>I started reading back in early 2000 and it took me two or three weeks
>THEN to read through everything.

In a similar vein, my advice is to start with the 4 'core' stories, then go back and read EVERYTHING else in the basic chronological order you see there. While they all were not written in that order (especially with the different authors) having all the, for example, Golden Age pieces in place will help when you move beyond Son-set into the Exile, and even more when you move past Core 4 and Twilight stories into the Future Imperfect (and beyond) stories. Don't worry if not all of these references make sense to you at first either, as the authors here gained experience they did an ever better job of making sure if something was obscure, there was a convenient NPC to exposit to.