This has been recommended a lot. I'm gonna buy it on Amazon and work through it slowly.
I've only worked through Chapter 1. The text is interesting, but most of my learning has come from the exercises. You should plan to do the exercises. Also, don't worry if you have to skip a few exercises and come back to them later. Don't allow yourself to be bogged down and loose interest over a single difficult exercise.
and you are right, the value lies in the exercises. I started doing them in Clojure. I recommend doing as many as you can and then you'll find plenty of solutions online to compare your results. It's worth it