[BugsBunny1991]

I think it's easier to do if you work up to it gradually. I read Logic by Wilfrid Hodges a few years back on a whim from some recommendation on HN. I didn't think much of the book at the time, though I recently picked up Benjamin Pierce's Types and Programming Languages. Having seen notation like that before made digesting the book much easier (along with starting with other introductory texts like Friedman and Wand's Essentials of Programming Languages).

[siraben]

Yeah, Essentials of Programming Languages is also another great implementation-oriented text, it has some formal things like inductive sets (which pop up in PLT anyway) and also lots of programming exercises.