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Out of that list I'm only familiar with the first 3 items on your list so working with just those:

For the moment, play as many games as you can and work through the 1st volume of Graded Go problems. If you are getting 80%+ of those right on the 1st try, move onto the 2nd book and keep playing.

If you are very comfortable with the ideas and reading skills needed to do those 2 then you'd be ready to start looking at the rest. At this point the elementary series will start to make some sense. Might as well read them in any order you like but I like "In the Beginning", "Attack and Defense", and "Life & Death". "38 Joseki" will make your head spin. "Tesuji" and "The Endgame" and "Handicap Go" are very useful, but not as much as those 1st 3 (at least to me). "Attack and Kill" is one to save for much later. And again when you feel comfy with GGP2, move onto the other 2.

That should keep you busy for a while!

Bruce "Bookie" Young

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Currently reading: Plutarch, Cerebus, and D&Q 25th Anniversary

disclaimer: I haven't read many of the books on your list. However, some general things- I don't think kyu players (until maybe 3k or so) get much out of endgame books, so I would avoid those. Kato's Attack and Kill is a bit high-level from what I remember, but I may be confusing it with Sakata's similar book. I really like fuseki and problem (esp. tesuji) books myself.

I entirely agree with BaghwanB that GGPB Vols. 1 and 2 are great books to start out with. These books are appropriate for 20 kyu to maybe around 15 kyu (or even a little stronger). Once you thoroughly master GGPB Vol. 2, you will have a good understanding of basic go tactics. I would recommend going through Vol. 2 multiple times, making a serious effort each time to solve the problems before looking at the answers.

Although it's not on your list, I would recommend you consider buying a copy of Opening Theory Made Easy by Otake Hideo. This is the best introduction to Go strategy that I know of, and it is accessible to even a 20 kyu. It would work well alongside GGPB Vols. 1 and 2. All three of these books (GGPB vols. 1 and 2 and Opening Theory Made Easy) are excellent for the 15 to 20 kyu range, and are the first three books I would recommend to someone who already knows the rules.

On the other books you have listed, I have a few comments.

In the Beginning in the Elementary Go Series is probably readable at 20 kyu, but I would put it in the 10 to 15 kyu range because it has some quite advanced ideas in it. I would recommend you read Opening Theory Made Easy before this book.

Ignore Life and Death in the Elementary Go Series for the moment, except the first 30 pages of basic dead and living shapes. It starts to get hard pretty quickly after that and seems mostly meant for SDKs.

Tesuji in the Elementary Go Series had the biggest immediate effect on my Go strength of any book once my rank stabilized a bit, but it's not an easy book and probably should wait until GGPB Vol. 2 has been mastered, or it could be very frustrating. I would guess that this book is most apropriate for 10 kyu and stronger, although a srong DDK might get a lot out of it too.

Attack and Defense is a great book, but you probably need to be at least a strong DDK to get alot out of it, and you could easily wait until you are a SDK before taking a look at it.

The rest of the Elementary Go Series you can ignore until you are a SDK.

The three Improve Your Intuition pamphlets are pretty good, but I found them challenging when I read them around 5-6 kyu. I think a DDK might get something out of them, but there is a lot of stuff in them that is probably too advanced for a DDK unless they are on the verge of becoming a SDK.

Star Point Joseki is another good book, but it's just not necessary to learn joseki in such detail at the DDK level. Joseki books probably should mostly be avoided until you are well into the SDKs.

The Proverbs book is a great book which you can read a little at a time because each Proverb stands on its own. This book has some more advanced stuff in it, but you can just ignore parts that seem too complicated and most of the book is very useful for 20 kyu to 4 kyu (and maybe even beyond).

GGPB Vols. 3 and 4 are also very good. After you get to the point where you are finding Vol. 2 pretty easy, you can try moving on to volume 3, which is quite a bit harder. I would guess that this would happen somewhere in the 10 to 15 kyu range.

I won't comment on your other books because I've only read a few of them and not very carefully.

Basically, if I were able to go back in time and devise a study program for myself as a beginner, it would go something like this:

Around 20 Kyu: Go through GGPB Vo1. 1, play a lot of games
Go through GGPB Vol. 2 at least twice, play a lot of games
Read Opening Theory Made Easy twice, play a lot of games
Read the first 30 pages of Life and Death in the Elementary Go Series

Around 15 kyu: Start Reading Proverbs, skipping over stuff that is hard to understand.
(There are well over a 100 proverbs in this book, probably going through
it slowly one or two proverbs at a time is better than trying to read
straight through the whole book), play a lot of games
Read In the Beginning from the Elementary Go Series, play a lot of games
Read through GGPB Vol. 3 at least twice, maybe more, play a lot of games

10-5 kyu: You will definitely want to read Tesuji and probably Attack and Defense
in this range. You could also try 38 Basic Joseki.
Read through GGPB Vol. 4, and start going through other life & death and
tesuji problem collections.

4-1 kyu: You are on your own.

Until you are well into the SDK range, you should probably spend a lot more time playing games than reading books. Books can only teach you principles, playing gives you practice in applying them.

For GGP, I'd say the difficulty is at least (and might be a little higher, especially the last two):

1: 20k
2: 15k
3: 10k
4: 5k

The indicated rankings printed on the books are bald-faced lies. The quality of the problems is great, though.

For Elementary Go Series books I have, I think this lists them in order of how hard their contents is:

Tesuji
Life and Death
Attack and Defense
The Endgame
In The Beginning

I don't have 38 Basic Joseki, so I don't know how hard that is.

I'm hesitant to put kyus to these books. I'm rereading them and finding things I missed, and things that are a little hard, still. I think if you understand them all perfectly, you're somewhere in the dans. Each time I read them, they are helpful. I wish I could make books this good.

I don't think they're ever bad to read, but don't demand of yourself that you understand them fully the first time you read them. I read them as a newbie, then again around 12k, and now again on my quest to danhood..

I agree that Otake's Opening Theory Made Easy is a much better introduction to the opening than In The Beginning (which is more of an overview of the entire thing).
It makes your opening less embarrassing even if you don't understand the reasons very well, and doesn't bother you with the details.

In The Beginning is better for when you've played a few hundred games already.

About the balance between playing and reading, if you don't understand what's in the book you're working through, play more games. If you're stuck and don't have any good ideas how to improve, read more.

Try to put what you read onto the board, but don't sweat it if it doesn't go right the first time. Each time I try something new, I mess it up a dozen times before doing it well.

There's a LOT of "what if..." that's simply not in any book. You're meant to "enjoy" discovering how in some contexts, some methods aren't so sure-fire.

I wouldn't say that. Both books have a different focus, the overlap is surprisingly small. "In the Beginning" was my first book at around 16-17k and gave me a boost of two stones.

I have created a list of books at SL including an approximate strength that the reader should have to get the most out of the book. It doesn't containt contain all of the books that the OP lists, but most.

Wow, my order of difficulty is almost opposite. I'd put it as:

In the Beginning
Attack and Defense
Tesuji
Life and Death (mostly because it's a little more dry than tesuji)

I haven't done the Endgame, so I can't rank it. I think that the biggest reason for the difference in our ratings is the text-to-problem ratio. If someone is just rambling about general ideas 'Okay, make sure all of your groups are safe before you try to attack. Yadda yadda yadda,' it's clear to me in concept. Whereas, if someone wants me to find fairly new-to-me tesujis and read the board position out 10 moves, that can be a lot harder. For that reason, I could make sense of In the Beginning, which is very text-heavy, long before I could successfully get more than a few Tesuji problems. Attack and Defense is middle ground between problems and text.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

Maybe the difference in perceived difficulty has something to do with a difference in distribution of strength and weakness.

I'd put Tesuji before Attack and Defense.

In response to Spine: I think before 15k, I'd probably not read any books except tsumego/problem ones. My own experience was that I ended up with a shelf full of books, but didn't play enough. I didn't want to play before I had an idea what I was doing and I looked for that knowledge in books, audio lectures, etc. I did find that knowledge there, but I was unable to piece it together and apply it in my games, which made me feel like an utter failure.

It also created the situation where I had a pretty good opening, but fell totally apart as soon as the game moved past the first twenty or thirty moves. Especially, I couldn't fight and couldn't read well. I tried to remedy this by studying even more books, even those I clearly didn't understand, which only led to sort of an information overflow and thus even more frustration. As a result, I stopped playing for a couple of years.

If you want to read a text book, besides GGPfB 1 and 2, I think "In the Beginning" is pretty good, though it's not necessarily user-friendly. It's something to chew through, slowly. Most of the books of the elementary series are like that. You can tell that they were written by a different generation of teachers for a different generation of learners. Less fluff, more substance.

But like I said, in retrospect I found books to be more counter-productive than helpful early on. But I also find starting on 19x19 too early to be troublesome (for me, it started to backfire around 12-10k), especially if you're like me and tend to be stronger with strategical concepts than tactical ones. I noticed it's very different for people with a chess background, like my partner -- she used to play tournament chess and when I introduced her to go, her tactical skill was far more advanced than mine, pretty much right from the start. These days I like the 9x9 board, and unlike 19x19 this is also a size where you can use the computer as competent sparing buddy without the risk of adopting bad habits.

So, if you're over 15k, I'd just do tsumego and play a lot, with a significant portion of the games on a 9x9 board. But people learn differently and the best way is probably YOUR way. Read what you think is interesting (many of the books you have aren't necessarily meant, or suited to be, read from cover to cover), and play whenever and on whatever board size gives you the best entertainment. Many people here also have more experience than me, so take what I say with a grain of salt -- I'm just a sdk, not a dan player. (And I didn't even mention that I really like replaying pro games, even when I started out, and I much prefer this over watching dan blitz parties on KGS, which so many learners do.)