's not like we had a LOT of books and comics that focused on this part of his life.

Solo is an odd beast that is fun in its own right but it certainly stands well apart from the other movies as it lacks that sort of grander mission pushing the story forward. This is a more "ground level" story that is about Han and his life and not necessarily about the expansion of the early Empire or even the beginings of the Rebellion.

[TV] Star Wars: Rebels - Season 4 Review

As is often the case with shows that I love, I had somehow missed out on writing a proper review for the final season of Star Wars: Rebels because needless to say it was amazing. And it always begs the question of whether or not one should review just the season or the season in the context of an effort to wrap up the season and come up with a decent ending to things.

If anything this show remains a testament to the vision of producer Dave Filoni and his obvious love for the Star Wars franchise that is very much evident in every show he creates. He has a particular way about crafting a story that nicely marries old references without making it feel like you know nothing. He nicely balances the Legends side of the fandom alongside the newer fans learning about Star Wars for the first time through animated features like this.

I wasn't overly keen on the show when it began but by this final season I totally didn't want things to end. But at least it's a show that got a proper ending unlike Star Wars: The Clone Wars before it.

[Books] Star Wars: Ahsoka Review

My love for Star Wars: Rebels oddly solidified when Ahsoka Tano was revealed to be the mysterious informant Fulcrum at the end of the first season. She went on to be quite the epic character including her massive duel with Darth Vader at the end of the second season. More than anything, the show helped confirm just how far along she has come since her rather tragic end during Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Naturally there's a rather large gap between her leaking the Jedi Order and becoming the intelligence asset for the fledgling Rebel Alliance. And outside of the fictional side of things, there were a lot of untold stories meant for the succeeding seasons of Clone Wars before the show was cancelled. This book, Star Wars: Ahsoka, aims to fill in some of that void with an exciting adventure focused all on her.

And the book naturally makes for fascinating reading as the Ahsoka that we come to meet in Rebels is a lot more confident and self-assured versus the Padawan she once was. Beyond that she also had a more balanced view of the Force that speaks of a lot of growing up.

[TV] Star Wars: Rebels Penultimate Week

This week saw the release of episodes 12 and 13 of the fourth and final season of Star Wars: Rebels. We have just one week to go before this crazy Dave Filoni trip draws to a close and the stage has been set for something pretty amazing.

If you've already watched this week's episodes, I strongly recomend that you check out this week's episode of Rebels Recon on the official Star Wars YouTube Channel as the folks behind the show including Dave Filoni himself discuss the revelations of these episodes and the thought process that went into the crafting of this story.



Rebels Recon: Inside "Wolves and a Door" and "A World Between Worlds"

Then for more Star Wars Rebels analysis, I suggest you pop on over to Star Wars Explained for another good break-down of this week's episodes and a more recent video trying to think about one of the biggest revelations of the episodes - the World Between the Worlds.


Star Wars Rebels Season 4 - Wolves and a Door & A World Between Worlds Episode Reviews


What is the World Between Worlds - Star Wars Rebels Season 4

[Movies] First Solo Teaser Trailers

With the Solo: A Star Wars Story set for May 2018 release, it has been a little unnerving that the marketing for this movie hasn't quite gotten into full gear For the longest time we just had this very direct to the point title card and little else. To be fair, this is the first time we're getting more than one Star Wars movie within a 12 month period, so things are rather close together.

But all that changed during this year's Super Bowl when we finally got our first teaser trailer only to get a longer teaser trailer the next day. So yeah, it's still the annoying teaser for a treaser trailer routine that is becoming more and more of a habit in Hollywood, but to be fair there were some rather meaty trailers.

[Videos] Star Wars: Rebels Mid-Season 4 Trailer

Because mid-season trailers are thing, we recently got our official mid-Season 4 trailer for Star Wars: Rebels as the show comes to an end. We also get a final air date for the last season - February 19, 2018. The first minute or so is mostly a clip show from past episodes but the second half of this trailer is pretty meaty.


Star Wars Rebels Mid-Season 4 Trailer (Official)
But if you're that sort of person, you can also check out various trailer break-down artciles and videos by now, but naturally I'll favor content from channels like Star Wars Explained, which are among my personal favorites for YouTube surfing.


Star Wars Rebels Mid-Season 4 Trailer Breakdown and Analysis
And while I don't want the show to end any more than you do, I am still excited to see how things will wrap up.

But darn it, Filoni better answer what happened to Ahsoka Tano.