I turned my back on the EU while reading the Kevin J. Anderson books of the "Jedi Academy". I tried twice to read the second book but never managed to finish it. It was just too... "who cares"?

BUT there are really good ones like the Thrawn trilogy (which comes as an audio play this year in Germany; all dubbing actors from the OT will be there, Williams' music and the original soundeffects, I'm excited as hell), or "Truce at Bakura" or "Shadows of the Empire". I even enjoyed the short story collections on Jabba's palace, the cantina and the bounty hunters. But the more books came the less I got interested.

Now I am really annoyed when a new episode of Clone Wars comes out and someone cries "b... but they're destroying the canon" because of something that doesn't compute with one of the books. In the mid 90s it was said that the books aren't canon, they where just authorised by GL. Canon was everything on film. So for me the OT and TCW are canon, and when someone turns the Moving CGI-Storyboard that was called "the prequels" into movies, they may be counted to my canon, too.

So IMHO, enjoy the stories if you like, but don't call them true.