I just finished listening to the Star Wars Tarkin audio book by James Luceno. Great read, would recommend!

At this point, I’ve read a little over 50 Star Wars books and comics, and still going strong, my wife asked if I was tired of the subject yet, and told her, “No, not really, there’s a LOT here…”

It got me thinking about how I read, watch, and think about Star Wars in general, and wondered if folks felt the same or different…

I’ve been approaching this as close to “history” and “historical fiction” based on true(ish) events.

What do I mean? In the same way there are Civil War and WWII books, movies, histories, and historical fiction, that’s how I see the “Star Wars universe”.

There’s a TON there to mine, tell stories about, and dig into.

Tarkin, for example, is a mix of memoir, origin story, and historical fiction (or fact, “from a certain point of view” 😏). This tiny point of the grand story of Star Wars offers Tarkin’s background, upbringing, testing in the hunt, some family history, and generally what drives the man and makes him tick.

It was fascinating, and I read it like I might read a book on Erwin Rommel (“The Desert Fox” Nazi commander), Robert E. Lee, or Charles Cornwallis, looking for the events that shaped and challenged these figures to be who they were.

Also, in thinking about it like this, the Timeline of Star Wars and all the events from “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” becomes even more interesting, thinking “Where was Tarkin during the Clone Wars and before?”… just an example, we know that he’s present and leads the case against Ahsoka in the Clone Wars series… But things of that nature.

So, I told my wife all this and she said, “Oh, I get it now… You’re in your ‘mid-life-dad-who-reads-about-wars’ stage…

Makes sense…” 🤣… She’s probably right.