captainsolo said:

I really enjoyed the Tales books despite the fact that everything gets tied in together. (Maybe that was the strength of it.)

They're really just stories about what each individual was doing prior to that one day in their lives which we saw in Star Wars. In fact, that's what I find most interesting about it.

They're all at a chance intersection for an afternoon, but they have little (if any) involvement with each other. A friend of Greedo's mentions seeing Solo across the room talking to an old man and a kid, but they get up and leave after a few minutes. It's a simple, nothing observation to them while they're sitting in a bar having a drink. Yet to us, it's one of the most pivotal points of the entire story.

Real life is like that. You and your friends may be in a bar after work surrounded by strangers, yet each stranger has a path that led them to be in that same bar at precisely the same moment as you.

You may see a guy walk by and think, if only as an afterthought, "...nice shoes". However, he may have chosen them to make a nice impression on someone who had a lead on a job that he may get, which may change the course of his entire life.

Nothing to you - huge in the life of someone who just happens to be in the same place at the same time. I think it's an interesting concept for a book of short stories.