What’s the best way to tackle reading SICP?

You actually have plenty of options besides Emacs! You can run a Scheme interpreter online, which makes it really easy to test out code from the book. I tried going through SICP myself and found it challenging. I often read a section and understood very little, then jumped to other resources to help clarify things. There’s also an old video series from the 80s available on YouTube that pairs well with the book, which I found helpful too.

There’s a JavaScript version of the book, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you want the full experience with SICP. The book and Scheme work really well together. And while you can write JS in a functional style, trying to translate the code from the book to JS can be more confusing than helpful.

You can definitely read SICP without needing Emacs. Emacs is just a text editor with its own Lisp dialect, and isn't essential for the book. The book primarily uses MIT-Scheme, but there are other schemes like Guile or Chicken out there that you can use too. I personally think sticking to a Scheme dialect is best for following along.