Land Of Lisp is the best introduction to a programming language that I have ever read

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

I’ve been reading Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time! by Conrad Barski M.D.

The book introduces a person to Common Lisp by walking them through how to create games. Since I think about games a lot, this is the perfect angle to hook me in. The games start off as a simple text based adventure and then slowly increase in complexity.

I love this book. I bought it on Monday and have read half of it already. This is the only time I can remember reading a computer book straight through. Most of the time, with programming books, I tend to skip around a lot, trying to figure out how the various fragments of the language all fit together. At first, learning anything is difficult, since you lack any context. But this book offers the right mix of background info and programming examples.