I read this book straight through; I am not an experienced composer. I'll be back in the future once I run into specific problems when making music.

In the meantime I've learned a lot about how to listen to music and for that it is already worthwhile. I found the sections on attentive listening, effective melodic composition, harmonic vs surface rhythm, and composition forms all very enlightening. This is another one of those books that seems to uncover a whole slice of the world by giving me the tools to think about it.