
Some Lisp books (2012) - deepaksurti
http://blog.fogus.me/2012/07/25/some-lisp-books-and-then-some/
======
TeMPOraL
Two important newer Common Lisp books worth mentioning:

\- Common Lisp Recipes - [http://weitz.de/cl-recipes/](http://weitz.de/cl-
recipes/) \- the de-facto go-to book on practical Common Lisp usage, for
people with at least basic familiarity with the language.

\- Land of Lisp - [http://landoflisp.com/](http://landoflisp.com/) \-
introduction to CL + overview of some more distinct aspects of other Lisps
(often portable to CL as a library), teaching by means of writing small games;
quite... peculiar.

Also, if someone wants to start with Common Lisp, then Practical Common Lisp
(PCL) is usually _the_ book for it. The entire book is available on-line for
free: [http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/).

------
deong
I'm not sure it should really count as a "Lisp book", but The Art of the
Metaobject Protocol" is one of my favorite technical books ever.

It takes some knocks for not really containing anything about how to use CLOS.
Instead, it's how CLOS is built. At a higher level, it's "how to build an
object-oriented language/object system from scratch" using Lisp as a vehicle.

~~~
Tomte
For how to use CLOS there is always Sonya Keene's book.

~~~
_ph_
I think the Keene book should be avoided by all means. I don't think it is a
good introduction into OOP or CLOS. My recommendation would be Peter Seibels
Practical Common Lisp.

------
kannmig
Steve Losh's post on how to learn Common Lisp is an amazing resource. I
encourage people to check it out!

It happens to include many of the books mentioned in the parent post.

Link: [http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-
lisp/](http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp/)

Accompanying HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17852194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17852194)

------
register
I always found "Lisp in small pieces" extremely heavy to read. It's not the
content per se but I find the writing style baroque to say the least . I
attempted to read it twice and never went further than the 2nd chapter. Am I
the only one?

Instead I found PAIP the best introduction to Lisp for somebody that has
already (plenty of ) experience with other languages. The introduction to the
language is concise and smooth. I liked much only the chapters on the language
though. The chapters on AI are too much outdated for me to find them
entertaining even if the Lisp code is pedagogical for sure.

I didn't like OnLisp at all: the book wastes too much words on saying how much
Lisp is great and the best thing in the universe rather than going straight to
the point. I don't like this kind of style at all.

I found Practical Common Lisp too slow for my taste and would reccomend it
only to a beginner.

For me the quickest way to learn Lisp for an experienced sw engineer is to
start with PAIP reading only the first 4 chapters about the language and then
to jump straight to a good reference guide such as "Common Lisp the Language,
2nd Edition"

Also I suggest anybody that is interested in CL to have at least a look at
Julia. Since the relese of Revise.jl the interactivity of the REPL is second
only to Smalltalk and CL but multithreading support is consistent amongst all
platforms and the library ecosystem is already interesting. The language has a
lot of momentum, is rapidly evolving and the community is small but helpful.

~~~
stephenbennyhat
I agree entirely about Lisp in Small Pieces. It's one of those books that I've
attempted to read many times and never get more than half way through.

------
mtreis86
I have been working through the examples and exercises in Paradigms of
Artificial Intelligence Programming by Peter Norvig, the full text is
available online, all code discussed in the book is LISP
[https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp](https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp)

------
thuuuomas
The author on occasion also publishes a journal about " the Lisp family of
programming languages and little-languages in general", which is worth a look.

[http://readevalprintlove.fogus.me/](http://readevalprintlove.fogus.me/)

------
dutchblacksmith
Don't forget CommonLisp Recipes by Edmund Weitz. Best Lisp book in years.

------
porpoisely
You could also try the MIT SICP course with accompanying lecture notes, video
lectures, exams, etc.

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-
compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/)

~~~
mesaframe
I'd suggest instead taking Brian Harvey's lectures on same.

~~~
mesarvagya
Could you share the URL for Brian Harvey's lecture.

~~~
kannmig
[https://archive.org/details/ucberkeley-webcast-
PL3E89002AA9B...](https://archive.org/details/ucberkeley-webcast-
PL3E89002AA9B9879E)

------
eadmund
There are some great books here. I can attest that Lisp in Small Pieces is
_awesome_.

Odd that the link is to a footnote, though.

~~~
ilammy
I can double on that.

Around the second chapter I was so amazed by the book that instead of reading
it further I translated it into Russian, got the Professor's blessings, and to
this day it warms my heart every time I see a new star on the repo.

It's definitely a good introductory _piece_ on Lisp history and its central
ideas as well as on language runtimes and implementations.

------
Jtsummers
Prior discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4291570](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4291570)

------
ertucetin
Also, "The Joy of Clojure" is a great one!

