Good list. Practical Common Lisp deserves that spot at the top. It's very approachable and provides examples of all those features you keep hearing good things about. I remember running through the spam filter chapter and finding an email that SpamAssassin misclassified about four years prior.

I think my favorite Forth introduction comes at it from the other direction, though: https://github.com/nornagon/jonesforth/blob/master/jonesfort...