Language and Mind Book

I am not assessing the book's quality, as much as I am rating my enjoyment in reading it - it felt more like a chore. Maybe I've been reading too much watered-down pop science to be able to handle this book, and I think I approached it with some flawed expectations.
For one, I didn't know going in and from the title that it would be a collection of essays, so I was let down by a certain lack of structure or cohesive global arch. I think I would have benefited from the chapters/essays being a little better broken down into sub chapters and sections. I often found myself having missed a jump from one idea to the next with no obvious marker.
The overall style and tone are definitely those of a research paper, but for a book about language written by a linguist, I thought that it used remarkably dry language and unnecessarily complicated sentences that didn't facilitate my understanding of some points.
For extended portions, it consisted of responses to articles criticizing his previous papers, none of which I was familiar with. This felt pretty much like eating dinner quietly while the adults at the table are having an argument
I am really interested in the subject, but my only prior reading, which had referenced Chomsky quite a couple of times, wasn't a solid enough starting base. However, I do really appreciate the value of his work and I felt like I took away some important points in the fascinating field of linguistics and grammar.
Overall, I would recommend "Language and the Mind" to people very passionate in the field, well accustomed to reading research papers. For newbie enthusiasts like me, I would suggest starting with "The Language Instinct" though. I'd love to gradually learn more about the field myself and maybe giving his works another try later on.