Please check out the excellent book The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music by Bradley Smith (ISBN 0-8230-7665-2). Smith has a real enthusiasm for the subject and does a good job of describing the music. He picks a mean selection of albums and I've bought a few on the strength of his recommendations.
For converting LPs to CDs I highly recommend WaveRepair by Clive Backham, see www.waverepair.com. This program has a wonderful user interface with a large range of useful features such as the ability to insert markers when listening, and the ability to move forward one revolution (33 or 45rpm) to hit the next offending click. It has automatic or an excellent manual de-clicking facility for removing those dreaded scratches. It also has a very good recording interface with fine level control. It has a very good manual as well. Be warned though, a proper job takes literally hours and you have to have a rest from the album for a few weeks or months, after the repeated listening/correcting cycles.
On my favourites page I list albums and also books.
Dislikes
Live albums - often tracks are little different to the studio versions, just worse quality with some cheering.
CD bonus tracks - they contaminate the original album which is a work of art in its own right. I know it's more expensive but why not put the extras on a separate disk.
Over-long albums - in the good old days of vinyl, 40 minutes was the length, now over an hour is the norm. The quality often suffers.
Repeating lyrics - something that Yes of the 90's have been doing, they sing/shout a line and then immediately repeat it. This smacks of a lack of ideas to me.