If I'm going to diverge from read code, write code long enough to do this much reading... I'd rather start with the papers and books recommended for the phd qualifying exam at the top 10 universities.
The closest I see to such a list is: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/GradAffairs/CS/Prelims/
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/academic_programs/graduate/curricul... Purdue's is a little more interesting but still will have to dig into the courses
that's like 10 years ago for me, it used to be easier to find lists of papers on this : ]