Forgive me for asking, but how could that book help me down the road? Scheme seems so obscure to me. I was at the bookstore and checked it out, and was mildly intimidated by it, although the illustrations were cute.

I ended up purchasing Practical Programming. Thank you all for your recommendations, some I have saved into my reading list.

PDF Sample: http://media.pragprog.com/titles/gwpy/toc.pdf

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Programming-Introduction-Pra...

It's not really meant to just teach you scheme. Scheme by itself is incredibly minimalist and simple. The exercises are more logic/math-based puzzles. Here's a list of the exercises themselves:

http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/exercises.ps

TLS will break your mind in the most delicious way. I can't recommend it enough. As for practicality, I think that the world is trending in directions that make becoming comfortable with recursion more important.

You made the wrong choice, TLS would have changed your world. Now you're slumming it.