I’ve been a Star Wars fan since the early ’90s. Back then outside of the VHS tapes you could rent at the grocery store, Star Wars mostly existed in the gaming world – Dungeons and Dragons-style RPGs, customizable card games, Super Nintendo cartridges and bendable rubber/wire action figures. As the release of George Lucas’ prequel trilogy loomed near Star Wars returned to the book world with dozens of comic series and novels. Fast forward about 25 years and Star Wars, now in the hands of multimedia superpower Disney, has multiplied exponentially. The library’s Hoopla catalog alone has hundreds of titles, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think there’s so much Star Wars now that I can’t ever hope to read it all, but this Star Wars Day I’ve picked out five titles available to borrow on Hoopla that I thought stood out:
1. Music Inspired by Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk by Meco (1977)
The disco version of Star Wars was a pop culture phenomenon in its own right and made it to #1 on the Billboard chart in 1977. This one can only be downloaded on a mobile device.
2. Star Wars: Most Wanted by Rae Carson (2018)
Disney scrapped the overwhelming timeline of Star Wars books published from 1976-2014 and set up a new “canon” of novels to tie in with its new movies. Since the really good stories are able to be told in movies and TV shows the new novels have been more hit-or-miss, but I thought the one that was the most fun and most like the old canon was Most Wanted by Rae Carson, a tie-in to the Solo film.
3. Star Wars Comic Series (2015-2019)
Although much of what happened in the 1977-1986 Marvel Star Wars 
comics didn’t have much bearing on later publications (including the introduction of a certain green anthropomorphic rabbit), it had a special place in the hearts of original Star Wars fans. With Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm in 2012, Marvel got Star Wars back and launched a new series set after the first(/fourth) movie that takes the space opera back to its Flash Gordon roots and centers on the character dynamics of Luke, Leia, and Han that made the original movie so good. One of the series’ highlights in Vader Down, which features the Dark Lord of the Sith marooned on a desolate planet with the Rebel forces closing in.
4. Star Wars On Trial (2006)
Serious analysis done in a not-so-serious manner, this entry in the Smart Pop series features a variety of essays exploring the philosophical and ethical nature of the saga. Is Star Wars substantial? logically coherent? elitist? sexist? pulp sci-fi? Is it even science fiction at all? Various authors act as prosecutor or defendant; you’re the judge. Available on Hoopla for mobile devices only.
5. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Soundtrack by Joel McNeely (1996)
On the top of my list for Hoopla’s Star Wars content (although available only for mobile devices) is the soundtrack for Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. Of course one of the best things about Star Wars is John Williams’ memorable score and all of the soundtracks by Williams as well as soundtracks for TV shows like The Mandalorian, Rebels, and The Clone Wars are available on Hoopla, but Shadows of the Empire is special. Bridging the gap between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Shadows of the Empire existed as a book, a comic series, a toy line, a video game, and just about everything else but a movie in the mid ’90s. This album is the soundtrack to a movie that doesn’t exist and features unique variations on John Williams’ classic themes as well as new music that can stand alongside the score of the original trilogy, including a ballet-like number between Princess Leia and the villainous Xizor and a high-energy scherzo for a Tatooine speeder bike chase.
