oh, also -- the advice to skim early chapters is generally good. In general, don't be afraid to skip past things you don't understand, as long as you have some

oh, also -- the advice to skim early chapters is generally good. In general, don't be afraid to skip past things you don't understand, as long as you have some way of testing that you are learning everything you need in the end (via peers and practice problems). Sometimes there are seemingly-extraneous details that can only make sense after you see how they are used later in the text, and sometimes confusing stuff ends up not being very important.