ESHBG said:
The thing that works for me is to look at the PT as almost EU, so you can take it with a grain of salt and accept it or no.

These have been my exact thoughts on the prequels for a while now. They came to me a few months before ROTS came out and I got Labyrinth of Evil from the library. I was thinking "holy shit, this is by far the best Star Wars novel I've read." I'd been collecting the clone wars trade paperbacks over the previous year and a half, but after reading LoE I proceeded to get all six of the clone wars novels in paperback (had to wait until the summer for Jedi Trial) and read through just about all of them by the time May 19th rolled around.

An analogy came to me around that time.

I haven't read the Harry Potter books (seen the first four movies), but I imagine the way at least some of their fans must feel about the movies is the way at least some of the pre-'99 EU fans must feel about the prequels. I mean, one of my friends was pissed about the total lack of Jorus C'Boath and Spaarti cylinders and just about anything else mentioned about the Clone Wars before the PT came along. Even Maul's dual-bladed saber annoyed him because Exar Kun had already done that and to him it was basically GL going "Oh yea, I've got your Expanded Universe right here (makes hand gestures over crotch)."