Well, before seeing this email, I bought ANSI Common Lisp off amazon the other day and it just came him; reading through it now! I looked at a history of lisp somewhere (I think in a link in the Common Lisp Hypertext, of which I was directed to from reviews on amazon) and heard Scheme described as basically a Pascal equivalent of Scheme in the sense that it was designed to teach, not to use. Of course, knowing nothing about Lisp and its dialects, I believed this, having the new 1000-level CS class that teaches Scheme seem also to point in that direction; hearing your feelings concerning Scheme, however, makes it seem as though I have been misinformed (alas, the curse of the internet!). Well, I'm teaching myself Common Lisp now, anywho. The book I got was highly recommended, both as an introductory Lisp book and as a great reference for Common Lisp. The book is put out by Prentice Hall as part of there Series In Artificial Intelligence, and being that that is what drew me to teaching myself Lisp in the first place, seems like a good place to start. I'll check out one of the local university libraries here (I'm in lower Rhode Island, by the way) and see if I can pick up some of those books you've mentioned. Thank you all very much.