Lisp programming langauge

Another programming language I have tried is Lisp. I wanted to read the book practical common lisp so I downloaded Lisp in a box and started reading the book, but Lisp in a box uses Emacs so I thought I needed to learn how to use Emacs and I only wanted to learn lisp so I got frustrated and stopped learning lisp after a few days. I want to try and learn common lisp again someday. And also learning how to use emacs would be fun too.