Very ambitious. I look forward to following. I recently finished grad school in English, so I can't resist offering some reading suggestions. I'll lean towards shorter books:
poetry
John Donne (the canonization is good)
George Herbert (donne's lesser-known contemporary)
t.s. eliot, four quartets. i much prefer this one to "the waste land."
fiction
voltaire, candide.
samuel johnson, rasselas. both of these books are "novels of ideas" or philosophical novels, which may appeal to you given your goals. Candide is better imo but rasselas is very good too.
faulkner, as i lay dying. his stuff is difficult but well worth it. This novel is absurdly good.
dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov. If you don't have time to read this one--it's 800ish pages--read his short story "the dream of a ridiculous man."
Chekhov's short stories--especially "the lady with the dog" and "gooseberries."
nonfiction
I've recently been reading "creative nonfiction" or "narrative nonfiction," which applies the tools of novel-writing (scenes, dialogue, point-of-view, detailed characterization) to journalism. Here are a few good ones:
Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra has a Cold." An incredible short piece.
David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster. Yes, Infinite Jest is the one book to read but it would take months. This nonfiction collection is excellent.
Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains. A biography of the wunderkind doctor Paul Farmer.
Al Alvarez, The Biggest Game in Town. I've been reading a bunch of poker fiction and nonfiction lately and, yes, most of it is weak compared to the books just mentioned. But Alvarez's book is excellent--he's an accomplished poet, essayist, and reviewer--and his account of the 1981 World Series is def worth your time. I'll be posting a review shortly in my goals thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...r-u-s-1334833/
Enjoy all the reading! What an awesome goal.