Don't read only the Dragon book if you're interested in compilers (or parsing in general). But it should be read, in addition to whatever else you read on the subject. It's classic for a reason.
Most programmers don't understand parsing worth a crap, imho. Some compiler theory would do most of us some good. I read it because I was doing data stream parsing back in the olden days before XML (which was before JSON), when we had to write our own stream formats. It really changed my whole way of thinking about a fundamental class of programming problems.
I found the Dragon Book unbearable---and I am one of those people interested in theory. Pick something better, plenty of choice available.
'Essentials of Programming Languages' and 'Types and Programming Languages' are good choices. (But slightly off-topic for this particular subthread, since they don't deal with parsing.)
The Dragon book is not good at teaching parsing, but is obsessed with the idea and spends 2/3 of the time talking about it, so you'll just be left thinking it's really difficult. The whole thing is extremely boring and lacks confidence.
Try "Parsing Techniques: A Practical Guide" and then a more concise book like Muchnick.
I also found my theory-of-computation course in college to be a wonderful help in understanding parsing.
Being familiar with the Chomsky Hierarchy ([1]), and the kinds of language recognizers required for each level in that hierarchy, can save parser authors a lot of wasted time.
Most programmers don't understand parsing worth a crap, imho. Some compiler theory would do most of us some good. I read it because I was doing data stream parsing back in the olden days before XML (which was before JSON), when we had to write our own stream formats. It really changed my whole way of thinking about a fundamental class of programming problems.