Off on a different tangent. My local tech bookstore is having a sale (25% off) on all books this weekend. I've been eyeing EOPL there but the price has been a putoff. I gather that you use the text for your classes. Would you say it's a good investment in money and time for us self-studiers?
First make sure you are thinking of EOPL2, the new edition. The first edition is better in some respects, but is quite problematic in others (e.g., typing).
I think EOPL2 is one of the better books introducing PL concepts, but it is not for everyone. For one thing, it is pretty dense. You must try out the programs on your own, and try to do the exercises. The way the book is written, important concepts are explained ONLY via exercises. So if you want to take this to bed etc. you may prefer another book.
The authors are fanatic about keeping the book short and focusing on essentials. This is A Good Thing. But you should be aware that important ideas were not included because of this. My pet peeve is the lack of dicussion of generic programming (aka paramteric polymorphism). Other topics I had to write about myself since they weren't covered: the LC, coroutines using call/cc, and garbage collection.
This is a textbook for newcomers to the field, covering the fundamentals. If this is what you want, it is one of the best.
From what I saw of LiSP it is also a great book (even more expensive, I think), but I haven't read it carefuly enough to review it.
And oh, if you find Purely Functional Data Structures (PFDS) by Okasaki, buy it. I got it a few weeks ago andI'll write more about it in the future, but it is really beautiful.
I went ahead and got the EOPL2. Still in the middle of going thru Paulsen's ML book and will start on EOPL when I get thru. I read SICP last year, and am comfortable with Scheme - though I like Lisp better with it's extensive libraries. Almost bought the Lisp in Small Pieces book today - but I figure I have enuf to keep me busy for the next several months. :-)
If anyone wants it, I think you can download it from the SCM website; but if not I'll try to find a new net home for it. It does need a maintainer (hint, hint).