Good Approach to Learning Algorithms and Design Patterns?

From what I've gathered reading similar questions here, Algorithms by Sedgewick, and CLRS seem to be the preferred books on the subject. Unfortunately, they're rather long, and entail a lot of memorization. The same goes for many of the design patterns books. While I typically read textbooks from cover-to-cover without major breaks, I'm wondering whether books of this subject would be better utilized by reading only their introductory/core chapters, scanning through the rest, and then simply keeping them as reference afterwards.

I like this approach because it doesn't put so much strain on the student in trying to comprehend a multitude of algorithms, one after another, many of which may not even be used in practice. However, I am skeptical of how effective it could be. Has anyone read the aforementioned books, or studied algorithms or design patterns with this approach, and could share their experience?

Thanks.