http://www.codingadventures.com/2009/01/getting-lispy-on-osx/
My verdict so far – I can’t stand that environment. SLIME is fragile, and Emacs is a prehistoric editor. As for Practical Common Lisp, it’s a decent intro, but the code examples bored me to tears. I really don’t want to write yet another MP3 song database…
More research reveals that there is a rather overwhelming collection of possible starting points. One of the best collections of references to Lisp environments and Lisp books is a thread on reddit – I really should’ve looked there sooner.
So the setup I ended up with for now? I stuck with SBCL, the editor is good old trusty TextMate, and for a starting set of problems to cut my teeth on, I went with Project Euler. (PCL left me with a good enough grasp of Lisp that I could at least start on problem one…)