Safari (safaribooksonline.com) offers a good option for reading widely at relatively low cost. They have all the O'Reilly books, many Addison-Wesley and Microsoft Press books, and recently added some Apress titles. Alas, Safari has almost nothing on Lisp. You can download Practical Common Lisp and On Lisp elsewhere, courtesy of their authors.
See if your local library has a subscription to Safari Books Online.
For example, Boston Public Library's hidden gem is that anyone in Massachusetts can sign up for an E-Card for free. From there, you can use their electronic resources, which includes a huge number of databases, as well as Safari Online Computer & Business Books. It's brilliant.
Though admittedly it's a pain in the ass to read on the computer.
Hmm. That's a neat idea. Although I have an American Library in my city. It has a one or two unique titles but I couldn't find anything for LISP and neither for Python or Ruby. It did have Code Complete.
Try asking one of the workers there for a specific book. I was at my local library today (in Chicago, IL, US) looking for a specific book on design patterns. They didn't have it but were able to order it for me. I should be able to pick it up in a week or so. After I finish with it it'll be available at the library to any future person that wants to read it.
Maybe I'm odd, but I generally prefer reading stuff on a computer, especially if it's computer-related material (search is invaluable and paper is cumbersome).
If you find reading on a screen difficult, I'd recommend turning the room light on, positioning your screen so you don't have a glare or reflection, blowing up the text, and sitting at a good distance from the screen.
Is this to imply e-books are a detriment to your study? My reading material, long and short, is almost exclusively digital now. In fact, I get very disappointed when there isn't a digital version. I'm close to an evangelist so I'll defend it to great lengths if you challenge me.
I will admit though, this is very much personal taste. But taste is the least of your worries if you're trying to learn, especially CS.
I just finished reading a 688 page (according to Amazon's listing of the paper book) scifi novel on my phone yesterday, it took me about a week of leisurely reading. It's only one such novel in a long, long, long list of ebooks I have been reading on my phone since mid-2007.
I have read all sorts of other books in such a format. It ends up saving me lots of money, and if I just reformat the text to something I am more comfortable with (i.e. a pdf 2 pages side by side), it can be awesome. No need to drag 10+lbs of textbooks to classes and I can store hundreds of books between my iPhone and my laptop from the aforementioned textbooks to leisure reading.
Yes, I do prefer to have a paper copy of some books, but when resources are limited, there isn't much you can do. Online copies/ebooks can be amazing in that respect. I had a subscription to Safari Books Online until I found out either ACM or IEEE (can't remember...) had access to most of the books I wanted, and I also discovered my college library had Safari access that I also occasionally use. To me it costs less to access those hundreds of books online than to buy a single dead tree book every year, and I live in the United States.
If someone made a Firefox plugin that converts the volume of text which has a appeared at a users screen for more than 10 seconds to A4 pages, I am sure a typical Internet user reads more than 100 pages daily. For example the Wikipedia article for "Common Lisp" in print view will be printed to 19(!) pages. And it appears so short. You can make notes in notepad (the real thing) if you like to think about the problem outside - notes are great thing by themselves.
You will have to do the exercises eventually and so there is no escape from the screen. I usually read a book about programming by executing the examples and solving the exercises while occasionally looking at the text for some guidance when I am stuck.. has anyone read a programming book which is ~100% executable (no cheating with excessive comments ;-))?
I have read more than half of all programming books I read on my computer. I find that with a laptop and a good lcd screen, it's not much of a problem... (and I move too much to bother with hardcopies)
I found a really good tech bookshop in Delhi - right on Radiv Chowk between radial 2 & 3 on Connaught place. The same books you might find in a european book store but at a fraction of the price.
There is the Connaught Palace stretch in Delhi, the whole lane leading up to Churchgate in Mumbai, also friends tell me of similar places in Kolkatta and B'lore, where most of the popular tech books' pirated versions are available pretty cheap.
Now, I am not endorsing privacy, but if you are actually so desperate..
Also, indiaplaza.in has some deal with some international book publishers, they take good 30 days to deliver such "international books" but they can be bought in India.
He is posting on his blog and yet doesnt know how to use the internets or even amazon or ebay? Who buys books in a bookstore at full price anymore anyway?
