I disagree Moose. Abrams ruined Star Trek. Made it cheesy space opera (red matter). 30 year of Star Trek lore gets destroyed by some Romulan miner traveling through time.
I will admit that there are so very many stupid holes in the Star Trek plot. 1. Red matter? Cheesy 2. Why didn't Nero just go back to Romulus and warn his people? 3. Kirk finding an old Spock on that planet is very unlikely to the point of being laughable Those points are all true. However.... Character dialogue was fresh Characters weren't one dimentional The action was exciting I've never been one to live/die by cannon, so as a casual viewer, I enjoyed it, although real Star Trek fans could probably take reasonable offense
I think the Yuuzhan Vong series alone is something like 19-20? Maybe more? There's some stretching back to pre episode 1. Such as the darth bane books. There's quite a few that cover the clone wars thru the views of the clones. Then you get to the huge end that's after episode 6. The Vong series and the ones where darth caedus comes to be. I can't remember the name of that 7(?) book series tho.
Best written story imo on the Star Wars universe is "A Barve like that"... If you don't know, or haven't read it yet.. Go read it now!!!!!!
Aaahhhh Tales from Jabba's Palace, one of my most favorite pieces of Expanded Universe, lots of good short stories in there and I share your love for "A Barve Like That" and the big game hunter one.