Star Trek discussion

I am fairly new to Star Trek, my parents own the entire Next Generation television collection and I have been watching it and adoring it. I am a huge Star Wars fan, and have found the Star Trek universe very compelling. I want to start buying and reading the novels set in the Next Generation era, as I have already nearly completed my Star Wars collection. But I have no clue where to start. Any ideas?

I know that it is very "Old School", but for a proper introduction, I recommend the TOS novelizations by James Blish. They are Star Trek 1 through Star Trek 12 .

You can get a timeline for all the series novels here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Tre...

check this out:
http://8of5.blogspot.com/p/trek-lit-r...
I found it a helpful starting point. But I love flow charts anyway.