It's like reading a novel in a barely known foreign tongue, translating with a dictionary, and juggling the syntax without feeling the flow of the language.

Hm. This is not quite on-topic, but I learned English that way, lo those many years ago. My dad is an avid science-fiction fan and his collection resided in the loo. As a kid I loved sci-fi, I'd gotten hooked after reading Star Beast (translated, natch). And everytime I went for a twinkle there was this treasure trove, mocking me because I couldn't understand a word of it.

So one day (must have been 11ish) I picked up an Asimov, a dictionary and a French translation. (Why? The Loo Library was sorted by author; I started with the A's.) I struggled through that first book, I have no idea how I didn't just give up, but I made it through. The next one came easier, I didn't rely on a translation. After a while I could pretty much do without the dictionary, and started building my vocabulary from unknown words made clear by contextual clues. By the time I started on Heinlein I was getting top grades in English at school, a nice added bonus.

I'd agree that my real fluency only came later, after I also got some practice writing. But I disagree that tackling a difficult but intrinsically rewarding work isn't a good way to enter a previously unknown domain of knowledge.

Further to that, and getting back on topic, there are places in Jaynes where I can tell that I'm missing some pieces of background knowledge (e.g. familiarity with binomial coefficient manipulations) that others are likely to have, that don't really detract from my understanding what's going on but do make it harder for me to reproduce the derivations, but that having others to help me would add some "icing on the cake" to my appreciation of the math.