Required Reading
Since you asked specifically about "required reading":
+1 on the RV14 flash drive manual from Van's. Sections 1-5 will give you a good start on the questions you are asking.
+1 on the Bingelis books from EAA
The Sportplane Builder
Sportplane Construction Techniques
Firewall Forward
Tony Bingelis on Engines
FAA AC 43.13 Acceptable Methods, Techniques and Practices-Aircraft Inspection, Repair and Alterations. You don't have to pre-read this before starting but it's a valuable reference throughout your build
The Aerolectric Connection by Bob Nuckolls. Start planning your electrical system early.
Primer
Do a search on this website for "Primer" and "Primer Wars". Your decision will depend on your location (near a coast or inland) and whether you want your plane to last 200 years or just 100.
You'll never have quite enough space. If you don't have a hangar, plan for ways to store the completed assemblies. My empennage is in my mezzanine, my wings are in my workshop (ex family room) and my fuselage is in my second garage bay (had to find another location to park my sports car).
I already had a steel topped workbench with a good vice for general mechanical work in my machine shop (utility room between workshop 2 and garage). For the empennage, flaps, ailerons and parts of the wings, I built a 2' x 8' workbench using 4" aluminum channels as a perimeter frame and crossmembers with 2 layers of 3/4" mdf on top. Yes it is overkill. No you probably don't need anything this elaborate, but the plans said a "flat surface" so I made it as flat as I could, and being near the coast, it is unaffected by humidity changes.
As mentioned above, many of these kind of decisions can't be made in advance, only by solving the many "How do I ...." questions as the build progresses.
The hardest part of my build was deciding to order the empennage.