A non-EU-related point, just a cool thing I noticed: Paul Le Mat (John Milner in Graffiti) would have made a good Anakin if the prequels were filmed at the time of the OT.
Le Mat Shaw
Anyway, there's something I like about the Bantam era EU, even if I dislike some of the particular stories from that period. The creators working in the SW universe during the 1990s had a very limited amount of background information from Lucasfilm, and this included things like the date of the Clone Wars ending around the time when Episode I was eventually set - which makes these stories artifacts of earlier versions of the SW story.
Also, because there was so little official information available about the Jedi and the Republic, etc, the authors had to go off their inferences from the films, which I think often turned out to be similar to fans' inferences and different from certain prequel definitions.
The Jedi in the Bantam era were less organized (even though Luke did train a group in a temple), less dogmatic, and less militaristic. I think a lot of people took the OT Jedi to be "normal" for Jedi, which is why in TOTJ (for instance) some are system guardians who operate in groups of master (knight?) + apprentice(s), while others are reclusive masters like Yoda. Ghosts were standard.
(I think some of the above is why Qui-Gon seems well-liked. He acted like the Jedi we all expected to see and thought was the standard - following his own rules but still acting nobly. Especially interesting when we consider that his character traits were originally Ben's.)
Also, the Emperor was a bad guy but not a representative of an ancient faction. Vader was the Dark Lord. People say Star Wars was always a story about good and evil, but even if that's the case I think the prequels took this to a whole new, external level with the prophecy, the Chosen One, and the Jedi and Sith as almost avatars for the sides of the Force. The events of the OT were always pivotal, but not necessarily to the structure of the Force or Destiny or anything larger than the characters/populace of the galaxy and their political structures. Or at least that was the sense I got.
Because the Sith were excluded from the post-Jedi Bantam EU, you had a lot of random dark siders and Imperial remnants. This might have gotten repetitive, but I think it's even more so now, because now they all identify with the same culture (with variations). The whole of SW history seems now to be increasingly embodied only in a struggle between the Jedi (paragons) versus Sith (always Evil - chaotic? lawful?). This also has the side effect of blowing the Force up to such a proportion that fewer stories can focus on non-explicitly-Force-using characters.
Sorry if that was too ranty.
Also, Anchorhead - another book you may like (it's one of my faves): The Illustrated Star Wars Universe. It's from 1995. It's set up almost like National Geographic, with profiles of the OT planets each told by different characters - an anthropologist who visits Tatooine, an Imperial scout who hates his assignment to Endor, a slimy political yes-man from Coruscant, a poet from Alderaan. Throughout, there are pieces of art done for the films (concept design work by many artists), complimented by quite a few specially-done paintings of various planet/culture-related scenes by Ralph McQuarrie. The stories are written by Kevin J Anderson, whose novels were not my favorites, but this book works for me.
That reminds me - it's always interesting when the film concept artists do work for the EU. I like the consistency of styles.