I think you are very lucky to have heard about Lisp while you are just starting to get into programming. If I could send my younger self some advice, it would be the books you just mentioned. Also Felleisen's other books such as Little Schemer (shorter and more introductory than How to Design Programs) and How to Design Worlds. I think I would have been ready for them around 8th or 9th grade, but I didn't discover Lisp until grad school.

How difficult is it to find Lisp programming jobs in Boston (interested in other cities as well)? Here in Florida, I've been stuck with a choice of Java, C#, or Fortran.