It turns out that yesterday's linking to Steve Donoghue's reminiscing on Star Trek books was premature, because the main video he posted today:

A Star Trek: The Original Series Starter Kit! #booktrek2021!

Well, as long as I've started allowing Steve to get me to reminisce about old Star Trek books I read in 5th and 6th grade, I might as well continue.

Steve mentions Diane Carey again (although the specific Diane Carey titles he mentions were ones I haven't read.)

But other than Diane Carey, the only other titles and authors I recognize in this video were Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday , both by A.C. Crispin, which I read back in the day.  

Watch the video from 9:32

Like the Diane Carey books, this was yet another series I read out of order because I didn't know any better.  I read Time for Yesterday first because that was the book that I found in the bookstore.  And only realized as I was reading it that it was a sequel to another book called Yesterday's Son.  So once I finished Time for Yesterday, I ordered Yesterday's Son through the mail.  

As Steve mentions, these books were really good.  (Steve doesn't care for the sequel as much, but I remember enjoying them both when I was in 5th grade.)

As Steve explains in the video, Time for Yesterday is a sequel to Yesterday's Son, and Yesterday's Son is in turn a sequel to the original Star Trek episode All Our Yesterdays, which was also really good.

As I mentioned in my long post on Star Trek years ago, for much of my late teens and 20s (when I was desperately trying to be cool) I was ashamed of how much time I had wasted on Star Trek in my adolescence.  But I also acknowledged in that post that it was the perfect entertainment for a young boy.

And you know what, looking back on this stuff, I'm going to double down on that statement.  This kind of stuff hits the sensibilities of a 5th and 6th grade boy exactly right.  And intellectually, I think it's just about the perfect level for that age as well.  I shouldn't be ashamed of my young Star Trek obsession.  This is exactly the kind of stuff you should be reading and watching when you're that age.