Yeah, LoL was an interesting experience. I could write shorter Python versions of most of the lisp code in the book, but it was an enjoyable introduction.
If I recall correctly, the common lisp community doesn't like nor recommend the book at all.
I remember going through the first 6 chapters and often going on the CommonLisp channel on free node to ask questions and eventually found out it was either wrong or misleading in many of the fundamentals. I tried to keep going through it but eventually gave up and picked the much better practical common lisp.
The book is good if you realize what it is -- it's a book by somebody relatively new to LISP who is excited by it and wants to share his enthusiasm with others. People who are more experienced LISP programmers may dislike it because the author has a rather idiosyncratic coding style that doesn't conform to accepted best practices in the LISP community.
It's been awhile since I've read it, but I seem to recall that Barski had been coding in Lisp for many years before publishing the book. Also keep in mind that many in the community seem to like the book and the exposure it gave to the language. I think the lisp alien is even the logo of the lisp subreddit.
I'm interested to know more here. I don't think of the book as a reference, but it was certainly fun to read and helped spark my interest in common lisp.
To be fair, I had similar experiences with 4-5 other lisp books I read. For the kinds of uses I have, I think Python is just more convenient. If I actually needed to write some compiler or grammar processing app or something like that, I'd bet Lisp could win, but I don't have those needs at present. It was a great learning experience though.
