Don't know your name, but I'll give my advice. Reading and writing music is of course essential if you're going to be playing classical music or if you want to be a session musician in a studio. It is also occasionally handy if there's a tune that you can't learn any other way. But my advice to young musicians is don't bother to learn if you don't have to. The reason being, if you play some sort of folk music or jazz, there are certain subtleties that cannot be notated. For example, if you play old-time music (or whatever it's being called now), you'll find that many people can't tell the difference between what you're doing and bluegrass or cajun (all fine kinds of music) but if you listen carefully with an increasingly experienced ear, you'll find that there are little differences in the rythms that make all the difference in the world. Often it's just a little hesitation or anticipation of one beat here and there, but it's of much importance to the sound of the music and it cannot be notated with even the tiniest notes or rests. As far as learning the tunes is concerned, that is something that gets easier and easier as you progress so that soon you'll have all but the fanciest tunes down after one or two rounds. I have had the experience a number of times, joining a jam group or dance band or some such, when somebody who has formal training brings a book and puts it on a music stand and plays directly from that. It ruins the sound (unless you've got enough people to drown him out) and is extremely irritating. An analogy I have used is that learning a distinctive style of music, such as old time, Celtic, etc, out of a book is like learning to type in a language that you don't know. The biggest and most important part of learning any music is to get it firmly in your head what it's supposed to sound like, and then when you get it, it will be right. It's not enough just to know where to put your fingers and approximately when. So if what I've described resembles where you want to go musically, don't buy books or take formal lessons. Buy records and play with other people as much as you can. You'll get there.

Good luck, Chet W.