As mentioned by the author, "An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction" [0] is one of the best papers I've ever read and I highly recommend reading it and implementing even just the first few steps. It was the first resource I found that made writing compilers approachable. I made it through about half of the steps (about as many as the author of this post) before setting it aside for awhile. I'd like to pick it back up and keep going sometime. I also recommend writing the compiler in lisp if you already know lisp, rather than C. :)
[0] http://scheme2006.cs.uchicago.edu/11-ghuloum.pdf