My first was Jeri Taylor's Pathways (in hardback, fairly recently out), and I was hooked ever since. It also provided a good introduction to the Voyager characters, as I was a new Trek viewer at around the same time. I'm going to guess at 1998? (It's in my parents' loft now with the half of my collection that hasn't yet made it to the flat I've lived in for five years. A good dozen made the transition in a rucksack last week though.)
I take back my answer. I forgot I read both Jeri Taylor novels back when they were "considered canon".
Vendetta by Peter David Edit: perhaps it was Q-in-Law, if Q-in-Law is a book where Q messes with somebody's wedding and someone falls from a cliff on the holodeck. I honestly don't remember much from the book. Or maybe it was this audiobook that we all listened to on a road trip, wherein TNG crew encounter a myth-based planet.
Star Trek Voyager: The Escape. Picked it up at a used bookstore years ago, and I've been reading Trek books ever since.
TNG: Rogue Saucer. I actually found it in a charity shop not too long ago but didn't feel the need to reread it
Uhura's Song followed by The Entropy Effect. Uhura's Song remains one of my all-time favorite Trek novels.
The first Trek books I read were the TNG Starfleet Academy books. At the time I was to young to read something that complex, so my mom read them to me as my before bed stories. I continued on with the series myself once I was old enough to read chapter books. I think they might even have been the first chapter books I ever read. My first adult Trek books were the first four NF books. But the books that really got me hooked on TrekLit was the Avatar books.
Hey, I've been around the Sun 49 times, too! My first Star Trek book was Star Trek 4 (James Blish), when it first came out - 1975, I think. Then came Star Trek 6, 10, and hundreds more... (I really need a house with a HUUUUGE library - you authors write too damn much! )
I've still got a few revolutions on both of you! But I'm impressed that you can actually remember which Blish book it was!
I'm going to take the question quite literally. There are several Trek books that I read but the first one that I clearly remember was Spock's World. All of the ones before that were enjoyable enough but this was amazing in a way that none of those others were. It felt like I was looking through a window into a real time and place instead of just reading a story.
I can't recall the very first Trek novel I ever read, mostly because I bought like 12 differennt Trek Hardcovers on Clearance when I local bookseller was going out of business and then proceeded to read all of them in no particular order one after another. I liked them well enough (Federation was the one that left the biggest impression I guess) and the experience of constant reading lead me into picking up my first Trek paperback which was Rogue Saucer by Vornholt. (More for the gimmick of another saucer I guess, I was a kid.) Didn't really love the story, but I decided to give paperbacks another shot. So the first Trek Paperback I actually enjoyed was the one I read right after that, which was actually the book that was released the month before... Dragon's Honor by the duo of Kij Johnson and Greg Cox... So... yeah, what ever happened to Kij?
"Spock Must Die", sometime around '81-'82 IIRC The first TV show I can remember watching is "Beyond the Farthest Star" from TAS.
My first two books (after seeing two episodes of Star Trek: TOS and a few episodes of Str Trek: TNG) was Spock's World (Duane) and Final Frontier (Carey). Neither of them was especially good for a beginner, I feel. I was a bit confused by what was happening in them for a while.. .P