Thread by @pabl0hidalgo

As threatened, beginning a shelf-indulgent thread of my home library, which has made remote working extremely easy this past year or so. Starting at one end of the room: miscellaneous guides and mechanical activity books. Will be a thread. A slow thread. #shelfie

I'm missing one of the Reinhart pop-up books, which just keeps going up in price. But this past year, finally tracked down the missing mini-pop up Return of the Jedi books which are great.

One more shelf for today. Next one down. More mechanical crafts, some LEGO books, and a few sound-equipped novelty titles.

This is where the punch out books live, which really peaked in 1999 with the Queen Amidala paper dolls book.

Next shelf down is predominantly non-fiction about collectibles. The Star Wars Vault is a trove of wonders and rarities. Those art books from Abrams are in constant use. A handful of Japanese "mooks" (magazine books) with great photography in between.

Of course, Steve Sansweet is very well represented in this section, going back to his 1992 book, From Concept to Screen to Collectible.

Last shelf in this case is a mix of larger books. Museum guides. Year by Year (really proud of those books), comics art and misc. large guides. Those IDW newspaper strip collections are so wonderful. I’m so glad they reprinted them like this. Some of my favorite SW stories there.

Again, I can’t say enough about this set. Lovingly archival. You get the Sunday strips in their original color. I missed out on the Russ Cochran collection of the Goodwin-Williamson strips (I’d borrow the set from work all the time) so this finally scratched that itch.

Back in my high school days I’d go to the public library and pore over their microfilm rolls of old Winnipeg Tribunes, the local paper that carried the Russ Manning strips. It was the only way to read those in the original daily format. I’d be taking notes and sketching as I read

Onto the next bookcase: hardback fiction. I keep them in publication order. So this is 1991 to 2001. The Bantam run to Del Rey.

A bunch of stuff stacked on top. I had no idea how much The Queen’s Gambit boardgame is worth until someone spotted it in a photo and suggested I look it up. I think I only played it twice. Cool game though.

Heir to the Empire is first edition. I lost the ribbon that wrapped around the cover that touted “special introductory price”. It’s probably in a box somewhere. That was a good price in 1991.

Some of these still have their receipts inside. I bought The Last Command at WHSmith in Portage Place mall on April 5, 1993.

Next over, 2001 to 2004 hardcover novels. As said, I’m a big advocate of publication order reading and not chronological reading. Case in point, Survivor’s Quest sets up mysteries answered in Outbound Flight and really should be read that way.

That hefty hardback of Unifying Force came with a CD ROM with a PDF of Vector Prime and other bonus materials. Cutting edge never seemed so antiquated. :)

2004 to 2009 hardcovers. (Some book store exclusives from later tucked in sideways in the gaps). Near to see how much Fate of the Jedi was a design refresh.

Tucked in with Omen is one of the rarest Star Wars print stories, Imprint. I commissioned @ChristieGolden to write it as a Fan Club exclusive, laid it out and had it printed as part of that year’s welcome kit. It was all so DIY.

And the end of this row brings us up to 2011. Underneath that are some trivia novelty books and a Therm Scissorpunch card made by someone on the Solo editorial team that was gifted to me when I visited their offices during post. :) Go Therm!

2011 through 2015 adult fiction hardcovers. Del Rey logo change starting with Kenobi.

Some odds and ends above that shelf, like this novelty item from 1983, the Star Wars Intergalactic Passport from Ballantine Books.

A battered copy of this pouch of Star Wars Blueprints, which I assume was one of the most overproduced items since the 1977 set was re-stickered six years later and put back in stores in '83.

Some of the in-universe brand names that people assume West End Games coined for the Roleplaying Game in '87 actually date back to '77 and this packet. Like Mobquet, a landspeeder manufacturer.

This blueprint of the "Ubrickkian 9000 Z001 landspeeder" is one of the earliest Star Wars easter eggs/Tuckerisms.

Ubrickkian = Kubrick
9000 = HAL 9000
Z001 = 2001

This speeder resembles the pods from 2001: A Space Odyssey, after all.

It's also an early example of a production-to-franchise role I get to play with to this day; taking a production name like 'Fourth Speeder' and dressing it up with a name that better fits the universe for those who want to explore the margins of the setting.

2015-2016 hardcover fiction. The doubles of the TFA novel and Catalyst are Barnes & Nobles exclusive editions. Tucked in here is a Del Rey 2015 sampler with wonderful Phil Noto cover art.

2016 to now, adult hardcovers. Will likely have to do some more rearranging soon but I freed up one shelf which should accommodate another year and a half of fiction.

These odds and ends trade paperbacks are united mostly by being the same trim size. They’re kind of just squatting as they’ll be relocated the second I need more space, but they do no harm here for now. (There’s a Lando disguise kit from Celebration keeping an eye on them)

This trade sized Making of Star Wars from the UK is so much more readable than the giant hardcover, which I love, but requires you to clear off a table.

they just look so miserable on this cover. lol

Modern middle grade hardbacks, with a slot of Studiofun hardcover “journal”-type books in between.

And finishing off this bookcase with the YA shelf, which will soon have to expand. More Studiofun books under those.

(And the preceding hardbacks have already been reshuffled since I put Order 66 on the shelf. Thanks for the tip @ChronoKeep)

My desk has a number of shelves built into it, so that to the left of my computer I keep these books handy. Top shelf are all Art of style books. Under that an array of DK visual guides and dictionaries. These are the books most used day-to-day.

A cool piece on this shelf is the Art of Uprising which was never published; it was more a commemorative crew item that I got from working on early development on the game. Some beautiful art in here, including world by Brian Matyas who went on to work in The Mandalorian.

* work by, not world by, dang it

These shelves go under the desk too, and that’s where the Del Rey Essential Guides and encyclopedias go, along with the Haynes manuals, a few other DK books, and the original edition cross-sections that were oversized editions.

Being down here makes the K2 glowing eyes on this exclusive edition of the Rogue One Visual Guide look cooler too.

This was the Costco exclusive version. Came with the light up eyes and a print of Kemp's art of the Zeta-class shuttle.

Will start going through this bookcase tomorrow, but the top of it is just a pile of out-of-sight, out-of-mind stuff not referenced often since opting for space-saving digital alternatives. Those commemorative Dark Horse hardcovers are too pretty to deep-store, though.

But up there are Star Wars Topps cards, DVDs, digest-sized comics reprints, and later comics trades. There's a bunch of comics CD-ROMs, though, that are a real time capsule. Dating from around 2007ish, they were very the result of some very shortsighted content decision-making.

It was before anyone had really cracked the digital comics model like Comixology did. So Marvel, in this case, made *hundreds* of back issues of their signature long-running titles available as PDFs on CD-ROMs that were really cheaply priced. Glad I snatched them up.

In addition to decades of X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spidey, Ghost Rider, Silver Surfer and Cap, also got a run of old Trek comics and Mad Magazine. These things promptly disappeared from the market.

Best part? These comics were scanned whole from actual print copies, and not sourced from digital art. So you'd get all the ads, letter pages and shoddy printing authenticity. As I said, time capsules.

The top of this case, the Dark Horse Omnib... Omnibuses... Omnibi? Story order, since these are collected reprints anyway. Their thoroughness made the decision to deep-store the individual issues and older trades much easier.

The tail end of the Omnibuses including my favorites, the Wild Space collections of odds-and-ends. Hardcover collections of the Thrawn Trilogy comics and Dark Empire series, vintage (and much used) comics paperbacks, and more recent Screen Comix fumetti-style adaptations.

A peculiar example of a Marvel collection printed as a Del Rey book from 77, the Star Wars adaptation. Has some great intro text from Roy Thomas and the ever-effusive Stan Lee.

By the time of the The Empire Striikes Back comics adaptation, licensing had cleared the path for Marvel to print its own paperbacks. This early version of the adaptation, produced without adequate Yoda reference, took some guesses based on concept art.

These battered Marvel paperbacks were the only way as a kid I could get a look at the Star Wars UK comics. One told the story of Han’s fateful Kessel Run and an encounter with Colonel Quirt. When SOLO was in early development, tried to find a way to get Quirt mentioned.

(I did get him mentioned in Rebel Dawn, way back in 1998 though!)

Next shelf down. Dark Forces graphic novellas, recent IDW adaptations, a Rebels Cinestory and a bunch of Dark Horse adventures-style digests. That Star Mal comic is a Chilean parody I got as a gift during a Santiago visit.

Tucked into a gap are a bunch of these cute 4x4 storybooks from Random House. How can you not love the Baby Ewoks’ Picnic Surprise?

Next shelf over: manga adaptations. K-2SO is holding room for more.

And last shelf for today, various kids educational, from vintage to modern.

Piecing together the Attack on Reading educational kit from the late 70s continued to be an ongoing hunt. I’m missing one of the workbooks.

And Shiny as a Droid and Fuzzy as an Ewok are two favorites from the mid-80s.

Next row down is pretty miscellaneous. I don't go out of my way to collect sticker books, but somehow, you end up with sticker books. A few kids novelty books that could probably move to the other bookcase. Large sized Golden Books.

The art in this Jar Jar shaped-book is pretty great. Look at that poor frog's face.

Loved these little board books (the Cruise Along series) from Fun Works, 1998. They had gorgeous Kilian Plunkett art, long before his work on The Clone Wars, and each book came with a Galoob Micro Machine of the relevant vehicle.

A lot of beloved childhood favorites on this next shelf. This is where the storybooks live. Some of these I've had since I was a kid. Others had to be rebought later, and others I never had until I was able to track down a copy as an adult. Of course, some more recent stuff too.

The Wookiee Storybook and The Adventures of Teebo are wonderful kids books. The art of Chewie and his family is so sweet. The Teebo book is written and illustrated by Joe Johnston! The post-ROTJ era saw him write a Droids episode too and start directing 2nd unit on Ewok movies.

A thing I did during the pandemic was slowly piece together my Random House storybook library. There was a bunch of old Ewoks and Droids books I did not have, until now.

This is a fun little hardcover. A 'step-up' style reading book on no less complex a subject as actually making the first Star Wars. This is from 1980. Oddly, until 2007, this was the *only* licensed book available specifically about the Making of Star Wars.

It's fun to imagine how many kids were introduced to the idea of "movie people" doing work. Here, @ILMVFX is described as a "special workshop for Star Wars in California" and ideas as complex as the Dykstraflex camera are explained for young readers.

@ILMVFX And this row ends with the more modern storybooks, a few of the kids-focused guides from the late 90s, and a bunch of those Head to Head books I used to write that I swear are meant for kids to debate, but let's face it, it's adults doing it too. :)

Oh, going back to those sticker books, forgot to mention that The Ultimate Episode I Sticker Book is one of the few places where an image of Adrian Dunbar as Bail Organa went to print. His scene was cut from The Phantom Menace, allowing the role to be recast with Jimmy admits.

*Smits (darn you, autocorrect; you should know Jimmy Smits by now)

Next shelf done is stuffed with more kids books. Specifically, the smaller Golden Books, Read Alongs, and 8x8 storybooks from the last 40 years.

These Golden Books started in 1997 as a way of introducing Star Wars to kids who didn't grow up with it, and for parents who did to share it. (Oh, and yeah, for adult book collectors who like the art.)

A wonderful example of 'what were they thinking' is this Mos Eisley Cantina scratch-n-sniff book. Finally, get the definitive word on Chewbacca's swamp odor or Greedo's horrid breath.

Next up are the classic Read Along Adventures. Those of us who grew up with them will forever remember 'You will know when it's time to turn the page when you hear R2-D2 beep like this..."; Corey Burton voices Luke in these, so it's cool to hear his Spike Witwicky voice.

Hey @kelly_knox these were the activity 8x8s you mentioned. There were Random House and Scholastic book club versions of each. Wonderful art.

And here are the vintage 8x8 storybooks from Random House. Some gorgeous art. Check out Mark Corcoran's interior art on the Mystery of the Rebellious Robot. Those colors inside the Falcon are so dreamy.

A smattering of more modern 8x8s. It was Random House publishing these till about The Clone Wars, when Gosset & Dunlap took it over for TCW titles, and then Lucasfilm Press. Glad that it's still a viable format. Always a great source of art.

The shelf under the 8x8s have the various-level kids readers.

And finally for today, under the reader shelf, there's a bunch of varied guides and novelty books. There's some of the 3D books I wrote for becker&meyer!.

The Queen's Amulet from Chronicle Books is a unique work with some delicate artwork by Matilda Harrison. The clamshell case conceals a small hardcover book inside.

And the amulet itself sits in a transparent tube on the book's spine. Readable cosplay-to-go.

Here's the junior novelization shelf. They used to fit in one shelf, but then IX and Mando came. A rare instance where the prequel novels came out before the original trilogy ones, which didn't get junior novels till the 2004 DVD release.

The last two junior novelizations; Jedi Mind serving as a divider for original middle grade series fiction (Servants of the Empire and Adventures in Wild Space featured) and some DK tongue-in-cheek "self-help" kind of books.

The next shelf down is a bunch of Star Wars Mission books from Scholastic, the original set and the Episode I assortment. On another shelf are the carrying cases for the dice and team cards. The original set, from 97, took a while to collect and I netted a bunch of doubles.

The next shelf has the game books from the Episode I Star Wars Adventures set, and then the short-lived Episode II Adventures. That segues to more Choose-Your-Own Adventure style books of the original trilogy, Clone Wars, and the more recent ones. At the very end there, though...

.... these Adventure Game books from Boxtree were very tough to track down when they first came out, as they were UK only. There were two books, Jedi Dawn and The Bounty Hunter, released in 1993. They were bundled together as The Lost Jedi in 1995.

They, like several other works, were about stealing the Death Star plans. That's it for today.

A shelf full of 90s young reader fiction, including the Jedi Prince series, Junior Jedi Knights, Galaxy of Fear, Science Adventures and Journals.

The Journals continued with Episode I, and then the run of Jedi Apprentice novels. At the end is a softcover collection of hardcover Jedi Apprentice-type books.

The Jedi Quest series follows. Then Last of the Jedi and Rebel Force. Down a row are the young Boba Fett novels from the early 2000s, followed by Clone Wars Secret Missions and various hardcover releases. That’s it for this bookcase.

Anyway, holograms made everything better in the 90s, as these editions of Galaxy of Fear prove.

Will start on this bookcase next; ttrpgs. Space limitations means the older boxed sets live at the top. These are mostly West End Games boxed sets, with a couple of Wizards of the Coast ones tucked in between.

Cracking open Star Warriors. A well-worn box. Had it since the start, 1987, part of the original line launch of the SW RPG. It's a standalone game, but easily plugs into the D6 game and is presented as an alternative set of more detailed starfighter combat rules.

The game is played on a full color poster-sized 22" x 34" hexmap that uses the unused nebula matte painting that was originally to end The Empire Strikes Back.

The rulebook, and the plastic counter tray with all the various cardboard counters. WEG would continue to supplement the game through their RPG modules, which would be packed in with color counters to add. The sandwich baggie with the oversized counters was my contribution.

Awww, teenage me was so clever. I photocopied the most frequently referenced rules and charts at a smaller scale and glued them onto a comic book board to have my own reference card during play.

The game's actually included reference card is considerably more professional and glossy than what I could muster at school.

Not that I'm a mint-in-box collector, but I couldn't bring myself to mark up the included control sheets, so I photocopied them and kept them in a magazine bag. On the photocopy, I'd fill out the stats, and draw the ship on the other side and include its RPG stats. Nerd.

The Long Shot was the Lantillian hauler that was the centerpiece of a packaged RPG campaign. I spent years running a game on that ship. Decades later, I helped make sure a Lantillian made it to the battle over Exegol. Was it my old gaming crew from high school? Maybe :)

From 1988, Assault on Hoth. Not an RPG tie-in (though one adventure module did include an Assault on Hoth scenario to customize this game). Tabletop recreation of The Empire Strikes Back battle. I loved this game. Fast to pick-up, fast to play.

The rules booklet includes some light lore - names of officers and such. I incorporated some of it into the 2nd edition redo of Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back in '96. There's the poster-sized terrain map.

This seems primitive compared to today's high-end games with molded miniatures and full-color everything, but Assault on Hoth play pieces are small cardstock counters on plastic bases. Play is resolved by working through a deck of cards that activate units.

Attn: @VeersWatch

So why do I have two sets? Here's the main reason. The fire dice. Turns out, they weren't design to last decades. The Vader and lightsaber-faces of these unique dice have rubbed off over the years such that I tracked down a second set just so I'd have the dice handy.

Battle for Endor used the same game system as Hoth but made it a solitaire game. I found it a bit unsatisfactory. A better solitaire or co-op game was Escape from the Death Star, where the dread of a station full of bad guys felt more menacing. You’d have to get the heroes out.

The next two boxes are campaign sets for the RPG. Darkstryder (95) puts players as part of a slapped together crew of a Corellian Corvette exploring a patch of creepy space. Lords of the Expanse (97) imagines Dune-type rival noble houses competing for power. Great stuff.

Each box came with a poster-sized setting map, campaign and adventure booklets and full color character cards.

The Introductory Adventure Game (97) was meant to maximize the resurgent interest in Star Wars with a simplified version of the RPG rules and “everything you need” approach in an affordable boxed set. Pretty standard nowadays but WEG was already a decade into their game.

This box also became my catch-all storage for pamphlets and newsletters handed out at GenCon in the late 90s, including this handout that made me and a few other freelancers visiting Milwaukee into the objects of a scavenger hunt.

These last few WEG boxed sets are the heaviest because they all contain metal miniatures. There’s very little new content in these releases; they feel more like clearing out old inventories in new products.

The Miniatures Battles Starter Kit comes with the rules released earlie and packed with an assortment of metal figures in non-descript bubble cards.

The Vehicles starter set came with a pre-existing rulebook, metal speeder bike minis and a heavy snowspeeder miniature. You could hurt someone with this. This box became storage for the separately released bantha and landspeeder minis.

The Mos Eisley set bundled together a pre-existing Galaxy Guide supplement, miniature figures and dice, and included a new booklet of adventures. That full color shootout pamphlet was not in the set but was a convention freebie that I keep in here.

Wizards of the Coast spared little expense in doing the Introductory Adventure boxed set for their new D20 game in 2000, including full color inserts and booklets (with art by @AH_AdamHughes) and a unique Wookiee action figure.

And their Miniatures Starter Game box has become a storage for all sorts of pre-painted plastic miniatures from WoTC. I’ve since stored the rules elsewhere. That’s it for today.

RPG shelf one! A complete collection of Adventure Journals (with a few doubles), oddly archaic combat game books, and the complete run of boxed miniatures from WEG.

The Adventure Journal is a hugely important part of my Star Wars journey and a great resource as well. A quarterly 288-page book of fiction and source material? Sign me up.

Issue 7 (Aug 95) was my first ever published Star Wars piece. I also got to design the R7 droid for this article in a pencil sketch that Matt Busch then drew and then, years later, became an actual toy. Wild.

The History of the R-Series Astromech Droids article differentiated between all the types of droids which was of course overridden by the naming conventions used in Episode I four years later. So I’m not too animated over the canon debates having lived through all this ;)

A slice of game design you don’t see much anymore: the battle book, pioneered by Alfred Leonardi with his Ace of Aces series, and expressed as the Lightsaber Dueling Pack and Starfighter Battle Book. These were 2-player standalone games not connected to the RPG.

Each book used by a player represents their POV, so you see your enemy’s position and decide your maneuver. Players call out a corresponding page that the book’s built in game system reveals the result as a new page to turn to and new POV.

The Starfighter Battle Book was also the only place to have these TIE interceptor schematics, for us pretend avionic gearhead nerds.

I could go on and on about the West End / Grenadier miniature boxes, so I’ll wrap today with the Rancor Pit set with the hefty hunk of lead (or presumably non toxic equivalent) that forms the beast’s body. It ain’t for kids.

RPG shelf 2: First and Second Edition West End Games titles from 1987 to 1994. Started playing this game in Junior High when Star Wars was very much dead. These are the actual books from then, many of them quite worn.

This section, from the first edition rulebook (1987) to the Dark Force Rising Sourcebook (1992) is all first edition. Lines up perfectly with junior high through high school for me. The foreign language editions are just odds and ends picked up during travel.

The very first adventure module, Tatooine Manhunt (1988). It was originally released shrink wrapped as all the first adventures were to keep in pack-in goodies like Star Warriors counters, maps, or this 4-page rules upgrade that made the RPG 1.1 edition, I suppose.

Strike Force: Shantipole (1988), which expanded on the history of the B-wing fighter. Viewers of Star Wars Rebels will note that I worked to keep the name Shantipole connected to that history when the B-wing origins were dramatized in animation. Long-term continuity fun.

The Star Wars Rules Companion added new and some optional elements to the game, essentially moving the rules to 1.5 but not quite moving it to 2nd edition. This came out in 1989.

1990 saw the switch from saddle-stitched shrink-wrapped 40 page adventures to 64-page perfect-bound books without goodies inside.

1991 was still first edition, but there was a line-wide design change to freshen the look of the game.

1991 saw Heir to Empire, and in 92, WEG dove deep into that book with an accompanying sourcebook which, for the first time, opened up the post-Return of the Jedi era to players. The book came with this disclaimer which you’d think should’ve ended the canon / EU debate, but no.

Here’s where 2nd edition starts. It added a lot more detail and I’d argue was more sci-fi than the simple 1st Ed, but given that the SW landscape was dominated by sci-fi novels, it makes sense as a 90s era thing.

For example, 1st edition had one skill for piloting any starship, and 2nd edition broke that up into starfighters, space transports and capital ships, and that granularity has more of a sci fi 'reality' to it consistent with the feel of the novels....

... but in the movies, if you're good at piloting one thing, you're good at piloting *everything*, and first edition reflected that more. But we didn't have as many movies at the time for that to really seem fundamental. Prequel Anakin can fly anything, but that was years away.

RPG shelf 3! Continuing WEG 2nd Edition through to Revised and Expanded (2.5, if you will) and then onto Wizards of the Coast’s D20 version that launched in 2000.

The 2nd edition of Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back was one I got to revise and expand. The editors let me pull in all sorts of obscure references (Marvel, Marvel UK, radio drama). Even got to find a way to bring back that Bespin surface storyline from the Marvel run.

From the start I was all for “here’s a way a version of that old story could exist.” Old habits and whatnot.

One thing I tried to do in that Guide was make K-3PO a captain. In my head canon that’s what those red dots mean! It couldn’t be more obvious! But for whatever reason we got the ruling from Lucasfilm Licensing that droids couldn’t be officers.

(Years later I was able to convince them otherwise in person. :) happy to say K-3PO’s rightful rank became a thing)

Here’s the gorgeous full color hardcover of the revised and expanded WEG RPG. This felt like a true graduation of the game in presentation. Now that Star Wars was alive again in 96, it was like this scrappy publisher out of rural Pennsylvania stepped up its game.

Often forgotten is that WEG had several games going in addition to their RPG. They launched an award-winning miniatures game system (which I’ll get to) and started a very brief run of a LARP game near the end of their license. Just two books.

Alas WEG was not to last, a bittersweet reality for so many of us who worked on it. In 2000, the gaming license went to WoTC and they created a lavish core rulebook with Drew Struzan cover art no less. I went to the launch event in Seattle to cover it for StarWars-com.

In 2002 a revised rulebook followed, along with a new look for the line that followed. That’s it for this shelf for today.

(actually what am I saying?! It was waaaay more bitter than sweet. Unless you managed to get the money you were owed. Okay okay, that's in the past)

The next shelf down, the last of the WOTC d20 line, a few miniature games from WEG and WOTC and the start of the FFG line.

I do like the trim size of the Saga Edition. Really sets them apart. It ran from 2007-2010, after which WotC declined to pursue renewing its license to create Star Wars product.

From the miniatures books is this Miniatures Battles Companion book from 1994 where author and designer Stephen Crane made the first workable Aurebesh character set for all of use to use. The galaxy’s never been the same since.

Among the Edge of Empire books I got from the FFG line is the softcover “Beta” set of rules they released prior to the launch of the game.

And we’ll finish off the RPG bookcase with the bottom shelf that’s all FFG, including their 30th anniversary reissue of the original WEG books, bringing this all full circle. I was honored to write the foreword to that edition.

(as an aside, Aurebesh-checking on odd projects is often a part of the job; oddest one in recent memory was the Simpsons short. Kind of a thrill to have touched Simpsons content; here's @AlJean mentioning the aurebesh in a Variety interview)

This is gonna get briefly chaotic as I go into the cluttered corner currently holding the super oversized books. Right now, it's just about space, not about presentation. These books simply won't fit anywhere else.

There's a couple of really heavy Dark Horse Comics tomes up top; a deluxe version of The Star Wars, and a celebration of Luke Skywalker.

Here's the deluxe edition of The Star Wars, which has three books inside: the series itself, a series art/making of guide, and a cover collection with removable prints.

The Luke Skywalker: Last Hope for the Galaxy tome is a sort of 'Best of' hits of Luke Skywalker comic appearances. Cover art by Adam Hughes.

The Artifact Edition from IDW is a beautiful reproduction of original vintage Star Wars Marvel Comics art at full size, with all the pencil, ink and notation lines visible.

The cover to Star Wars 16 features Valance and Jaxxon, who are in the midst of a long overdue resurgence in current Marvel and IDW titles.

George Lucas' signature on an Archie Goodwin script shows how involved he was in the Carol Titelman / Black Falcon era of publishing (perhaps not by coincidence, my favorite era too).

One of my absolute favorite early Marvel stories is showcased in this book, issue 38, with art by Michael Golden and Terry Austin.

The Masterpiece Edition books from Chronicle Books were these enormous trapezoid cases that contained as 12-inch Hasbro figure and a hardcover non-fiction book about the character. There was a C-3PO, Anakin Skywalker ( pre-Hayden version) and, pictured here, Aurra Sing.

(Want to get me to buy a toy? Pack a book in with it)

The original Star Wars Chronicles (1997) was the first big Star Wars coffee table book. Its follow up, focused on The Prequels nearly a decade later, was one of the first book projects I ever worked on.

Not everything on this shelf is super deluxe high end. Some of them are just too tall, like these really tall Pop-Up Books with original Ralph McQuarrie art, this Falcon punch-out book, and A Droid's Tale that has sound effects and C-3PO narration from Anthony Daniels.

The deluxe limited editions of Dressing a Galaxy and Sculpting a Galaxy live up to the hype. They're enormous. Dressing a Galaxy is the only book I've ever seen to wear a cummerbund.

Inside the box of Dressing the Galaxy shows the book itself, as well as the replica Wookiee medallion, the bonus DVD of costuming documentaries and an actual piece of Darth Vader cape material. The book has extra inserts, like this cool layered breakdown of Padmé's white outfit.

More tactile/textile goodness with these fabric samples from various costumes included as an extra booklet.

I take particular pride in Sculpting a Galaxy; Insight Edition hired me as project editor on it. Basically, I went to Lorne Peterson's house over the course of several weekends and recorded his recollection of the showcased models. This book is Lorne's stories I helped present.

Inside the massive box, which is held fastened by magnets. The book is tucked away within a slot. Here is a bonus DVD full of rare ILM 'home movies' and some replica models that Lorne sculpted for the book.

Inside are scale Death Star surface tiles as well as a "lost" model of Luke's landspeeder originally built for the scene where it's spotted by Tuskens; the original model is gone, so Lorne recreated it for this book.

There's a scale R2-D2, C-3PO and Luke Skywalker molded to fit inside, along with a mirrored presentation base meant to simulate the practical gag of its floating effect.

Finishing up for today are the latest oversized books, the fantastic Star Wars Archives series by @kershed. These were such a pleasure to work on and read and have some of the best George Lucas interviews you're ever going to find. That's it for today; paperbacks tomorrow!

@kershed The paperback shelves (with astromech droid accompaniment) begin. To think all Star Wars adult prose fiction from 1976 through to 1990 fits in this space, counting some doubles and reissues. It was a different time, clearly. These are some of my favorite books.

And yes, I meant '76 because as many of you know, the first Star Wars novel came out some ~six months before the movie did. Here's the first edition with the unique Ralph McQuarrie cover. I'm guessing no Star Wars novel has sold more than the original novelization.

I would say the novel George Lucas had the most involvement with was Splinter of the Mind's Eye, from 1978, as it was primed as a potential sequel movie. I somehow picked up a British edition in addition to the original. Here's the '90s "Classic Star Wars" reissue too.

From 1979 my hands-down favorite Star Wars novel, Brian Daley's Han Solo at Stars' End. It's ~180 pages, a format that Star Wars novels just don't come in anymore. That length makes it a perfect movie length, so it feels much more cinematically paced than your typical 300+ pager.

Next section has some bundled reissues of the early Del Rey books and then the Bantam paperbacks start. I don't seek out Legends-banded books for things I already have since space is tight, but I got these Solo and Calrissian Trilogy reissues since I wrote the new introductions.

In addition to Bantam paperbacks, the '90s also had younger novels from Berkley Boulevard books - the Young Jedi Knight series by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta.

I do miss the days of paperback originals, but I wouldn't have space for them nowadays as it is. This stretch has the first flight (pun intended) of X-wing novels, and the Shield of Lies trilogy in addition to two of the Tales of anthologies.

Next batch over has A.C. Crispin's Han Solo trilogy. She was the first person (and certainly not the last) to ever 'Tuckerize' my name into a Star Wars character, Palob Godalhi, as a thank you for me helping her out. This was before I ever worked at Lucasfilm. Mighty kind.

And here's the point where the license transitions from Bantam Books to Del Rey, and the formalization of the 'Lucas Books' imprint with the Episode I novel and The New Jedi Order series starting up.

The last Bantam book starts this batch; Tales of the New Republic was an anthology made up of orphaned Adventure Journal fiction. NJO paperback originals follow, along with some mass market editions of previous hardcovers. I loved Greg Keyes' NJO books. Wish he did more.

*(Black Fleet Crisis trilogy. Brain just repeated its favorite book of the three)

More paperback originals in this era were all NJO; no prequel-era original paperbacks just yet. Right in the middle of this shelf is Traitor. This NJO novel really stood out, and wow did Matt Stover make a name for himself as one of the best out there to add to the EU.

The prequel era paperbacks start showing up, with the Medstar series, Dark Rendezvous and the first - and my favorite - of the Republic Commando novels, Hard Contact. The creases tell me I must've read that several times.

The design of these shelves puts a row of immoveable loadbearing ones in the middle, and my tendency to pack the paperbacks with little headroom meant there's a nice little gap to stash random foreign editions, small droids, and the heavily referenced Ben Burtt phrase book.

The next row of paperbacks; among the originals, the Dark Nest Trilogy, some more Republic Commando, the Coruscant Nights series, and some (but not all) of Legacy of the Force.

It's this row where my completionist instinct starts to falter. Although I have all the paperback originals, I missed some of the hardcover-reissues and am thus stuck with the Legends branded ones until I can track down proper ones to replace them. I was running low on room...

(And some are only available as Legends because they came out late in the EU run). I had thought I'd need to hold room for a bunch of new paperback originals, but Del Rey opted for all hardcover debuts. That saves me some shelf space! I did get a few reissues before opting out.

An assortment of paperback guides and scripts; some real gems in here. That Once Upon a Galaxy at the start there is great look at the making of Empire Strikes Back and has some very candid interviews from production. Very much out of print.

The Jedi Master Quizbook is an early example (1982) of a fan making it big and getting to write his own Star Wars book: in this case, 11 year old Rusty Miller. Does anyone else have a blue copy of the book? Most people i know have the black one.

This one is a favorite. A Guide to the Star Wars Universe from 1984, when the universe was just 3 movies and a small stretch of publishing. It's such a time capsule of what little we knew. It was followed up by much larger guides in the 90s, of course.

This book, The Annotated Screenplay is a treasure trove. It could have easily been a deluxe coffee table book and been worth its weight. But as a small paperback it was a huge bargain considering all the inside behind the scenes info it contained about the evolving story.

In the home stretch here. Another small slot to hold the new Lightsaber book, a more portable Taschen book, and Fascinating Facts by some guy. Underneath that, plenty of videogame guides dating back to the early 90s. These things would occasionally hold great lore.

The last two slots at the base of this bookshelf are hardcover (mostly) behind-the-scenes, including the Rinzler making ofs, and those mighty tomes, the Blueprints book and McQuarrie art. That John Knoll 365 Days book is also a visual feast.

And that's it. That's the last of the dedicated Star Wars shelves. Thanks for following along. And thanks for tips and recommendations of things I might have missed. Just since I started this thread I've made a few purchases. It never ends.

And because someone asked earlier, here's my G.I.Joe and Transformers libraries, which came in handy when writing guidebooks for those universes. It's far more of a jumble. My Indiana Jones books are over here too.

And here's another obsession from my youth that I just had to re-acquire. The Fighting Fantasy books that I spent many a winter day playing.

(One last thing. I am completely surprised this thread didn't mess up and break)

Somehow, the thread has returned. Looking through my photos I realized I skipped this little shelf of little books.

Running Press made these tiny hardcovers, including pop-up books! Their Ep I Guide ran the Adrian Dunbar pic but smartly named it Bail Antilles, not Organa. Continuity bullet mostly dodged.

And Chronicles made these small adaptations that draw to mind the Big Little Books of the 1930s. Wish they did the whole series. Okay. That’s the last of it. (Or is it?)