Magic book(s) recommendations

[gsquid]

Hi friends,

I was a tremendous GURPS 3rd Ed. enthusiast as a teenager, and now as an adult with too much time on my hands, that enthusiasm (that never really died) has reared up again. I've decided to take the 4th Ed. plunge, but here is the problem: I peruse the website and there are about 50,000 books I desperately want to own! Someday, they will be MINE, ALL MINE!!! But..... that is a far-off someday. Meanwhile, I need to seriously prioritize, and that is why I am seeking your advise--on a specific question, as well as I welcome any feedback in a more general, open-ended way.

So, obviously I'm gonna need Basic Set (Characters). I'll pick up Campaigns in the not-too-distant future, but since I'm abandoned by my friends and society in general, I'm mostly interested in character creation for now, I'm not really going to be running any campaigns for the foreseeable future.

I'm interested in several niche genre books (including a few 3rd-Ed.-only books). I actually delight in adapting not-entirely-compatible source material, and I won't be using any of my old 3rd Ed. books to start fires in my woodstove. But what I am interested in is getting the up-to-date core rules into place (I've read up and they seem very sensible revisions, except that I refuse to give up 1/2 pts.). Virtually every campaign setting I'm likely to imagine will include at least some magic, and most likely tons of magic, with a ton of variety in magical systems (e.g., spell magic, ritual magic, cleric magic, mysticism, circles symbols and runes, innate powers, psionics, I could keep going.....).

So, it seems natural that, after Characters, I would pick up Magic.... but looking at the table of contents for Characters, it appears to do a pretty decent job covering magic to begin with (and maybe Psionics, too). I'm wondering if maybe I'd be better off making due with Characters for the time being, so as to invest in one of the other 50,000 I'm eyeing. I'm wondering if maybe I'd be better off with Characters and Thaumatology? And, instead of Magic, maybe I'd pick up Powers, which might expand my core capacity to build complex, dynamic, often fantasy comic-book-style magical worlds (and to populate them). OK, this is a highly subjective question; feel free to weigh in if you want. For me, what it hinges on is whether the spell list in Characters is the same or abridged as compared to that in Magic? I like to build really elaborate grimoires, and it would be frustrating to dive right into Characters and then have all my hard work up-ended when I discover I was working from a significantly incomplete reference source, upon eventually acquiring Magic. I've downloaded the Spells flowchart pdf, which I suppose I could compare to Characters since I'll be getting that book no matter what, but I want to get this show on the road, save on combined shipping, etc., not to mention I'm interested to know what people think generally, about these books that have the potential for significant overlap in subject matter. I just thought of Fantasy, too, drat, another book I have to research then inevitably lust after.........

Thoughts? Apologies for my lack of brevity.

David