This is a list of many of the most influential white papers: http://christophermeiklejohn.com/distributed/systems/2013/07... This is an associated podcast: http://thinkdistributed.io/ This is mixu's book on distributed systems: http://book.mixu.net/distsys/single-page.html This is the MIT reading list: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.852/05/papers/
I've tried to provide a more accessible introduction to distributed systems. To me, that means two things: introducing the key concepts that you will need in order to have a good time reading more serious texts, and providing a narrative that covers things in enough detail that you get a gist of what's going on without getting stuck on details.
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/15-440-f14/index/lecture_in...
[0] http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs6410/2014fa/sched.htm
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~alc/comp520/schedule.html
This class on networking has a great list of papers as well..great for understanding the systems which distributed systems depend on as well:
On a separate note, it is always great to see Satya's courses in the news.
Such as a good video lecture series?