I've been re-reading David Brin's Uplift novels -- and I started with the Contacting Aliens tie-in book that features illustrations of nearly all the dozens of aliens depicted or mentioned in the novels, which is very helpful for keeping them all straight (though I'm not sure I'd recommend it for newbies to start with, since it has some sizeable spoilers for at least a couple of the books).
The one thing that bugs me about Uplift is the species essentialism -- each Galactic race is treated as though it has one uniform, stereotyped culture and psychology, which is something that annoys me when it happens in Trek and other SF. On the other hand, Uplift may be the one SF universe where that makes sense. Since virtually every species in that universe was genetically uplifted to full sentience by some alien "patron" race, and is therefore something of an artificial, designed culture, it follows that they would develop in a rather uniform way. And the great conservatism of Galactic culture and its species-based caste system would tend to reinforce the narrow, stereotypical behavior of each species.
That's one of my absolute favorite sci-fi series. I remember going to sleep every night for a couple weeks listing all the characters in Brightness Reef and Infinity's Shore in my head, over and over, to keep them straight...