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Put This One On Your Sith List - Star Wars: Book of Lists
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Submitted by RJ Carter on Wed, 11/04/2020 - 08:34
When I was a middle schooler in the late 70s and early 80s, there were two books that would publish new editions which were required reading (three for me, if you count the Overstreet Price Guide to Comic Books): The GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS and THE BOOK OF LISTS. Both were filled with intriguing facts and figures that could keep me engaged for many an afternoon.
The STAR WARS BOOK OF LISTS tries to capture that same attention in a very handsomely bound hardcover with gold leaf imprinted on the cover. If you're a Star Wars fan, you'll pick this up immediately. However, you may also get disappointed quickly at what qualifies as 'trivia' in this compendium. For instance, "Caped Crusaders: Characters Who Rock Capes and Cloaks," which is immediately followed by "It's A Deal: Negotiations and Deals Made for Parts, Droids, and Information," are, kindly put, uninteresting. It screams out "I have to find 100 different lists to make from a finite set of films!"
Are there interesting lists in here? To be sure, yes, there are. "Walk or Crawl: The Biggest, Tallest, and Toughest Land Vehicles" is a nice display of seven such vehicles, with photos and measurements. That's trivia, if you want to know which is bigger. It's just one of the lists in Chapter 3: Vehicles and Vessels, that includes "Name That TIE-Fighter" and "Tricked-Out Ships." But when you end with "Best of the Rest: Other Significant Vessels" and the urgently requested 'Sticking the Landing: Types of Landing Gear and Different Ways Ships Can Land" you're really just padding out the pages.
STAR WARS BOOK OF LISTS is subdivided into chapters such as "Major Figures of the Galaxy" (aka the leading characters of the films), "People Creatures, Places and Worlds", the previously discussed "Vehicles and Vessels," "Technology and Culture, "Organizations and Factions," "Galactic Events," "Galactic Miscellany" (aka stuff we couldn't figure out how to categorize), and "Behind the Scenes."
It loses this reviewer early on, however, in the first chapter, when it lists Han Solo's Best One Liners. It begins the list with "I've Got a Really Good Feeling About This," and talks about it reflecting his positive attitude that let him be "crazy enough" to make the Kessel Run. However, the list completely omits the original line, "I've Got a Really Bad Feeling About This," which was the whole point of the listed line from SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY. The description doesn't even mention the original line to provide the contrast for what made it such a humorous moment.
This is for the Star Wars completist, who likes browsing photos of Star Wars scenes, and for the casual fans who are new to the franchise. For the lifelong devotees, there's nothing new here to serve as a draw other than it's solid construction and very nice design. It's a book that looks good, but reads weak.
Grade:
2.5 / 5.0
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