Anyone ever read any of the novels? Over the years I have read maybe four or five of them.
I spent way too much of my early teen years reading Trek books.
My thoughts:
I really like the original crew in the books, it lets them shine in larger scale / more modern stories (although there are books that predate TNG). For example there was a book called Strangers from the Sky written while TNG was airing that is the story of first contact, with Kirk involved. It involves Kirk, Spock, Gary Mitchell and McCoy being sent back in time before first contact with the Vulcans. I also like how the TOS novels from early on deal a bit less with technobabble.
Some stuff I remember:
Peter David - anything that he wrote. His stories usually involve Q, and his writing style reminds me of Douglas Adams at times. Also just remembered the Excalibur series, which was fantastic. Basically a new series focusing on a new ship (with a new captain, but some familiar faces in the crew). Excalibur is sent into a sector that just had the dominant empire collapse, and is tasked with keeping the peace.
An TOS book called "The Great Starship Race" - Pretty Kirk centric, very much a "Captain and his ship" story. Involves a space regetta and Romulans.
Personally, I liked the TNG and TOS books the best. I didn't read much DS9 though. If I remember right, DS9 would be harder to write since stories would have to be shoehorned in around the ongoing plot. Voyager had a similar problem of not having many recurring elements for the authors to really use, plus everything had to be returned right how it was in the show. TNG and TOS could draw on the whole alpha / beta quadrants as backdrops, and really expand on a lot of minor characters and races.
I'd offer up a better list of recs, but my box with all my books is at my parent's house.
I've read a few of the post TV series books, and its a bit off in my opinion. Big massive war with the Borg and it didn't feel plotted together super well (have only read a few though.) Maybe I'd grown up, but I just couldn't get back into those.