As a native Russian speaker I was listening the recordings of Echo Moskvy. Surprizingly, having 50k known Russian words, I had 300-400 new words in EVERY lesson. I marked them all as known but anyway I had 300-400 blue words in the next lesson. Some authors seem to have unlimited vocabulary. 
I am slowly reading through steve’s book so far it is a good really and is keeping me interested!
It depends only on you, jonesjack.
If you really interested in the content, you can start reading it anytime.
But if you have not so much vocabulary and don’t have some main grammar structures, it would be like a walking in the darkness - but yet it’s possible.
I’d reccommend you to combine some interesting but difficult content with some quite easy content from the lingQ library to get gradually accustomed to some new vocabulary and Grammar structures.
I remember how I combined in my younger years the novels by Thomas Mann in German with some easy topic or grammar lessons.
At first I had 40-50 new words on each page by Thomas Mann, so I couldn’t read more than a half of tthe page in a go, but on page 100 I had 5-10 new words, on page 200 only 2-4 new words.
That´s interesting because from the very beginning, almost, I battled through reading in Spanish, only reverting to English in my head when I was stumped. It was really hard at first but so long as the text wasn´t too difficult, reading has become easier very quickly of late, I put this down to keeping everything in Spanish in my head whilst I read. I´m not sure if it actually is better to do that or not, but if the material is at my level (around B1 ish) there´s not a great deal of difference between reading in English or Spanish for me now.
Nice to hear you enjoyed. El Norte, Cabecillo del Parador, Rosa Luxemburgo and El Principito are other interesting short and easy-to-read stories on Lingq. Radialistas and Spanish Podcast Net have a lot of interesting lessons. You can find them in the Lingq Spanish Library. Radio Ambulante is an awesome source to listen to advenced native podcasts and interviews (with transcripts) from different hispanohablante countries. You can import transcripts from their website and read on Lingq.
The materials that I mentioned above are generally B1-B2.
The best way to tackle more complex materials at first is to do comparative reading. Get a book that’s available in two languages, read and listen in your target language while you compare sentences in to your native language version. You can go through materials that are a lot more difficult and learn a massive amount of vocab doing it.
If you like it, fight through it. If it’s boring, don’t read it at all. If it’s too incomprehensible to tell, come back to it later.
I wouldn’t say Steve’s book is that hard - maybe half way between B1 and B2.
If your level is really what LingQ says (~3000 known words), then personally I would start with lower level material. You should be able to enjoy what you’re reading and not have it be a struggle all the time.
Laura Gallego writes for adolescents and sometimes younger children and the first chapters of all her books are available as free downloads from her website: http://www.lauragallego.com/libros/
I have read virtually all of her books now (21, after finishing one two days ago) and they have been a huge help and very enjoyable. Some very light kids’ books to start with are the two ‘Aventuras por casualidad’ books:
http://www.lauragallego.com/libros/sagas/aventuras-por-casualidad/
My favourites are the Memorias de Idhún trilogy but, really, I’ve enjoyed them all.
Sometimes, powering through a really hard lesson is a waste of time. On some content, I lose focus of the lesson and its meaning from trying to decipher the unknown words. I struggled with ШколаЖизни course on here, and I gave up on the first lesson. A year and a half later, I’ve already completed 6 lessons (in the span of a month). Just be patient and don’t be afraid to review old material!