I hope they take things from a wider aspect than 'Yay! The Jedi are back! Let's go fight things!'. It's kind of odd that they are saying they won't follow the books when, if you think about it, there are large aspects of the books that you simply cannot ignore and still retain some kind of logical view on the New Republic. Luke has no idea of the traditions or History of the Force, and whilst I'm sure the Jedi Academy contains some information for him, he is having to learn to go from a gung-ho Farm hand to the head of a powerful group that were, mostly through negligence and over-procrastination, partly responsible for the Emperor gaining power in the first place.
If you add to the mix the fact that Skywalker is, well, Skywalker, the son of one of the symbols of the Empires terror as well as a Force sensitive, there are really very few people with reason to trust him, and he has very little experience in anything that stands before him.
The books tended to reflect that fact, people made mistakes, misjudged things or misinterpreted things, it helped to give the characters some real depth, I far preferred Zahns' self-doubting Leia, trying to do her best but haunted by the ghost of her own parentage, to the far more self-centric film version.
But then, all that said, it'll probably be a circus show with glowing sticks, I hope for more, but don't expect it.