Tbh I always direct people who want to read old important papers to lecture notes or textbooks, at least in distributed algorithms or CS theory.
I've found that the original papers are always super dense and the material has usually evolved to be more explainable, especially when someone has put in the time to compile it as part of a course.
any recommendations? I read the Cormen introduction to algorithms 3rd ed book, and then a whole bunch of machine learning related books, but I always feel there is a world of algorithms out there that are pretty neat that I haven't uncovered yet.
The 4th edition of Cormen book got published recently! Now in colour! I think it added a bit to better comprehension. It is slightly thinner than 3rd edition as they removed computational geometry algorithms and added some ML stuff.
I've found that the original papers are always super dense and the material has usually evolved to be more explainable, especially when someone has put in the time to compile it as part of a course.