In chapter 1 you mention that Petzold's book is underrated. If that's any consolation, I have bought the book when it came out and have talked about it to many of my friends since. I wouldn't say it's underrated, but just not well known. Great book!

Maybe I'll change that to "under-appreciated"

I forgot to say that I'm reading your text now :) I had a compiler class with Marc Feeley, author of Gambit-C, and I've been sold on Lisps ever since. I really love the simplicity of Scheme, but I found that it's much easier to get going (i.e. not having to re-write even basic things such as for-loops) in CL than Scheme. I can write/read some basic macros but my end goal is being able to write a read-macro for a DSL. I can't really envision doing this as easily without a Lisp.

FWIW, please accept my bit of encouragement. I would really like a book like yours.

Thanks!