Yes, Clojure can be quite different from other languages. For instance "loop" in Clojure is a bit different than in OO/imperative languages. Hence it will take some time and effort to learn these new concepts.
A good starting point are the following resources:
I think you're right, the book is not suitable for first time learners without any or much background in programming. This as lots of concepts are explained in passing. It quite frustrated me and I think Carin Meyers "Living Clojure" or Aphyr's "Clojure from the ground up" are in this respect a much better job. However, after having gained some experience with Clojure I thought the book was quite rewarding.
As of the Jokes, it seems this is a matter of taste. I quite liked the jokes.
Concerning the book "Land of Lisp" I wished Conrad Barski had used Clojure instead of Common Lisp.
I have no idea how Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G character sneaked through my gate to ask Noam outrageous things like, "How many words does you know?" and "What is some of them?" I do remember that Noam came to me afterward looking dazed. "No more men in gold suits," he said, sighing.
ClojureScript is these days selfhosting. If you want to write and run small scripts you could give Planck a try (ClojureScript REPL). The startup time is much smaller.
I think it was because they ran into problems with NW (esp. freezes on OSX), but I'm not entirely sure if this was the main reason for switching to Atom/Electron.
