I saw the Top 10 of SW 2005 and had to do one of my own, since this is definitely the year of SW mania.

10) The Dark Nest trilogy--I'm still waiting for The Swarm War, but Troy Denning takes my breath away and his characterization of Luke is especially good.

9) The Marvel comics--I inherited a huge stack of them from a friend who, insanely, no longer likes Star Wars (she liked it back in the '70's, too!). Sure, the characterization is way off and they were obviously rooting for a Luke/Leia romance for a while there, but there were some really creative aspects and good filler between the movies.

8) Hyperspace web comics--I loved seeing an online addition to the comics every time I signed on.

7) The Yoda Easter Egg on ROTS--Yoda getting down with jiving clonetroopers just made me giggle.

6) ROTS midnight showing--I admit that I sat in the front row, wearing my Darth Maul makeup, and promptly burst into tears when the opening crawl came up. I went to a 12:50 showing of TPM, but was a missionary when AOTC came out and never saw it in a theater. Seeing ROTS on the big screen as soon as it came out was just magic.

5) My Yoda PEZ--I now have two, thanks to Christmas, but the one of which I speak is the foot-high one that plays music and looks a lot more like Yoda.

4) ROTS novelization--Kudos to Matthew Stover (I'm now such a fan of his that I've been to his book signing and had him sign page 389 of Shatterpoint) for the most insightful novelization ever done of a SW movie. I hadn't been moved that much since reading "They lay entwined in each other, too weak to move, too moved to speak" in ROTJ.

3) Hayden's acting skills--Despite being a victim of the hairbrush scene, he not only inspired empathy, but completely made the conflict that Luke suggests in ROTJ something more real than a few choice lines.

2) The soundtrack--I've always been inspired by the music following the opening crawl, but having ROTS open with this funereal, resolute percussion followed by the Force theme was awesome. I cried at Padme's Rumination long before I had any idea what it corresponded to, then when I saw the heartbreaking inner conflict that it represented, I cried even harder.

1) The deleted scenes--I am a Red Sox fan and a softball player. I'm also an Obi-Wan fanatic. When, therefore, I saw a scene of Anakin and Obi-Wan trying to decide on an escape route by looking like they were telling Johnny Damon to steal third, it was priceless. Even better was Obi-Wan's "All right, I still have much to learn."