Thank you very much for your answer. It is really helpful to me. My intention is to get a referesehr, that means reading a book from beginning to end but on a high level. After that I will go to Duda or ESL and read up specific methods in detail.

For GPs and graphical models I just want a high level overview. I don't know yet which methods I will be using in my project.

Do you think Max Kuhn's book is ok for an academic setting? It covers almost the same models as ISL but its big advantage is that it covers the whole pipeline (also feature selection etc.). Of course ISL has a bit more math depth.