I have spent the last year or so having false starts on learning Haskell; I would reach an impasse as soon as I start asking "what will I use this for." Once I decided to learn Haskell as a companion language for learning more math and computer science, I was actually able to stay on track.
If you have any other books along the lines of this one to recommend I am all ears. The time I have spent on these sorts of academic pursuits have paid off incredibly well in the real world of programming for a living day-to-day.