I highly recommend this book from 30 years ago. It was based on works from much earlier, but I think some part of the field kind of still haven't caught up to it yet (I agree with you).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2069.Consciousness_Expla...

For a shorter read, "Fame in the brain":

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Multiple_drafts_model