darth_ender said:

I've been developing a desire to read some Trek novels. I think they're awesome in that they are not canonical, but you can take them as such if you want. They're not all obligatory parts of the whole story like Star Wars, and I find that liberating. I've been thinking of the aforementioned Star Trek: The Lost Years and its sequels (not to be confused with Trek: The Lost Years ;) ), Probe, and Vendetta for starters. Anyone have any recommendations?

I enjoyed the Star Trek Log novels by Alan Dean Foster. He took the scripts to the animated series episodes and fleshed them out into full blown books. Don't know if they're still in print these days.

Some of the DC comics run of Star Trek in the 80's had some wonderful stories. (The very best of which was a tale of how the original five year mission ended and tied into TMP.) When Marvel had the rights briefly in the 90's, they had a pretty good Captain Pike era book.