I'm just about to finish re-reading (well, actually re-listening, as I've got it as audio books) the Thrawn Trilogy for about a 10th time and I just love every bit of it! The Trawn's Hand duology was pretty great too IMO, and I don't think one would miss much of the info in the other books. Everything else from Zahn was awesome as well. The only other EU I really liked and ever returned to was the Han Solo trilogy, which is very interestingly written, and quite unique in EU, perhaps because it was written by a woman.