want to learn common lisp [closed]

Answer 1

check "Ansi Common Lisp" by Paul Graham

it would also make sense to read SICP (http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/) before it.

Answer 2

To add to Nathan's excellent suggestion, there's also Land of Lisp. :-)

Answer 3

Try Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, it's available online.

Answer 4

Be sure to check out the Hyperpolyglot Lisp section. It's a great cheat sheet to use and very useful if you already know a variant of Lisp.

As a final note, are you sure you want to learn Common Lisp? There are some modern Lisps which are interesting, e.g., Clojure, Racket, New Lisp, Qi.

Answer 5

In my opinion, Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation is the best introductory Lisp book available. It has a good pace for (even absolute) beginners, and there are nice little exercises with solutions. If I interpret your self-description correctly, this would be a good read for you.

When I recommended it to some of my fellow students, all agreed that this was a very solid introduction to Lisp, and everybody passed the exam without problems. Some (those already quite good at programming) found it too slow paced, however.

Then, good second reads (or first, if you feel bored by Touretzky) would be Practical Common Lisp and Successful Lisp.

Finally, one of my favorite books not only about Lisp, but programming in general is PAIP. I prefer its style to SICP, which is also great and recommended by many.