From: Pascal Saremsky
Subject: Best Lisp Book
Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Message-ID: <7goh12$d61$1@newsmaster.cc.columbia.edu>

Hi,

I'm relearning Lisp, and I am shopping for a good Common Lisp book that
starts from the beginning but also goes to advanced as well.

I already have the 'Paradigms of AI Programming: Case Studies in Common
Lisp'  by Norvig, which is excellent and I _really_ like (it's just my kind
of book...hint hint), but I need something that covers the language itself
specifically.

I have MIT's 'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs', which I
liked, but it's for Scheme, and so no good to me.

I looked at Patrick Winston's 'Lisp', but it looks too simple and doesn't
look like it would serve well as a reference too.

The opposite goes for Guy Steele's 'Common Lisp' book.

Perhaps I need two books: tutorial and the other reference

Suggestions anyone?

Thanx and regards,

Pascal Saremsky

• Re: Best Lisp Book Christopher R. Barry
  • Re: Best Lisp Book Philip Lijnzaad

From: Christopher R. Barry
Subject: Re: Best Lisp Book
Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Message-ID: <87so9cm647.fsf@2xtreme.net>

"Pascal Saremsky" <······@docdes.com> writes:

> Perhaps I need two books: tutorial and the other reference
> 
> Suggestions anyone?

For the book, get Graham's _ANSI Common Lisp_ or _On Lisp_. I've never
seen either, but have heard nothing but praise for them. For your
reference, you can't beat the freely available html _Common Lisp
HyperSpec_.

CLTL2 is outdated, but it still has a lot of good examples and is
great if you like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles jokes. I still read it
now and then.

Christopher

From: Philip Lijnzaad
Subject: Re: Best Lisp Book
Date: Wed, 05 May 1999 00:00:00 +0000
Message-ID: <u7so9b3n9l.fsf@ebi.ac.uk>

>> Perhaps I need two books: tutorial and the other reference

> For the book, get Graham's _ANSI Common Lisp_ 

I find this one great as a reference; it also has a fairly extensive
introduction to Lisp, but it's not an introduction that's gentle enough to
learn Lisp if you're entirely unfamiliar with Lisp. Make sure your copy
includes pages 369-400; mine was misprinted and had pages 49-80 following
p. 368. Cheers,

                                                                      Philip
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