What is a good way to read CLRS? I find myself losing interest after reading a couple of pages at a stretch, probably due to the text being too formal.

Practical, battle tested answer: keep a copy by the throne. We had a copy of CLR, and a copy of Bjarne Stroustroupe's C++ programming language. We both did really well in our algorithms class and classes which used C++ for programming ( and quite a few did ). No, seriously. That's not to say that the material itself is boring, but the fact that the book has your complete attention can ensure you get some quality reading time. I think some of the criticisms about the book using pseudo code might be valid, but in my mind they are not the high order bit when it comes to understanding algorithms. It's good enough to the point that if you aren't getting the material ( at least in the first half, it's usually a case of not applying yourself. Admittedly, this was before the advent of smartphones so your mileage may vary today.