If you were going to fill in your timeline for the Bantam-era EU, why not fill it in with things that reference those other stories but are good, like the X-Wing novels and I, Jedi? The latter pretty much retells the JAT but from another character's point of view (the whole book doesn't focus on this, but it is in there) and it seems like a lot of people prefer that book's take.
(I actually didn't mind DE so much, probably just because of the volume of spacecraft designs.)