It looks like I'm maybe half a dozen books further down the consciousness reading list than you are. I am beginning to suspect that consciousness is a fruitlessly interesting subject. It's hard to think about, and it appeals directly to our personal experience, but reading about it doesn't imbue you with fantastic mental powers.

I think a rough background in theories of consciousness, free will, personal identity, etc. are useful for reasoning about related thorny subjects, such as political or legal philosophy. Also a lot of the orbital cognitive science forms a useful set of case studies for how your brain can go wrong, which is incidentally useful when reasoning about cognitive biases and the like. But you're probably right in thinking that reading all the available material is a lot of work to cover very little distance.