Thank you everyone for your input! And thank you everyone for the kind welcoming, this community seems pretty cool. It's also really cool to be welcomed by Gryphon himself.

It seems that the general consensus is to read in chronological order after the cores. I will probably just stick to that, it seems like the least complicated way to go about this. I will definitely read the short story omnibuses as well. Oh, and last thing, the audiobooks mentioned earlier, where can those be found?

Thanks again for all of the help!