Balance Point and Future Reading

I'm just finishing up New Jedi Order: Balance Point. It's good!

Next up in the queue is Splinter of the Mind's Eye, which I overlooked in my sweep through the books in (roughly) chronological order. After that, on to NJO: Edge of Victory I - Conquest. Frighteningly, I actually have no Star Wars material to read after that!

Once I get them, I'll continue the New Jedi Order, but I'll be interspersing that with a little newer Clone Wars material. I'll probably at least complete the Edge of Victory duology first, but before Star by Star I think I'll read The Cestus Deception. After SBS, I'll go on to the Medstar duology, and then return to NJO for a book or two, then go back to Jedi Trial and Dark Rendezvous to round off the Clone Wars content.

But wait! What about Tatooine Ghost and Survivor's Quest, the two books that have popped up in between by two fronts of Star Wars reading, Clone Wars and NJO? I'll have to fit them in there, somewhere, too...

After finishing the NJO and all that, though, I might be in a bit of trouble. Of course, more books will be coming out all the time, but what about those other novels that have slipped through the cracks due to my relative lack of interest?

There's the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, Children of the Jedi, Planet of Twilight, The Crystal Star, and The New Rebellion in the New Republic era. There's the Han Solo trilogy, the Han Solo Adventures and the Adventures of Lando Calrissian a little closer to the Classic Trilogy era. Along the links of Splinter of the Mind's Eye, there's Shadows of the Empire. Then there's the whole Jedi Apprentice, Jedi Quest, and Boba Fett series, Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, Cloak of Deception, and Legacy of the Jedi in the prequel era. Oh, and I can't forget the Junior Jedi Knights series, which I started but never finished, or the Galaxy of Fear books, or that "Glove of Darth Vader" series.... The problem is, I'm not all that interested in any of that. What to do!?!?!?

On a fairly unrelated note, I think it would be pretty interesting if LucasBooks republished every Star Wars book ever made, with one standard format (at least somewhat standard; of course, creativity is still encouraged!). Each book would have a full timeline at the beginning, proper era designations and an updated map of the galaxy up front. Perhaps the galaxy map could have an inset focusing on the key areas in that particular book.

Then, they could re-do the whole Essential Guide series. It couldn't be the New Essential Guide -- they already started doing that without waiting for Episode III, the completion of the NJO, or for the Clone Wars to play out. How about "The Ultimate Guide"? Sounds good to me. Each one of those could have an even more improved, full-color, complete, fold-out galaxy map in the front.

And then, DK's excellent series of cross-section books could be expanded to cover the Expanded Universe. Sure, that's kind of what the Ultimate Guides would be for, but DK's series could basically take a slice out of those books and expand upon that slice. I'd love to see an "Inside the Worlds of the Expanded Unverse" featuring Centerpoint Station, a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, Thrawn's fortress on Nirauan and more!

Well, that's all for now. Sorry I couldn't write a very long entry today... I must be off to dinner! ;-)