this book is really beautiful. it is in fact filled with exposition about how to build a lisp, but also how to bootstrap a language (or more generally any non-trivial environment).

queinnec went to some pains to make this book accessible, in particular by heavily reducing his usual reliance on denotational semantics. but its not really a good causal introduction to the topic, it requires a certain amount of work to get through.

but can't recommend this book strongly enough, maybe as the ideal followon to SICP