I would also vouch for this approach, it's what I did and it helped force me to understand instead of just copying. Honestly, working through this book was the most fun I've had programming in years.
It also helps to have a practical application that you're working towards - I was in the process of building a game server in Node and wanted a way to modify the state at runtime, so I used this book to build an embedded language for debug builds.
It also helps to have a practical application that you're working towards - I was in the process of building a game server in Node and wanted a way to modify the state at runtime, so I used this book to build an embedded language for debug builds.