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.
Does LW have a consensus on which books are worthwhile to read regarding consciousness? I read a small intro (Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction, Susan Blackmore, Oxford University Press), and the summary seems to be "Consciousness is pretty damn weird and no one seems to have much of a handle on it". As a non-technical layman, are there any useful books for me to read on the subject?
(I have started reading Daniel Dennet's Intuition Pumps, and I'm a bit torn. He seems highly respected by good scientists, but I feel that if the book didn't have his name on it, I would be well on my way to dismissing it. Are Dennet's earlier works on consciousness a good read?)