I'm focusing exclusively on reading at this stage, and predominantly on solving all of the problems in Davies' Tesuji and Life and Death.

I'm pretty confident that just reading practice will get me easily to 1 dan KGS in not too long.

there are many roads to KGS 1d

I got there without doing much tsumego at all.
therefore I think I'm good in whole board tactics but not as good in close combat fighting.

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Laurens
Go school: freegame's Teaching School
Author of: The Next Move a book for 15-3kyu players.

I also did almost no tsumego apart from the basic shapes at the beginning (bulky 5 etc) and 10 every now and again as idle time-passing until I hit around 2k. Even then, I use them as a benchmark for my reading as opposed to an effort to improve my reading. As the last poster said, there are plenty of ways to 1 dan.

I do at least 20 Tsumego/Tesuji-problems a day and it is good practice, but to become Shodan, I think the more important factor is tactic. For me it is not that hard to read a sequence, it is way harder to choose if this sequence benefits my play or not.
I may get life in short terms, but my opponent becomes really thick. So better Sabaki and go for a more flexible approach? How many points do I lose then? Is there Aji to exploit later? How to play, to leave the most Aji behind?

And so on, and so on.

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My "guide" to become stronger in Go

I am not good at theory, as you can probably see in my Malkovich games if you've watched any. I rely only on reading. As a result, when I'm sharp and have been studying, I have some success in games. But when I take a break from study, it's also reflected in my results.

I do not think I could even have reached SDK without practicing tesuji, because I suck at the other stuff so much :-p

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be immersed

That might get you to 5d. The carpenter's square sections make my head hurt.

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