There are a whole lot of them out there now, and even us lazy people have a hard time finding enough time to read them all. It must be twice as hard finding time if you have to write them as well. So which books haven't you read (and really want to?) P.S Merry Chrimble
One of these years, I will make time to actually read David R. George III's Serpents Among the Ruins, and then, if I'm not too knackered, I might try to actually do more than skim Keith R.A. DeCandido's Articles of the Federation. I also continue to feel as if I should find time to read A Stitch in Time, as well as In the Name of Honor and The Left Hand of Destiny. However, as you so correctly noted, the demands of writing novels while holding a full-time job and merely keeping my life from spiraling into entropy leaves little time for recreational reading.
I've only one toe in the pool of Trek authorship, but it's still hard to keep up. I've not read the new Shat book, the first two books in Errand of Fury (waiting for all three to read at once), Forged in Fire, and Sword of Damocles. I'm terribly far behind on the eBooks--probably about two dozen all told, with half of them already on my computer just waiting for me. Sorry, KRAD! Please don't beat around the head and shoulders with your bongos!
I try and keep current since so many are being written by people whose work I enjoy or I like personally. Having said that, I stopped reading the Shatner/Reeves-Stevens books a long time back. The only other stuff I seem to have missed reading along the was Daffyd ab Hugh's DS9 Rebels trilogy.
What Bob said. Until recently, I wrote the book review column for Star Trek Monthly, so I was paid to read everything Trek for several years.
I try and keep current so that when I pitch novel ideas to the editors, I have some clue as to what's currently going on.