Some Lisp books (and then some)

These links have been added. Thank you.

Let Over Lambda is a fantastic read. Don't make the mistake of writing it off as I did due to the author's triumphant tone. Indeed, the rhetoric is so over the top it is often indistinguishable from parody. He is the Ayn Rand of Common Lisp. But if you can get over that, you will find a range of unusual macrological acrobatics on display that even veteran Lispers will appreciate.

[PM'd you; I have a copy I can surrender for rendering :) ]

I have a copy and I don't find it that very useful.

It's a brilliant book, a professor at my university used it for teaching SECD machine implementation. I'm glad that I could get it from the library. If you're interested in these kind of things, Henderson's "Functional Programming -- Application and Implementation" might also your thing. (IIRC the list did not contain it.)

The original lambda papers might be on your want-to-read list, too: http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html; I liked the AIM-453 TR, "The Art of the Interpreter, or, The Modularity Complex" by G. Steele and G. Sussman.

According to camelcamelcamel.com, its price spiked recently. It was more like $30-35 for a while (including when I bought my copy).

It is really good, describing several different architectures for computation. Different designs for virtual machines, if you will. It isn't limited to Lisp, either -- Prolog and a couple other language families are covered.

I see there are used copies listed at Amazon. Sellers with thousands of ratings generally have bots that set the book prices. For obscure, out-of-print books, the volume of buyers is really low. I've heard cough that if you want to acquire one of these books less expensively, that the best plan of action is to also try and sell a copy (which of course you don't have). Certain automated bots will then try to under-bid you in order to keep the coveted lowest price slot. You keep reducing the price until it meets you budget. Remove your listing, and then buy from the lowest priced source. The downside is if perchance someone were to try and purchase your non-existant copy. You'd have to cancel that order. But since there is no transaction, the buyer can't give you negative feedback. Of course Amazon doesn't like you canceling orders, so they'll cancel you account if you have a cancellation rate greater than 5%. Its fun watching the different algorithms compete and thinking about what you'd do in those situations (or so I've heard). Of course this strategy probably works better if the book isn't the subject of massive coverage just before you want to buy.

I had read some of Practical Common Lisp, found it good (I'm new to Lisp still, though have dabbled in it over the years a bit) and plan to read the rest sometime later. Do you happen to have a link to that HN thread that discusses the book, or remember (part of) the title of the thread? Would like to read it.

Indeed! It's hard to believe that SICP is not on the OP's list. It should be on any list of books on Lisp.

IMHO better than any book on that list.

seconded. there's also the clos book (amop), which is generally recognised as a classic (i think? personally i own a copy but didn't finish it...)

clos book - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_the_Metaobject_Proto...

apropos absolutely nothing, except that i finished reading it last night, the book (and manual for) ggplot2 is both a good introduction to that software (ggplot2 generates plots in r) and would serve as an excellent start for someone who wanted to implement the same in other languages. the whole thing is based on a domain model for plotting, which makes a huge amount of sense. after reading it, i am convinced every language will eventually have a similar package/dsl for plotting. i don't think even incanter (r in clojure, sort-of) has a version yet, so as far as i know there is no ggplot2 in any lisp. it would be a great project for someone...

this is (a review of) the domain model - http://www.jstatsoft.org/v17/b03/paper

Indeed. My one strike against it is that I'd rather have a hardcover or an e-book. A paperback that large will eventually fall apart if I keep carrying it around (and it's heavy).

I happened to be reading Norvig's "Tutorial on Good Lisp Programming Style" (http://norvig.com/luv-slides.ps) just now.

That's a great book for new programmers, but if you already know you like Lisp and have the experience to be able to dive into PCL or PAIP or whatever, LoL is unnecessary. The books in the OP are valuable for any programmer.