Tobar said:

George himself has stated that there are different levels of canon...

Which is a nicely done and diplomatic way of saying, "If I didn't write it, it didn't happen! Err.. but it did happen, because I want all this money from licensing... but it didn't actually happen, because I didn't write it. But- Buy that book!- it did happen, just not really. Okay... maybe it happened... a little. But not as much as the stuff I wrote happened, because that is the only stuff that really happened."

Maybe we should just say all EU is stuff Artoo dreamed about (do droids dream?), which would explain why some is quite pleasant, while other bits are downright weird, and other bits are absolutely nightmarish. So, Artoo really dreamed about it, giving it a solid place in the SW universe, but it didn't really happen. That is my new definitive explanation for EU!