I assume over time there will be more sites doing useful reviews, and niche sites will start talking more about apps specific to their needs as more people in that group (artists, web designers, casual gamers, younger kids) have access to iPads and spend time using them. Right now it's all just people taking the first steps to weed through things and get the process rolling themselves.
As for the app store itself, it's like being tossed into a barely-organised warehouse full of glowing press releases and sales pitches. I don't have a whole lot of good suggestions on how to make it better, other than encouraging developers to offer more free samples of limited versions of their apps.
Now, what I'd recommend depends on your needs. Here's some of what I've found that I've liked, though not an exhaustive list of what's on my iPad:
There are a lot of reviews and blogs and forum posts and YouTube demos out there for drawing apps demonstrating every quirk and feature of the various apps (start here with a search for Sketchbook Pro, ArtStudio, or Brushes) but I had a harder time finding in-depth reviews of HTML editors. I went with Gusto.
Ebook readers are mostly free with samples, so I didn't have a hard time figuring out that I prefer the simplicity of Kindle. I got recs for PDF viewers from friends. I need one where I can read and add comments, so even though GoodReader is a convenient interface, iAnnotate is better for me.
A friend recommended BeeJiveIM as an alternative to AIM so we can do group chats, but the interface irks me (the input window covers up much of the chat window).
I got info for comics apps from Comicsbeat.com, other comics blogs, and a heckuva lot of it here on this site (oh, I just downloaded all the free ones, many of which use the same interface). I used Twitterific on the iPhone, so I use it on the iPad. What's On? because it's a quick way to see when Mike Rowe or the Mythbusters team are going to grace my television screen.
Atomic Web as a substitute for Safari because it has tabs that actually DON'T reload each page when you return to it. Other things come up as I need them, maybe because I've used them on a laptop (OpenTable) or because they came up in an app store search and were cheap and had good reviews and a clean-looking interface (QuickVoice).
So, my iPad is getting pretty loaded up. I'm not sure if a random ramble of what meets my need will be helpful, but a good drawing app was worth the whole cost of the iPad.
