Perfect Timing: Showdown at Centerpoint

Okay, time to face the facts: I'm not finishing the book meme by the end of the month. Committed to finishing it eventually, though!

11. A book that came to you at exactly the right time

Star Wars: Showdown at Centerpoint by Roger MacBride Allen

Showdown at Centerpoint – and the Corellian trilogy generally, though I read Showdown at Centerpoint years before I managed to get my hands on the first two books – is among the best of the best when it comes to Star Wars novels, and is excellent science fiction generally. The worldbuilding is excellent: The Corellian Trilogy introduces the concept of the Celestials, a mysterious ancient species, and this thread gets picked up in later novels, all the way through the Fate of the Jedi series. I also love Allen's take on Jedi philosophy. There's a scene where Luke Skywalker uses some risky and unconventional tactics to disable enemy fighters without killing anyone, and it's followed by this passage: Luke breathed a sigh of relief. That one had been just a bit too close. There were times when the advantages of being a Jedi Master could turn around and bite you, no doubt about it. A regular fighter pilot without the power to use the Force wouldn’t have felt any moral obligation to risk his own life while using the Force to spare his enemies. Luke smiled faintly to himself. One of these old days, his moral obligations to spare life were going to get him killed.

I first read Showdown at Centerpoint when I was eight or nine, and the book came to me under some unusual circumstances. I was bullied pretty badly as a kid. The cousin of one of my tormentors evidently felt bad for me, because he gave me two Star Wars books out of the blue one day – Showdown and a choose-your-own-adventure book about Zam Wesell. I already liked Star Wars, but Showdown is what really made me fall in love. (Jonah, if by any chance you're reading this: Thanks!)

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Bad Timing: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

12. A book that came to you at the wrong time

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in kindergarten, and it was the first book I'd ever read in which a character died. I didn't handle that well! According to my parents, when I got to the scene where Aslan died, I closed the book, cried quite a lot, and then declared I was never going to read a book again – "If people die in books just like they die in real life, then what's the point of books?"

That resolve lasted four days, which to this day remains the longest I've ever gone without reading anything. I didn't pick up The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe again until several years later – at which point I discovered Aslan came back to life after just a few pages! I loved it to pieces the second time around, and still do, but I was a little too young at first.

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